Caltrops

Rkindaleft

With Stamina PvE DPS in the gutter in raid compositions due to lack of penetration and zero cleave compared to the strength of Magicka's Mystic Orb, I suggest that they take a look at Anti-Cavalry Caltrops. Razor Caltrops was a big part of Stamina AoE DPS till Scalebreaker, where they changed Razor Caltrops to now inflict Major Fracture alongside a large damage nerf. I don't know a single person who uses Anti-Cavalry Caltrops, perhaps it's time to rework the skill so one can apply Major Fracture, and the other can be a functional Stamina AoE DPS skill once again. Razor Caltrops only has a very niche use as it is, currently.

VaranisArano

Razor Caltrops got nerfed way back when ZoS was trying to nerf AOEs to not be the go-to skill in every situation. I doubt they are eager to buff a big AOE to basically revert their earlier nerf.

DocFrost72

VaranisArano wrote: »

Razor Caltrops got nerfed way back when ZoS was trying to nerf AOEs to not be the go-to skill in every situation. I doubt they are eager to buff a big AOE to basically revert their earlier nerf.

Perhaps not, but living proof of their failure in mystic orb is mildly amusing. Having caltrops matter again wouldn't be the worst thing for game health and diversity.

CableBomb

It still matters to my build.

It's a skill I remember being 100% necessary for endgame back in the day. To my friend and I, it was a hallowed Skill that had to be earned from hours of zerg-surfing in Cyrodiil. When I first earned it, I felt like the Sun shined upon my toon and that I had somehow entered ESO adulthood. Like getting Meteor back in the day.

That's why I still keep it. Oh, and it doesn't suck completely. Not everything has to be OP or something. That's my two cents. I understand your feelings about it too.

YandereGirlfriend

CableBomb wrote: »

It still matters to my build.

It's a skill I remember being 100% necessary for endgame back in the day. To my friend and I, it was a hallowed Skill that had to be earned from hours of zerg-surfing in Cyrodiil. When I first earned it, I felt like the Sun shined upon my toon and that I had somehow entered ESO adulthood. Like getting Meteor back in the day.

That's why I still keep it. Oh, and it doesn't suck completely. Not everything has to be OP or something. That's my two cents. I understand your feelings about it too.

I think it's more that entirely unused Anti-Cavalry Caltrops morph that they're talking about.

Having Major Breach on a universal skill is very valuable to classes that do not otherwise have access to it and it should stay as the basis of Razor Caltrops.

But Anti-Cavalry Caltrops is too pointlessly niche for its own good. Nobody that I've ever known has used the skill and, as such, it is a prime morph for recycling into something better and more broadly useful for players. Since there isn't any obvious thematic card to play, simply increasing its damage to be on par with something like Mystic Orb (while dropping Major Breach from that morph...) would be a fantastic change.

Failing that, you could stick a different debuff on Anti-Cavalry Caltrops. Perhaps something thematically apropos like Minor Mangle.

CableBomb

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

CableBomb wrote: »

It still matters to my build.

It's a skill I remember being 100% necessary for endgame back in the day. To my friend and I, it was a hallowed Skill that had to be earned from hours of zerg-surfing in Cyrodiil. When I first earned it, I felt like the Sun shined upon my toon and that I had somehow entered ESO adulthood. Like getting Meteor back in the day.

That's why I still keep it. Oh, and it doesn't suck completely. Not everything has to be OP or something. That's my two cents. I understand your feelings about it too.

I think it's more that entirely unused Anti-Cavalry Caltrops morph that they're talking about.

Having Major Breach on a universal skill is very valuable to classes that do not otherwise have access to it and it should stay as the basis of Razor Caltrops.

But Anti-Cavalry Caltrops is too pointlessly niche for its own good. Nobody that I've ever known has used the skill and, as such, it is a prime morph for recycling into something better and more broadly useful for players. Since there isn't any obvious thematic card to play, simply increasing its damage to be on par with something like Mystic Orb (while dropping Major Breach from that morph...) would be a fantastic change.

Failing that, you could stick a different debuff on Anti-Cavalry Caltrops. Perhaps something thematically apropos like Minor Mangle.

