The Forgotten abilities

Marchastre · April 2021

In my humble opinion, there's a few abilities that are forgotten by the balance team, left on their own devices with no changes to make those more attractive or interesting to play.
But while i do have my own ideas about how those ability may change, everyone has their own perspective and i think it's better to point out the lack of attention than to produce another "rework" topic.

Templar

Sun Shield

Unless you see it in gimmick build for pvp, that ability doesn't have any clear use. More so with the recent changes done to living dark and rune focus. We have an ability scaling with the max health but there's no use for it and the balance is ignoring it.

Healing Ritual

Never seen anybody using it in trials or in pvp, that ability cost too much magicka for a burst heal. And yet, the class has already the overnerfed and overcopied Breath of Life.

Radiant Aura

Before that current iteration, that ability was a source of major fortitude, endurance and intellect. Now, we have an ability that can apply "Minor magickasteal" on a large radius... Which can be ignored since the apparition of the Overcharged status.

Sorcerer

Daedric mines

There's nothing to say. Seen no changes on that ability that is taking one slot for some CC and damages... But that doesn't work in PvE as CC is handled by the tank which won't use Daedric mines and the damage are too low which too much restricting to make the ability worthwhile. At least, we see it more in PvP but at that point, if you want more CC as a magicka, it's better to use Streak. A good ability but in a oversaturated CC kit.

DragonKnight
I'm putting it here as a placeholder.
But while the class is in need of buffs and radical changes, it seems the devs are tweaking the dragonknight fairly often. Not in the good way thought.

Nightblade

Reaper's mark

Got nerfed and then left, its only use being in overland if you are alone and even then. Right now, with the introduction of the Kinra's Wrath set, you can forget the existence of that capacity. And in pvp, Piercing mark works better as a source of Major breach with the benefit of a invisibility detection.

Shrewd Offering

While the reduced cost is pretty great, it doesn't have much more to compete with Healthy Offering. In fact, both morph are barely different from one to another and that's a waste of ressources.

Power Extraction

It can be a "good" aoe ability with a rare debuff you're not seeing often in game but there's no reason for any stamina player to use it as their primary source of aoe damage in pve or pvp.

Manifestation of Terror

Can be somewhat useful in PVP/PVE but it simply cannot compete with Mass Hysteria.

Warden

Crystallized Slab

A very good ability on its own but cannot be compared to Shimmering shield.

Frozen Retreat

While frozen gate and frozen devices are a good chain for the Warden, especially in delayed spawn, Frozen retreat is barely useful. Allies cannot use the ability if an ennemy stepped into the field and the "potential" use of the ability in PVP is hindered by the restriction the balance team did to avoid a overreliance on chains abilities.

Necromancer

Stalking Blastbones

Exception to the rule of "Non meta skills"
While the ability is used by every magicka necromancer, you could simply use Blastbones that it wouldn't change your rotation or the ability itself most of the time. Stalking Blastbones mostly lack its own identity.

Remote Totem

Bone totem and Remote Totem are pretty good if, again, there was not a morph that is outshining the other version of the ability. Agony totem is above Remote Totem in PvE while Bone Totem itself is a tad too clunky to use in pvp due to the delay.

Dual Wielding

Flying Blade

Clunky to use as a two-part skill, you need to use two gcd to get the whole use of that ability that isn't reliable, compared to shrouded daggers.

Sword and Shield

Invasion

There's no reason to use that morph in pvp or pve. Increased stun duration on a gap closer cannot compete with a damage shield.

Power Bash

If we don't account the sword and shield set from Vateshran Hollow, there's no reason to equip that ability. It's pure damage on a weapon based for tanking, at the end of the skill lines where every others ability are already unlocked.

Destruction staff

Elemental Susceptibility

It has no use in PvE over Elemental Drain, it may be "useful" in overland but why morph it the wrong way just for overland. And in pvp, the fight are too short to really take advantage of Elemental Susceptibility.

Restoration Staff

Blessing of Restoration

Compared to combat prayer, there's no reason to use it at all. The increased healing will mostly go in overhealing, nothing else.

