How to make frost staff suck less: some ideas.

FantasticFreddie

Let's be real here: frost staves kinda suck.
The tanking capabilities are underwhelming, the minor brittle buff is a lot of fuss for an unremarkable buff and dps will choose actual daggers over frost staff when given the choice. What to do?
First: remove all the tanking stuff from the passives, and make a new passive: Frozen resolve.
Add all the tanky stuff here: block costing magicka, the dumb little shield, the 25% damage nerf, the minor protection, all that goes here.
Tri-focus is reworked so that lightning staff does splash damage, inferno staff does extra damage, and ice staff procs brittle. No damage nerf!
TADA, ice staff is now a viable option for all 3 specs, and you can more easily choose how to use it.
Next, make frost clench actually useful. . . Turn it into a magicka based pull.
This would BLOW PEOPLES MINDS. Right now the only 2 reliable pulls are silver leash and dk chains. Frozen gate for wardens is buggy as all hell, swarm mother and necro armor rely on blocking and have cooldowns.
Having a reliable, magicka based pull skill would be awesome, and rightly make ice staves a popular tank tool.
Making minor brittle able to be procced with a frost staff on just one bar would also be nice.... but if you made the above changes more dps would actually be inclined to *run* double frost staves, so I think it wouldn't matter as much.

LostHorizon1933

Plays Snow Miser song when fired.

Sangwyne

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Add all the tanky stuff here: block costing magicka, the dumb little shield, the 25% damage nerf, the minor protection, all that goes here.

HEY, the little shield for 25% max health isn't dumb, I actually quite like it thank you very much . I do wish that we could obtain the shield without having to also take the Magicka block passive though; maybe move that to another passive, make Tri-Focus apply Major Brittle under certain conditions (as Ice staves already provide minor brittle by default) and make the first point into the passive provide the shield and the second change your block to consume Magicka? That way you could make the decision as to whether or not you wanted to use Magicka without having to accept the change in order to also get the shield. I do agree that Ice staves need a buff though for DPS specs, Warden can make good use of them but everyone else is severely limited in potential. Unfortunately, I don't see how you would go about buffing Ice Staff too much without making it the BIS option in PvP for tanking and dealing damage simultaneously.

opaj

For a while, I've wished that Ice Staff's Tri-Focus gave it an 8% bonus to targets at close range. Keep Ice Staff a little defensive, let it keep its mobility-hindering effects, but otherwise maintain it as a damage-dealing weapon. For magic tanking, it'd be great if there was an entirely new weapon, like an Alteration Staff or Conjured Weapons or something.

But that'd be unfair to folks who have grown to love frost tanking. I'm told that these people exist, and I hate it when the devs take away my preferred niche playstyles, so icy tanks it is.

(By the way, I used to know a player named Horizon Seeker. Did he ever find you, @LostHorizon1933 ?)

LostHorizon1933

@opaj Nope, everyone says I’m as lost as they come. Ironic since I’m the only one who knows how to read a map nowadays.

barney2525

Turn it into a lightning staff

emilyhyoyeon

opaj wrote: »

But that'd be unfair to folks who have grown to love frost tanking. I'm told that these people exist, and I hate it when the devs take away my preferred niche playstyles, so icy tanks it is.

not to be that guy but it was unfair when they first decided to go against what was preestablished for how destruction magic works in the TES world and make ice destruction magic half-tanking magic--which wasn't exactly REMOVING a playstyle I suppose, but just not appropriate imo.

I think the fairest way to deal with the elemental destruction damage issue is each of the 3 elements gets 8% more damage done to targets affected by their respective status. Remove brittle.
Or: fire gives 8% extra single target, lightning gives 8% AOE, ice gives 4% single target and 4% AOE (which is kind of boring but also one of the fairer options)

AcadianPaladin

ZoS listened for over a year on how to improve the frost staff - then made it worse than it was so I'm not big on the idea of further tweaks to a hopeless cause.

What I'd urge is make frost staff a pure dps weapon (like fire and shock staves), then create a new type of staff for tanking that is totally focused on supporting tanking. Then we'd have 3 dps staves, one resto (healing) staff and one staff dedicated to tanking that could be of help to hybrid/stam tanks but really helpful to mag tanks.

Saccopharynx

I'm biased, as my Warden is an ice tank with frost staff on front and backbar both.

Sure Frost Clench doesn't pull but it does aggro and stun, frozen gate pulls just fine but requires pre-setting to properly work (just use silver leash if it's too complicated, problem solved).

I'm glad they reworked frost staffs to not auto-aggro on a heavy attack, it's now skill based instead as it should have always been (trying to keep a boss aggro while the DPS keeps overriding mine really isn't fun). That shield I get is great, procing Frozen Watcher is amazing, there's a lot of bonuses it provides as a tank that Fire and Lightning leave to be desired for me personally.

Three destruction staffs exist, it's ok if one helps the tanks out sometimes, too.

ESO_Nightingale

I have a bunch of things that i would change and i don't think that your ideas are what zenimax would be likely to do. They expressed interest in expanding the cp system in the future so I'll be using that for my suggestions.