Ah, yeah, I didn't really adress this morph. I kinda just waxed about Caltrops lol

I actually used to use Anti-Cavalry, and this was post-nerf. It was a DoT build and now I use a shorter rotation build. And I'm sure a lot of people still use it, but it's not heard of too much around these places I think because people here generally are higher-end players as most don't take to the forums for a variety of reasons.

Anyways, I won't ever complain about a buff. Please ZoS. Oh, and I forgot to add it looks dope as hell to throw any Caltrop.

JoSePHRiNG

I agree on Anti-Cavalry Caltrop needs to change, because it virtually offers nothing other than the duration increase in PVE.

My suggestion would be increasing DPS with duration same as Maelstrom arena bow but instead depends on how many enemies were standing in it.

Razor Caltrop is really good and easy access to Major Breach is awesome, it is actually my favorite skill to use if I am using low penetration stamina character.

Rkindaleft

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

CableBomb wrote: »

It still matters to my build.

It's a skill I remember being 100% necessary for endgame back in the day. To my friend and I, it was a hallowed Skill that had to be earned from hours of zerg-surfing in Cyrodiil. When I first earned it, I felt like the Sun shined upon my toon and that I had somehow entered ESO adulthood. Like getting Meteor back in the day.

That's why I still keep it. Oh, and it doesn't suck completely. Not everything has to be OP or something. That's my two cents. I understand your feelings about it too.

I think it's more that entirely unused Anti-Cavalry Caltrops morph that they're talking about.

Having Major Breach on a universal skill is very valuable to classes that do not otherwise have access to it and it should stay as the basis of Razor Caltrops.

But Anti-Cavalry Caltrops is too pointlessly niche for its own good. Nobody that I've ever known has used the skill and, as such, it is a prime morph for recycling into something better and more broadly useful for players. Since there isn't any obvious thematic card to play, simply increasing its damage to be on par with something like Mystic Orb (while dropping Major Breach from that morph...) would be a fantastic change.

Failing that, you could stick a different debuff on Anti-Cavalry Caltrops. Perhaps something thematically apropos like Minor Mangle.

This is exactly what I was trying to imply, thank you. Razor morph is useful for some classes like Stam Sorc that can't provide Major Breach, and thus should stay that way. The Anti-Cavalry morph has a niche so small that it's never, ever used, and even in it's niche is not worth slotting over something else. It looks to only be a PvP-designated skill but it's still quite useless. It doesn't even have to be as strong as Mystic Orb (I think Mystic Orb is a bit too strong as it is, but that's not my point) but the damage it gives is very weak.

MashmalloMan

+1

I use to use caltrops when it was 30s long and had a 12m radius in pve content. It was a sleeper hit, no one used it at the time, but I saw the massive potential in the skill for a stam sorc that wanted to have constant procs of surge. It made rotations a lot of fun and arena's were a breeze.

Stamina had a problem of having absolutely no skills to use and being extremely single target focussed, since classes didn't really have stamina abilities. Magicka had at minimum, 2 aoe ground dots. At least 1 was a class dot (Shards/Winters Revenge/Graveyard/Path/Liquid Lightning/Ash Cloud)and 1 weapon aoe ground dot via Wall of Elements.

Stamina only had Endless Hail for aoe, besides a few rare examples like Jabs and Hurricane.

So as an answer to the 1 class aoe dot every magicka class got, they changed Razor Caltrops to compete. It was reduced to an 8m radius, 12s duration, way more damage and could stack with other players instead of being capped to 1. The skill became a must on every stamina dd rotation, while magicka still had some extra aoe class skills like Curse, Ritual, etc. The balance between them was pretty close.

Fast forward ahead, people started complaining about stamina pve dd rotations being exactly the same with very little class identity.. The rotations were almost always as follows Endless Hail -> Razor Caltrops -> Poison Injection -> Switch bars -> Rearming Trap -> Twin Slashes -> 1 or 2 class skills (Shalks/POTL/Bow Proc, etc) -> Flurry/Flying Blade/Steel Tornado spam -> Repeat. Literally only 1, maybe 2 skills differed from class to class.