Medium Armor

Evasion

The ability can only be used if you're using five medium armor pieces, therefore you're playing a stamina character or tanking with medium armor. In both case, major evasion can be either aquired in another way (IE Blade cloak) or there's a better source of mitigation (Major resolve) that needs to fill that slot.

Heavy Armor

Unstoppable

With every classes able to access major resolve or are simply using the spell balance, Unstoppable has no use with the default of forcing you to wear five heavy armor pieces and slowing you down.

Soul Magic

Soul Splitting trap

A cleave dot sounds good but having the "reduced" damage part from the morph make it useless compared to Consuming trap that does the full damage and increase your sustain.

Vampire

Vampiric Drain

Probably thought as a tank skill for pve, the channeled part make it useless as most of the bosses needs to be actively blocked. And in pvp, it's channeled therefore easily interruptable

Assault

Echoing Vigor

For that one, it does have some use for healers and tank using the powerful assault set, or to waste stamina for some set like martial Knowledge. But outside of that use, there's no reason to slot in Echoing Vigor as it does less heal than its original morph per second.

Rapid Maneuver

With the removal of Major galop from that ability, it only has some niche use for an ability that cost a lot of stamina to simply increase movement speed.

Fighter guild

Evil Hunter

With a morph that solely increase the damage done by the fighters guild ability, it can basically affect three skills. Dawnbreaker, used a source of weapon damage or a stun. Silver Bolts that's commonly morphed as Silver Bolt for its chain quality... And Breast trap that's solely a dot. The real ability that's clearly impacted by that morph is one morph of one skill : Silver shards. In the meantime, Camouflaged Hunter is more beneficial on every aspect with its minor berserk gain.

Mages Guild

Radiant Magelight

Stun prevention can be great but it simply cannot compare to Inner light with its increased magicka when slotted.

Undaunted

Inner Beast

Have a taunt that increase the damage dealt by tank by 2% is a joke. It has no use in PvE and cannot remotely compete with Inner Rage.

Psijic Order

Imbue Weapon

It served a great alternative for any spammable for lightweaving by impacting two light attack instead of one. Now, it barely has any use for magicka DD (Who are using force pulse or their class spammable) or the stamina DD who have Shrouded blade or any class spammable.

Mend wounds

That's not a bad ability but it requires you to bar swap if you need to activate or deactive it ontop of taking one slot that can either be use with one more powerful ability (Because Mend wounds can only heal one target at a time and its heal cannot be compared to a spell akin to Breath of life in a matter of pure healing).

So, here my list of ability that, in my own opinion, are forgotten by the balance team.
It doesn't mean they're inherently bad or cannot compete to their counterpart or even that no skills else needs a buff. That list is about the skills that are in a bad situation and not adressed.
Even if a skill is BAD but is used in a rotation (Such as Power of light for the stamblade) or can be somewhat used in more than one content (Like the Protective scales and its morph), it won't be added to the list.

+---+

Modification done to the list:
- Addition of Flying Blade. Courtesy of Sarousse

notyuu · April 2021

Marchastre wrote: »

Templar
Radiant Aura

Before that current iteration, that ability was a source of major fortitude, endurance and intellect. Now, we have an ability that can apply "Major magickasteal" on a large radius... Which can be ignored since the apparition of the Overcharged status.

Radiant Aura applies MINOR magicka steal and having it slotted grants MINOR Fortitude, Endurnace and Intellect
it's also free to cast and has a 28 meter range

Although it does need some work there's three simple options sitting on the table

1: Make it so you can get the restore from minor mag steal from more than one target at once
i.e. you hit three targets with minor mag steal on them you should get 168 X 3 instead of the X1 you get on live atm

2: Make it grant MAJOR magicka steal..then it'll have a reason to exsist

3: Make it into a mag version of repentance (if ya don't know, power eats corpses, heals 3K, restores 3K stam per corpse)

Marchastre · April 2021

notyuu wrote: »

Marchastre wrote: »

Templar
Radiant Aura

Before that current iteration, that ability was a source of major fortitude, endurance and intellect. Now, we have an ability that can apply "Major magickasteal" on a large radius... Which can be ignored since the apparition of the Overcharged status.