What i would do is i would move taunt onto elemental susceptibility instead of it's current effect. That way, the morph is useful as opposed to it being on frost clench which is universally disliked because it sucks.

For magicka blocking id put it on a new slotted cp passive which changes mag block cost to magicka and reduces cost of magicka blocking for ranking up. That way everyone can take tri focus no problem instead of the messy state it's in right now where most people don't take it.

For the tanky passives on the current ancient knowledge i would move these to the Bulwark CP. And then i would replace frost staff's effect with +8% critical damage. The reason for this is that more classes can effectively run a frost staff instead of being limited to one person per raid. Fire damage buffs to group, burning and the overall increased power of the staff in it's skills means that fire wouldn't exactly just be replaced in all situations. Additionally. Classes that want to run critical focused builds in pvp wouldn't have to ensure they have a constant uptime on chilled to get the critical bonus. As it's just there while slotted instead.

For minor brittle, i would make it a new slotted cp where you can apply minor brittle from any status effect. This would mean one person in the group who is applying a lot of status effects will want to run this cp to buff the group.

vivisectvib16_ESO

How about we reduce the visual effect that Frost's wall of elements puts around characters. I find it so obnoxious when teaming with someone who's constantly spamming it. I appreciate the shield but the visual effect is way too much/distracting.

ESO_Nightingale

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

How about we reduce the visual effect that Frost's wall of elements puts around characters. I find it so obnoxious when teaming with someone who's constantly spamming it. I appreciate the shield but the visual effect is way too much/distracting.

Yeah sure, that too.

volkeswagon

Turn it into a lightning staff

AyaDark

Frost stuff was good.

You make it good for DDs, so no one use it now ?

Now you want it "suck less" ?

May be return to old version and newer change anything in gamebasics ?
And just add new ?

ESO_Nightingale

AyaDark wrote: »

Frost stuff was good.

You make it good for DDs, so no one use it now ?

Now you want it "suck less" ?

May be return to old version and newer change anything in gamebasics ?
And just add new ?

The changes are meh at best. it's quite unreliable as a dps weapon at best, only being secure in solo pve where, you know, you're the only one applying chilled. some of the tanking related changes are just bad, ie frost clench and frost impulse, they're not being used how the devs intended them to be used because they literally don't offer any benefit worth slotting and unless they gave a really powerful effect they never will be either. They should be both good for tanks and damage dealers, but a lot of the tank passives can be shifted into slottable CP points. the weapon passives should have the tanking stuff taken out, most specifically the magicka block cost and the reduced block cost and increased block mitigation, the ancient knowledge passive needs to be replaced with a flat +8% critical damage. this makes it useful for dps in a lot more situations than just 1 per trial at best.

The reason why tanking should be on cp is because the weapon has always been for dps considering all versions were just dps focused until the morrowind patch, so every skill has use to a DPS. The magicka block cost can (relatively) easily be shifted to the red cp tree because the current block cost cp already exists there, it also means that they can spread out the new cp so less has to be sacrificed by the tank that wants to run the frost staff, they're already sacrificing stuff for utility anyway, putting the dps stuff on the CP means sacrificing way too much since all of the damage passives are in the blue tree and you, as a dps need to squeeze out as much damage as possible.

minor brittle can be made into a slottable CP as well, but instead of chilled specifically, it can be through any status effect to provide the group buff.

FantasticFreddie

Moving stuff to CP isn't ideal imho because I specifically didn't want to gatekeep frost staff tanking to a certain level. Below 50 and low cp tanks deserve to frost tank too!
Zos has shown they can add more passives to things very easily, making 2 passives that unlock at like destruction staff 3 or 4 would be a nice, accessible way for people to play exactly how they want from the get go.

ESO_Nightingale

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Moving stuff to CP isn't ideal imho because I specifically didn't want to gatekeep frost staff tanking to a certain level. Below 50 and low cp tanks deserve to frost tank too!
Zos has shown they can add more passives to things very easily, making 2 passives that unlock at like destruction staff 3 or 4 would be a nice, accessible way for people to play exactly how they want from the get go.

Low level is honestly not the most important thing. this is the only way i can see this working the best it can for both worlds. below level 50 dungeons aren't that hard anyways.

FantasticFreddie

Mm. Only one I would really like to see shifted to CP is block costing magicka with a staff equipped.
Everything else, just make a low level passive.

Daemonai

Yes, let us make tanking more inaccessible and miserable because there are too many tanks in-game as it is.

DreadDaedroth

Don't lower ice staves damage output only because they can used by tanks?