So they adjusted the classes and we got some magicka skills we could use, soul trap was added as a universal dot option, poison injection and twin slashes were reduced in effectiveness and Caltrops was changed from being a solution to the magicka vs stamina rotation problem, into being a utility skill.

Suddenly our rotations no longer felt shoehorned into using the same 5-6 skills in a row. This is most likely why they changed Caltrops from being a damage skill first into utility, they didn't want every class to feel like they needed to use the skill. but if that is true, why did they not change Orbs? The skill is the strongest aoe dot in the game in terms of damage AND it provides an esential synergy to any group, arguably more useful than the healing orbs counterpart which ALSO adds a ton of group dps.

In my opinion, if Orbs can be utility AND damage focussed, why can't Caltrops? It would solve a ton of the aoe dps issues stamina has, they just need to be mindful of how they tune it. I don't really want it to be a must on every stamina build again, but it should be at least 1.5x stronger than a spammable over a 10s duration, right now it's about 1.0x as strong as a spammable over that time which makes it never worth using for dps.

A small boost of 50% damage would allow Anti Calvary Caltrops to be about 2.0x as strong as 1 cast of a spammable, but over the course of 14s making it the pvp AND dps morph. Razor Caltrops over 10s would = the 1.5x a spammable, but without using a dynamic rotation, it would fall off due to the Endless Hails 14s duration. This gives the skill options in that you can juice it out by using a dynamic rotation to make it worth it for dps or you can use it in a static rotation to mostly just focus on getting major breach by allowing it to fall off. Both options remain useful for pvp.

As a comparison in case 1.5x over 10s sounds too strong, take a good hard look at Orbs. It actually does a little more than 3.0x a spammable over 10s, does ANOTHER 1.0x damage of a spamable in aoe form via synergy, the synergy can be used multiple times from your entire group for 1 cast, AND as if all that wasn't enough, it provides an additional 4k resources back to your main pool via the syergy effect itself... of course synergies also give 4% mag/stam/hp via undaunted too. Can't forget that.

But Caltrops having competitive damage to every other dot in the game is too much? It really doesn't make any sense, Orbs is a utility skill too, but it does insane damage and is available to every magicka class. In fact, it's so strong, it's replaced some classes aoe dot skills. Look at any end game sorc dps parse right now, they don't use Liquid Lightning or Lightning Flood, but they use Orbs.

ZOS will read this and nerf Orbs instead of buffing Caltrops -_-

AcadianPaladin

I have two pure archers (sorc and warden) and I simply cringe every time I look at caltrops' poor damage. I'm running Night Mother's Gaze on the bowsorc with volley and it is good. The bowward is still running caltrops for now. Both archers have high crit so I'm finding better major breach uptime with NMG than caltrops. I'll probably change the bowward from caltrops to volley + NMG soon. Snipe does a good job of providing minor breach. As solo boss killers, my archers like their pen.

MashmalloMan

MashmalloMan wrote: »

+1

I use to use caltrops when it was 30s long and had a 12m radius in pve content. It was a sleeper hit, no one used it at the time, but I saw the massive potential in the skill for a stam sorc that wanted to have constant procs of surge. It made rotations a lot of fun and arena's were a breeze.

Stamina had a problem of having absolutely no skills to use and being extremely single target focussed, since classes didn't really have stamina abilities. Magicka had at minimum, 2 aoe ground dots. At least 1 was a class dot (Shards/Winters Revenge/Graveyard/Path/Liquid Lightning/Ash Cloud)and 1 weapon aoe ground dot via Wall of Elements.

Stamina only had Endless Hail for aoe, besides a few rare examples like Jabs and Hurricane.

So as an answer to the 1 class aoe dot every magicka class got, they changed Razor Caltrops to compete. It was reduced to an 8m radius, 12s duration, way more damage and could stack with other players instead of being capped to 1. The skill became a must on every stamina dd rotation, while magicka still had some extra aoe class skills like Curse, Ritual, etc. The balance between them was pretty close.