Radiant Aura applies MINOR magicka steal and having it slotted grants MINOR Fortitude, Endurnace and Intellect
it's also free to cast and has a 28 meter range

Although it does need some work there's three simple options sitting on the table

1: Make it so you can get the restore from minor mag steal from more than one target at once
i.e. you hit three targets with minor mag steal on them you should get 168 X 3 instead of the X1 you get on live atm

2: Make it grant MAJOR magicka steal..then it'll have a reason to exsist

3: Make it into a mag version of repentance (if ya don't know, power eats corpses, heals 3K, restores 3K stam per corpse)

My bad for the Minor Magicka steal (Changed it)
But before the rework of the ability, it granted Minor Fortitude/endurance/intellect while slotted and granted Major Fortitude/endurance/intellect when you use it on a large range.

Right now, as i said, it only applies a status that nearly every caster in the game can apply passively.
If the ability had to get reworked, it's from the ground up. Buffing Minor magicka steal won't make the ability more interesting as other sources of magickasteal are available.
And Major magickasteal is a great buff to that terrible skill, it will simply keep a fire and forget ability that doesn't need to target/place or interact with anything whatsoever.

And having radiant aura become a MagRepentance is a good alternative but that's cheap.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

Crystallised Slab isn't the worst skill in the world. it's insanely useful in vMA where it tells you the locations of enemies and helps you deal damage to them. in pvp it's far more niche though. shimmering is better in most cases because 6 seconds of major heroism can be a lot better than a stray projectile a lot of the time.

phantasmalD · April 2021

I can't say I have the sufficent insight on every skill but I def disagree with some of these. Many of these seem to be based on preconceived, deep rooted believes and don't take the larger picture into consideration

> Echoing Vigor vs Resolving Vigor
Resolving only heals the caster. So that's why you'd take Echoing, because it heals others as well.

> Soul Splitting trap
It's the perfect skill to mass fill soul gems. In public dungeon that's usually 6 gems per ability cast. Much more efficient.

> Blessing of Restoration
With Kinras' Wrath becoming a fairly popular set, there's less of a demand for Minor Berserk, so Combat Prayer is not the definite best morph for every situation now.

> Elemental Susceptibility
If Radiant Aura is bad because it applies Minor Magickasteal then what makes Elemental Drain the superior morph? To the point that you frame it as 'wrong morphing'? It's literally the same deal.

Also, lol at not even touching DKs.

Sangwyne · April 2021

The one class you omitted is the one that needs buffs to its abilities most of all. Surprised to see Crystallized Slab brought up when it's just a vastly superior version of DK's Dragon Fire Scale, blocking all damage from projectiles instead of just half. And Shimmering Shield blows anything DK has to offer right out of the water. Even our most iconic abilities are just inferior versions of some random abilities slapped on to the DLC classes just because. Ask me which DK skills need to be addressed and I'd just copy and paste the entire Dragonknight skill wiki. But instead of meaningful changes we get a 400 mana cost reduction on Coagulating Blood. Wowee.

UntilValhalla13 · April 2021

Healing ritual is actually super useful in group healing vcr +3 in place of breath of life.

Marchastre · April 2021

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Crystallised Slab isn't the worst skill in the world. it's insanely useful in vMA where it tells you the locations of enemies and helps you deal damage to them. in pvp it's far more niche though. shimmering is better in most cases because 6 seconds of major heroism can be a lot better than a stray projectile a lot of the time.

That's why i said that, on it's own, Crystallised Slab is good. I'd even say great but it cannot compare. If Crystallised slab didn't compete with Shimmering shield, it would be a great choice.

phantasmalD wrote: »

I can't say I have the sufficent insight on every skill but I def disagree with some of these. Many of these seem to be based on preconceived, deep rooted believes and don't take the larger picture into consideration

> Echoing Vigor vs Resolving Vigor
Resolving only heals the caster. So that's why you'd take Echoing, because it heals others as well.

> Soul Splitting trap
It's the perfect skill to mass fill soul gems. In public dungeon that's usually 6 gems per ability cast. Much more efficient.

> Blessing of Restoration
With Kinras' Wrath becoming a fairly popular set, there's less of a demand for Minor Berserk, so Combat Prayer is not the definite best morph for every situation now.