Grandchamp1989

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Let's be real here: frost staves kinda suck.
The tanking capabilities are underwhelming, the minor brittle buff is a lot of fuss for an unremarkable buff and dps will choose actual daggers over frost staff when given the choice. What to do?
First: remove all the tanking stuff from the passives, and make a new passive: Frozen resolve.
Add all the tanky stuff here: block costing magicka, the dumb little shield, the 25% damage nerf, the minor protection, all that goes here.
Tri-focus is reworked so that lightning staff does splash damage, inferno staff does extra damage, and ice staff procs brittle. No damage nerf!
TADA, ice staff is now a viable option for all 3 specs, and you can more easily choose how to use it.
Next, make frost clench actually useful. . . Turn it into a magicka based pull.
This would BLOW PEOPLES MINDS. Right now the only 2 reliable pulls are silver leash and dk chains. Frozen gate for wardens is buggy as all hell, swarm mother and necro armor rely on blocking and have cooldowns.
Having a reliable, magicka based pull skill would be awesome, and rightly make ice staves a popular tank tool.
Making minor brittle able to be procced with a frost staff on just one bar would also be nice.... but if you made the above changes more dps would actually be inclined to *run* double frost staves, so I think it wouldn't matter as much.

That part I agree with 10000%

Good OP - no one gets screwed over.

FantasticFreddie

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Let's be real here: frost staves kinda suck.
The tanking capabilities are underwhelming, the minor brittle buff is a lot of fuss for an unremarkable buff and dps will choose actual daggers over frost staff when given the choice. What to do?
First: remove all the tanking stuff from the passives, and make a new passive: Frozen resolve.
Add all the tanky stuff here: block costing magicka, the dumb little shield, the 25% damage nerf, the minor protection, all that goes here.
Tri-focus is reworked so that lightning staff does splash damage, inferno staff does extra damage, and ice staff procs brittle. No damage nerf!
TADA, ice staff is now a viable option for all 3 specs, and you can more easily choose how to use it.
Next, make frost clench actually useful. . . Turn it into a magicka based pull.
This would BLOW PEOPLES MINDS. Right now the only 2 reliable pulls are silver leash and dk chains. Frozen gate for wardens is buggy as all hell, swarm mother and necro armor rely on blocking and have cooldowns.
Having a reliable, magicka based pull skill would be awesome, and rightly make ice staves a popular tank tool.
Making minor brittle able to be procced with a frost staff on just one bar would also be nice.... but if you made the above changes more dps would actually be inclined to *run* double frost staves, so I think it wouldn't matter as much.

That part I agree with 10000%

Good OP - no one gets screwed over.

That is what I was going for-- that the frost staff can be more flexible tool for all specs without being too OP.
It could work that if you take the tanky passive, you do get the damage nerf, but maybe buff the shield to 30% of health, or provide major protection instead of minor in that case.

Scardan

Simple solution - make it DD weapon. Let fire staffs increase heavy attack damage, lightnings staff do aoe with heavy attack, let frost staffs penetrate spell resistance with heavy attack. Let fire buff single target damage skills, let lightning buff aoe damage skills, let frost staffs buff DoT damage. Let unstable fire wall do more damage against burning targets, lightning one apply off balance, frost one apply additional dot. Make frost staffs a weapon of destruction. Make restoration staffs magic tanking weapon instead. Or gift us alteration magic skill line for it.

Septimus_Magna

Maybe other element staves than fire would be used if the passives were better balanced and there was a debuff for extra lightning and frost damage. If you mainly use AOE skills its not right that a fire staff out-performs a lighting staff just because Engulfing Flames increases all fire damage by 10%. Sorcs could apply the lightning debuff and wardens could apply the frost debuff.

Ive also would like to see a magic element destro staff added with unique passives. Nightblades could apply the magic debuff. Right now DDs basically have 1 choice and 1 situational alternative. If compare it to stam builds they have daggers and mauls as good weapon type options. With magicka DDs its one option almost regardless of the circumstances.

TLDR;
1. balance destro passives so all elements are viable for DDs
2. add lighting/frost/magic debuffs to sorc/warden/nightblade class skills
3. add magic damage type destro staff with unique passives

Ratzkifal

At this point I would almost like them to remove the damage modifiers on destruction staves entirely so everyone can just play what they like instead of being forced to go fire because the spreadsheet tells us that fire is the best. I want to be a Sorc and use lightning, but everyone looks at me weird if I use a lightning staff on a single-target fight.

Of course they would need to get something back for that, but single-target versus AOE versus group support kind of sucks as a divide because single-target pretty much always wins due to their damage standards.

Varana

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

First: remove all the tanking stuff from the passives, and make a new passive: Frozen resolve.
Add all the tanky stuff here: block costing magicka, the dumb little shield, the 25% damage nerf, the minor protection, all that goes here.

No, please not do that.
I specifically avoid taking the TriFocus passive because I never want to block with magicka. I'd hate to give up that choice.

FantasticFreddie

Varana wrote: »

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

First: remove all the tanking stuff from the passives, and make a new passive: Frozen resolve.
Add all the tanky stuff here: block costing magicka, the dumb little shield, the 25% damage nerf, the minor protection, all that goes here.

No, please not do that.
I specifically avoid taking the TriFocus passive because I never want to block with magicka. I'd hate to give up that choice.

And idea later in the thread was move blocking with magicka to a CP node!
So, tri-focus passive, a tank passive, and then a CP node. Complete flexibility!