Fast forward ahead, people started complaining about stamina pve dd rotations being exactly the same with very little class identity.. The rotations were almost always as follows Endless Hail -> Razor Caltrops -> Poison Injection -> Switch bars -> Rearming Trap -> Twin Slashes -> 1 or 2 class skills (Shalks/POTL/Bow Proc, etc) -> Flurry/Flying Blade/Steel Tornado spam -> Repeat. Literally only 1, maybe 2 skills differed from class to class.

So they adjusted the classes and we got some magicka skills we could use, soul trap was added as a universal dot option, poison injection and twin slashes were reduced in effectiveness and Caltrops was changed from being a solution to the magicka vs stamina rotation problem, into being a utility skill.

Suddenly our rotations no longer felt shoehorned into using the same 5-6 skills in a row. This is most likely why they changed Caltrops from being a damage skill first into utility, they didn't want every class to feel like they needed to use the skill. but if that is true, why did they not change Orbs? The skill is the strongest aoe dot in the game in terms of damage AND it provides an esential synergy to any group, arguably more useful than the healing orbs counterpart which ALSO adds a ton of group dps.

In my opinion, if Orbs can be utility AND damage focussed, why can't Caltrops? It would solve a ton of the aoe dps issues stamina has, they just need to be mindful of how they tune it. I don't really want it to be a must on every stamina build again, but it should be at least 1.5x stronger than a spammable over a 10s duration, right now it's about 1.0x as strong as a spammable over that time which makes it never worth using for dps.

A small boost of 50% damage would allow Anti Calvary Caltrops to be about 2.0x as strong as 1 cast of a spammable, but over the course of 14s making it the pvp AND dps morph. Razor Caltrops over 10s would = the 1.5x a spammable, but without using a dynamic rotation, it would fall off due to the Endless Hails 14s duration. This gives the skill options in that you can juice it out by using a dynamic rotation to make it worth it for dps or you can use it in a static rotation to mostly just focus on getting major breach by allowing it to fall off. Both options remain useful for pvp.

As a comparison in case 1.5x over 10s sounds too strong, take a good hard look at Orbs. It actually does a little more than 3.0x a spammable over 10s, does ANOTHER 1.0x damage of a spamable in aoe form via synergy, the synergy can be used multiple times from your entire group for 1 cast, AND as if all that wasn't enough, it provides an additional 4k resources back to your main pool via the syergy effect itself... of course synergies also give 4% mag/stam/hp via undaunted too. Can't forget that.

But Caltrops having competitive damage to every other dot in the game is too much? It really doesn't make any sense, Orbs is a utility skill too, but it does insane damage and is available to every magicka class. In fact, it's so strong, it's replaced some classes aoe dot skills. Look at any end game sorc dps parse right now, they don't use Liquid Lightning or Lightning Flood, but they use Orbs.

ZOS will read this and nerf Orbs instead of buffing Caltrops -_-

Wow... I can't help but feel I or we predicted this... because literally 4hours later this was posted in the patch notes for the new chapter, 36% damage increase to Caltrops, massive reduction in Orbs dps and with the reasoning being Stam DDs have lower cleave damage and Orbs was overperforming.

Guild

• Undaunted
  • Necrotic Orbs:
  • This ability and its morphs now tick once every second, rather than every half second.
  • Increased the damage per tick of this ability and the Mystic Orbs morph by approximately 16%.
  • Decreased the travel speed of the orb so it's easier to land multiple ticks on low mobility enemies. This will be an overall DPS loss, getting these abilities closer to other AoE DoTs in power. Note these will still be stronger than most other DoTs due to having higher variance of performance, especially in high mobility in encounters.
  • Fixed an issue where the AoE size of the synergy from this ability and its morphs were 7 meters instead of 8 meters.
  • Healing Orbs (morph): Increased the healing per tick of this morph by approximately 38%. This will result in less total healing overall but will still be stronger than most other AoE HoTs due to its mobile nature.

Alliance War

• Assault
  • Caltrops: Increased the damage per tick of this ability and its morphs by approximately 36%. It will now deal damage equitable to a normal DoT ability, rather than being weaker than them.