> Elemental Susceptibility
If Radiant Aura is bad because it applies Minor Magickasteal then what makes Elemental Drain the superior morph? To the point that you frame it as 'wrong morphing'? It's literally the same deal.

Also, lol at not even touching DKs.

For Echoing vigor, i'm not even comparing it with Resolving Vigor, i'm comparing it with its base version that heal more per second than echoing vigor, making it a less powerful ability than its base.

Soul Splitting is great for filling soul gems but at one point in the game, do you still need to actively farm soul gems if you already have a passive that fill soulgems randomly by killing ennemies with a weapon ability?

And if there's less interest for minor berserk with Combat Prayer, it stil brings the buff constantly while an error in the rotation. But i do agree on that point.

Elemental Drain is superior if you need to place a minor magickasteal on targets that are easily killed. But for that one, it's rather a lack of interest from the ability than to compare it for a better morph.
In truth, unless you're playing in some rare situation like vet trials HM or pvp, elemental drain is also useless

And for the end, i'm not talking about the DK because they're getting some changes on their abilities, not in the best ways. What i provided is a list of abilities that are either too niche or not competing with their morphs that doesn't receive any attention, not a class or a skill that are in dire need of a buff.

Marchastre · April 2021

Sangwyne wrote: »

The one class you omitted is the one that needs buffs to its abilities most of all. Surprised to see Crystallized Slab brought up when it's just a vastly superior version of DK's Dragon Fire Scale, blocking all damage from projectiles instead of just half. And Shimmering Shield blows anything DK has to offer right out of the water. Even our most iconic abilities are just inferior versions of some random abilities slapped on to the DLC classes just because. Ask me which DK skills need to be addressed and I'd just copy and paste the entire Dragonknight skill wiki. But instead of meaningful changes we get a 400 mana cost reduction on Coagulating Blood. Wowee.

Not talking about buffs for one class.
I do see a lot of clunkys spells indeed from the DK class but talking about how a spell should be buffed is a tacky subject. I'd rather go on why one spell or one morph is missing its own identity in the large toolkit from eso.

But if you have your own list about the dk and you are proving your point on why the morphs and ability are lacking an identity or a reason to be slotted in, i can add it to the first post.

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

Healing ritual is actually super useful in group healing vcr +3 in place of breath of life.

Legitimate. But then, can you tell if you're constantly pondering between Hasty Ritual or Ritual of Rebirth? Or are you simply keeping one morph of the ability?

Sarousse · April 2021

Add to your list Flying Blade (single target morph) that no one uses today. Totally clunky, unpractical, slow.

zaria · April 2021

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

Healing ritual is actually super useful in group healing vcr +3 in place of breath of life.

Its also very nice on my templar as an emergency heal, uses ritual of rebirth a lot as an DD/ heal.

Marchastre · April 2021

Sarousse wrote: »

Add to your list Flying Blade (single target morph) that no one uses today. Totally clunky, unpractical, slow.

Added to the list.
I thought about adding the ability Hidden Blade itself as its current use is mostly bloated by the presence of the Vateshran Hollow 2W set but Shrouded blade itself is still a good spammable while Flying Blade is, indeed, a bad gapecloser due to its nature as a two-part skill.

JoSePHRiNG · April 2021

Frozen Gate and its morphs are all bad,

It needs change but it looks like we will never receive that.

CP5 · April 2021

Mend wounds was amazing pre-Elsweyr for very niche situations. They nerfed it so heavily it isn't worth fiddling with because 'its free now', but the old heal over time (which had to be buffed by literally 300% on the summerset pts) was nice, and the channeled heal was nice for those situations where you want to focus heal a specific target. Symbiosis was a strong morph as well, but the values are so low now why even bother?

Marchastre · April 2021

JoSePHRiNG wrote: »

Frozen Gate and its morphs are all bad,

It needs change but it looks like we will never receive that.

While the design itself of Frozen gate isn't perfect in pve, it has some use if you are able to pinpoint where the adds are supposed to reappear. But where the ability could have worked, in pvp, the restriction for chains abilities make it clunky. Still usable though and major maim can hardly be ignored.

Frozen escape, in comparison, is a skill that could have been great but is hindered by the core design of Frozen gate.

CP5 wrote: »

Mend wounds was amazing pre-Elsweyr for very niche situations. They nerfed it so heavily it isn't worth fiddling with because 'its free now', but the old heal over time (which had to be buffed by literally 300% on the summerset pts) was nice, and the channeled heal was nice for those situations where you want to focus heal a specific target. Symbiosis was a strong morph as well, but the values are so low now why even bother?

It was.
During one period, casting the ability and using LA was using your mana but the heal over time felt great and it had a lot of potential in pvp, either with mend spirit or symbiosis. But since its nerf, the dev are ignoring the ability.

ajkb78 · April 2021

Some of your points are quite good but I'd argue some of them.

You mention Imbue Weapon in the context of both magicka and stamina dds so I assume you're including the morphs too. It's not fair at all to say that Elemental Weapon sees hardly any use, it's used extensively in PVE and in PVP it has a place where you want increased burst as it essentially buffs the impact of a single strike (the light attack that follows it).

The paragraph on fighters guild abilities is a bit confused and I'm not really sure what you're getting at, but all of them have their uses. Silver Leash is vital for chains functionality on at least 3 PVE tank classes (warden has frozen device but sometimes leash is more useful, DK has unrelenting grip and Necro has beckoning armor but sorc, templar and NB all rely on silver leash). Camo hunter is used - maybe not widely but it definitely has a well established niche - in PVE because of the minor berserk - and it's useful in PVP too, both for nightblade detection and for the passive savagery and minor berserk (which frees you up to use a wider range of potions). Trap beast - again, Barbed Trap is extremely widely used for the minor force, though the lightweight beast trap is kind of a dead morph.

And echoing vigor is definitely not a dead morph. I do use resolving in PVP because its increased heal strength is useful to offset the overall healing nerf from battle spirit, but in PVE the heal from echoing is strong enough and Id much rather have the longer duration than an unnecessarily strong heal. It's an extremely strong skill in solo arenas for example.

Stalking blastbones might not be hugely different from the original skill but it does provide cleave in the same way that the cleave from force pulse differentiates it from the unmorphed skill force shock.

Marchastre · April 2021

ajkb78 wrote: »

Some of your points are quite good but I'd argue some of them.

You mention Imbue Weapon in the context of both magicka and stamina dds so I assume you're including the morphs too. It's not fair at all to say that Elemental Weapon sees hardly any use, it's used extensively in PVE and in PVP it has a place where you want increased burst as it essentially buffs the impact of a single strike (the light attack that follows it).

The paragraph on fighters guild abilities is a bit confused and I'm not really sure what you're getting at, but all of them have their uses. Silver Leash is vital for chains functionality on at least 3 PVE tank classes (warden has frozen device but sometimes leash is more useful, DK has unrelenting grip and Necro has beckoning armor but sorc, templar and NB all rely on silver leash). Camo hunter is used - maybe not widely but it definitely has a well established niche - in PVE because of the minor berserk - and it's useful in PVP too, both for nightblade detection and for the passive savagery and minor berserk (which frees you up to use a wider range of potions). Trap beast - again, Barbed Trap is extremely widely used for the minor force, though the lightweight beast trap is kind of a dead morph.

And echoing vigor is definitely not a dead morph. I do use resolving in PVP because its increased heal strength is useful to offset the overall healing nerf from battle spirit, but in PVE the heal from echoing is strong enough and Id much rather have the longer duration than an unnecessarily strong heal. It's an extremely strong skill in solo arenas for example.

Stalking blastbones might not be hugely different from the original skill but it does provide cleave in the same way that the cleave from force pulse differentiates it from the unmorphed skill force shock.

For the Imbue weapon and precisely Elemental Weapon, it is a decent spammable.
But there's better one in the form of force pulse for the cleave aspect or class spammable that are often supported by class passives (For example Screaming Cliff Racer that is doing decent damage but also increasing all damage done by the character while slotted in)

For the Fighter guild, it's mostly talking about Evil Hunter that, at the end, it mostly improving the damage of one ability, one morph. Its other morph is outperforming Evil hunter in many way and it doesn't have to rely on abilities that are more used as support/utility than as pure damage skills.
It's only Evil Hunter that's concerned, every other fighter guild skills have their use in one palce or another.