Developer Comment:

• Between the changes to Caltrops and Necrotic Orbs, we hope to see less of a disparity in performance between Stamina and Magicka DPS. We already see many Stamina-based classes pulling slightly ahead to most Magicka in single target, but are quite a bit behind in cleave areas which most of the game requires between boss encounters and elite encounters in dungeons and trials. By reducing the bonuses Necrotic Orbs has from being harder to use and improving one of the universally accessible Stamina AoE DoTs, we hope to lessen the delta between the two in regards of damage dealing.

YandereGirlfriend

Nice buff though I do wish that they'd come up with a better morph gimmick than draining mount stamina for ACC.

You have the increased duration but there's still the unmissable sense of a missed opportunity with that morph.

Athan1

Yeahy, buffed caltrops!

VaranisArano

VaranisArano wrote: »

Razor Caltrops got nerfed way back when ZoS was trying to nerf AOEs to not be the go-to skill in every situation. I doubt they are eager to buff a big AOE to basically revert their earlier nerf.

Hah, I got proven wrong right quick.

MindOfTheSwarm

Nchuleftingth wrote: »

With Stamina PvE DPS in the gutter in raid compositions due to lack of penetration and zero cleave compared to the strength of Magicka's Mystic Orb, I suggest that they take a look at Anti-Cavalry Caltrops. Razor Caltrops was a big part of Stamina AoE DPS till Scalebreaker, where they changed Razor Caltrops to now inflict Major Fracture alongside a large damage nerf. I don't know a single person who uses Anti-Cavalry Caltrops, perhaps it's time to rework the skill so one can apply Major Fracture, and the other can be a functional Stamina AoE DPS skill once again. Razor Caltrops only has a very niche use as it is, currently.

Exploding Caltrops:

Caltrops explode on impact inflicting Major Breach on all targets hit. This explosion will instantly dismount enemy players.

Razor Caltrops:

Enemies take extra Bleed damage every second while standing in the area and for 3 seconds after.

Rkindaleft

They buffed Caltrops. /endthread.

It's not as strong as it once was but it's much better in the buffed state, more AoE DPS is most gladly accepted on Stamina. Also that orb change, haha.

Rkindaleft

Double post.

YandereGirlfriend

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Nchuleftingth wrote: »

With Stamina PvE DPS in the gutter in raid compositions due to lack of penetration and zero cleave compared to the strength of Magicka's Mystic Orb, I suggest that they take a look at Anti-Cavalry Caltrops. Razor Caltrops was a big part of Stamina AoE DPS till Scalebreaker, where they changed Razor Caltrops to now inflict Major Fracture alongside a large damage nerf. I don't know a single person who uses Anti-Cavalry Caltrops, perhaps it's time to rework the skill so one can apply Major Fracture, and the other can be a functional Stamina AoE DPS skill once again. Razor Caltrops only has a very niche use as it is, currently.

Exploding Caltrops:

Caltrops explode on impact inflicting Major Breach on all targets hit. This explosion will instantly dismount enemy players.

Razor Caltrops:

Enemies take extra Bleed damage every second while standing in the area and for 3 seconds after.

I would very much like this solution.

Especially as a someone with a vested interest in seeing Dro'Zakar's Claws semi-viable again.

Mr_Gallows

CableBomb wrote: »

It still matters to my build.

It's a skill I remember being 100% necessary for endgame back in the day. To my friend and I, it was a hallowed Skill that had to be earned from hours of zerg-surfing in Cyrodiil. When I first earned it, I felt like the Sun shined upon my toon and that I had somehow entered ESO adulthood. Like getting Meteor back in the day.

That's why I still keep it. Oh, and it doesn't suck completely. Not everything has to be OP or something. That's my two cents. I understand your feelings about it too.

If anything they could buff the duration of Breach and the area of effect. They can't add minor to the mix, because that's on pierce armor... a single target skill. I like caltrops as a source of breach for some builds. Sometimes I use it if I put something else in place of pierce armor on the back bar. Maybe the problem with caltrops isn't that it is baf, but that better skills also have access to breach.

The solution of just buffing is nog good... maybe adjust some other skills to make caltrops better, relatively speaking.