Echoing Vigor is not dead skill per say but it has the issue of healing less each second as you're leveling it. Once the ability is maxxed, you have the longest duration but also the least hps from all morphs and versions of the ability. The ability itself is good but that's a design issue that hasn't been adressed by the balance team.

Finally for Stalking blastbones, its initial version "Blastbone" is already providing the cleave damage. The issue with Stalking Blastbones is , with the recent changes, instantaneous. Stalking Blastbones increase the damage the longer the blastbones is stalking its target but it now explodes in one instant unless it has an issue with its targeting. And then, it feels like the morph is a bandaid in case the ability doesn't work as expected

ajkb78 · April 2021

Marchastre wrote: »

ajkb78 wrote: »

Some of your points are quite good but I'd argue some of them.

You mention Imbue Weapon in the context of both magicka and stamina dds so I assume you're including the morphs too. It's not fair at all to say that Elemental Weapon sees hardly any use, it's used extensively in PVE and in PVP it has a place where you want increased burst as it essentially buffs the impact of a single strike (the light attack that follows it).

The paragraph on fighters guild abilities is a bit confused and I'm not really sure what you're getting at, but all of them have their uses. Silver Leash is vital for chains functionality on at least 3 PVE tank classes (warden has frozen device but sometimes leash is more useful, DK has unrelenting grip and Necro has beckoning armor but sorc, templar and NB all rely on silver leash). Camo hunter is used - maybe not widely but it definitely has a well established niche - in PVE because of the minor berserk - and it's useful in PVP too, both for nightblade detection and for the passive savagery and minor berserk (which frees you up to use a wider range of potions). Trap beast - again, Barbed Trap is extremely widely used for the minor force, though the lightweight beast trap is kind of a dead morph.

And echoing vigor is definitely not a dead morph. I do use resolving in PVP because its increased heal strength is useful to offset the overall healing nerf from battle spirit, but in PVE the heal from echoing is strong enough and Id much rather have the longer duration than an unnecessarily strong heal. It's an extremely strong skill in solo arenas for example.

Stalking blastbones might not be hugely different from the original skill but it does provide cleave in the same way that the cleave from force pulse differentiates it from the unmorphed skill force shock.

For the Imbue weapon and precisely Elemental Weapon, it is a decent spammable.
But there's better one in the form of force pulse for the cleave aspect or class spammable that are often supported by class passives (For example Screaming Cliff Racer that is doing decent damage but also increasing all damage done by the character while slotted in)

Ele weapon does more (single target) damage than force pulse though. And while most classes do have a class spammable it's nice to have a choice. Take sorc, the class spammable is frags but it's downright nasty weaving the hard cast skill, so it's nice to use a different spammable and only cast frags when it procs. Sometimes FP is good to use, sometimes I do crushing shock duties as interruptor but sometimes it's nice to use EW. Turn your argument round: what skill (that fits a psijic theme) do you think is missing and should replace Imbue Weapon and its morphs?

For the Fighter guild, it's mostly talking about Evil Hunter that, at the end, it mostly improving the damage of one ability, one morph. Its other morph is outperforming Evil hunter in many way and it doesn't have to rely on abilities that are more used as support/utility than as pure damage skills.
It's only Evil Hunter that's concerned, every other fighter guild skills have their use in one palce or another.

Echoing Vigor is not dead skill per say but it has the issue of healing less each second as you're leveling it. Once the ability is maxxed, you have the longest duration but also the least hps from all morphs and versions of the ability. The ability itself is good but that's a design issue that hasn't been adressed by the balance team.

If that's true it sounds like an implementation bug. I don't have characters with different ranks of Echoing Vigor to test it but when skills rank up by extending the duration (there are lots of these) the dps or hps is supposed to stay the same, it just happens for longer. It's the same with the mages guild passive that extends the duration of mages guild skills, you don't get the same damage spread out more, you get the same dps for longer so more damage in total. Of course if you just get the same healing but over a longer time nobody would want that, and if that's what is happening with EV then it's a bug that needs reporting and fixing rather than an implementation bug.

Finally for Stalking blastbones, its initial version "Blastbone" is already providing the cleave damage. The issue with Stalking Blastbones is , with the recent changes, instantaneous. Stalking Blastbones increase the damage the longer the blastbones is stalking its target but it now explodes in one instant unless it has an issue with its targeting. And then, it feels like the morph is a bandaid in case the ability doesn't work as expected

Yes, my bad, I misremembered the morph. I'd agree that one needs a rethink, I guess they intended it for pvp with this idea of skeletons chasing people around but the BB moves so fast that it never really takes long to cover its entire range, and in PVE you're never really at a huge range anyway so it's fairly pointless.

emilyhyoyeon · April 2021

I pretty much exclusively play nightblade. I'll admit I'm probably one of the few who uses manifestation of terror over mass hysteria. Aside from the minor rp reason (I like the wraith and summoning circle visual animation), I like the place-ability of the CC for content--throwing it down on a distant Stoneshaper in Mazzatun HM before it can channel the stone throwing is incredibly useful if you're playing with a weaker group.

I also reguarly use it in PVP at choke points, and I even use it as a ''method of alarm''--putting it somewhere out of my vision so that, when it procs, I see the stunned notification and know who and how many are there. Which I admit is niche, but yeah.

It really has a wide range of uses in that regard and I actually think it's fairly balanced with mass hysteria. I think it comes down to most people see ''stun after X seconds'' on it and immediately choose mass hysteria since they don't feel like playing around or learning to play around it when all they need in that moment is a stun in any form.

I'll be honest and say manifestation of terror is my favorite skill in the game because of the visual & theme as well as its use possibilities. Maybe I'm biased but I think my points are fair.

As for power extraction: I use power extraction (when tanking) regularly, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one; I see other tanks use it consistently in endgame high damage content, especially since grim focus lost the damage reduction. It's a support NB skill and most NBs aren't support NBs which is why the skill seems useless and unused, but support NB is still a role that deserves its own skills.

Draevik · April 2021

Crystal Weapon: So no one is going to mention it? I like the burst capabilities but the damage needs to increase or it should grant the user increased weapon and spell damage after it hits. Something, aside from the lame 1k pen

Rapid Strikes/Bloodthirst: Not sure how I feel about changes, as I have always used that because I tend to solo a lot. I will have to test. Either way rapid/bt are both inferior to dizzying in PVP. DS has so much utility attached it is insane. Why can they not apply something similar, like perhaps increases crit damage by 10% after 2 successful full flurries.

Galarthor · April 2021

Sorcerers:
- Bound Aegis (all it does is give you 8% Max magicka for a skill slot, something other classes get passively, they even removed the cool looking glowing eyes ... the only real use for that ability!)
- Rune Prison -> especially Rune Cage, but to a lesser extend also Defensive Rune
- Encase & morphs(outside of ballgroups)
- Daedric Mines & morphs

phantasmalD · April 2021

Marchastre wrote: »

Soul Splitting is great for filling soul gems but at one point in the game, do you still need to actively farm soul gems if you already have a passive that fill soulgems randomly by killing ennemies with a weapon ability?

The passives def can't keep up with the rate I'm gaining empty soul gems, after a few weeks I always have a good 80-90 unfilled gems. So it's nice to have an options to fill them up quickly.

Also, not everyone have been playing this game for 6+ years or have stockpiles of 2k+ gems.

Marchastre wrote: »

For Echoing vigor, i'm not even comparing it with Resolving Vigor, i'm comparing it with its base version that heal more per second than echoing vigor, making it a less powerful ability than its base.

When you are already overhealing it doesn't matter if you are overhealing by 2000 or by 200.
In fact, let's say the numbers are 4k over 8s and there's incoming damage of 400 on you. 4000/8 = 500 HPS, aka 100 heal is useless overhealing. But if you are running Echoing then you get 4000/10 = 400HPS, aka no overhealing, but you still get the same effect and you remain topped off.

The extra duration on the other hand gives you a larger window to proc sets that trigger upon getting healed. Like Earthgore gets +2 sec of window of opportunity.

Marchastre wrote: »

In truth, unless you're playing in some rare situation like vet trials HM or pvp, elemental drain is also useless

In truth, redundant abilities and buffs exist so you can have build and team diversity and don't have to use the same cookie cutter build everywhere.

Firstmep · April 2021

Bit wierd to see power bash here, the stun morph, reverberating bash is a very good cc for pvp.
Power slam is a bit wierd, I think if they just made it so it needs less stacks it could be a good skill.
Evasion is an incredibly good skill, both morphs are fantastic in pvp, not sure what's forgotten about it.

Marchastre · April 2021

ajkb78 wrote: »

Ele weapon does more (single target) damage than force pulse though. And while most classes do have a class spammable it's nice to have a choice. Take sorc, the class spammable is frags but it's downright nasty weaving the hard cast skill, so it's nice to use a different spammable and only cast frags when it procs. Sometimes FP is good to use, sometimes I do crushing shock duties as interruptor but sometimes it's nice to use EW. Turn your argument round: what skill (that fits a psijic theme) do you think is missing and should replace Imbue Weapon and its morphs?

That's true that Ele weapon is doing more damage by itself, more if we account for the passive that randomly hit an ennemy after the 5th cast of the ability.
But it can only be compared with the other classes. It can be a great alternative, for roleplay reasons or simply for parse or to hit one boss but it can only be compared to the others spammable and their own advantage (Cleave, interrupt or passives that improve the whole rotation.
And i do think a damaging ability fit within that role and a spammable is an honest addition as any dot or burst damage could easily be used as a mandatory skill for any spec rotation. I could try to propose ideas but i'm not trying to cram ideas on how to improve or rework spells, everyone has their own point of view.

ajkb78 wrote: »

If that's true it sounds like an implementation bug. I don't have characters with different ranks of Echoing Vigor to test it but when skills rank up by extending the duration (there are lots of these) the dps or hps is supposed to stay the same, it just happens for longer. It's the same with the mages guild passive that extends the duration of mages guild skills, you don't get the same damage spread out more, you get the same dps for longer so more damage in total. Of course if you just get the same healing but over a longer time nobody would want that, and if that's what is happening with EV then it's a bug that needs reporting and fixing rather than an implementation bug.

I have been trying to compare the differents version with one of my character atm but stupidly, i did accept to compact the numbers on my combat, making it less easy to compare the value between each version.
For the moment, the hot is healing of 2.3k each tick while the skill description is always giving the same numbers. i'll push further the test with another character.

Draevik wrote: »

Crystal Weapon: So no one is going to mention it? I like the burst capabilities but the damage needs to increase or it should grant the user increased weapon and spell damage after it hits. Something, aside from the lame 1k pen

Rapid Strikes/Bloodthirst: Not sure how I feel about changes, as I have always used that because I tend to solo a lot. I will have to test. Either way rapid/bt are both inferior to dizzying in PVP. DS has so much utility attached it is insane. Why can they not apply something similar, like perhaps increases crit damage by 10% after 2 successful full flurries.

That's a good spammable that does not only increase the spell pen', making a useful spell for stamina dps (who cannot reach max pen until they invest in it or have a tank with alkosh) and Tank alike. It also reduce the cost of the future non-ultimate spell, improving the sustain of the sorcerer.
Ontop of that, Crystal Weapon is a recent addition to the sorcerer toolkit compared to others abilities.

Rapid strike/bloodthirst can have their utility as spammable in certain build in pvp. If they need a buff or not is not the topic.

Galarthor wrote: »

Sorcerers:
- Bound Aegis (all it does is give you 8% Max magicka for a skill slot, something other classes get passively, they even removed the cool looking glowing eyes ... the only real use for that ability!)
- Rune Prison -> especially Rune Cage, but to a lesser extend also Defensive Rune
- Encase & morphs(outside of ballgroups)
- Daedric Mines & morphs

Bound Aegis can be used by tank and magDD alike, both in pve and pvp. It needs a buff or some slight changes to make it worthwhile but the simple magicka bonus is enough to keep it out of the forgotten abilities.
Rune prison is still a CC than can be used in every versions of PVP, more like in battleground but if you can explain why they are forgotten and never looked at by the team, go on.
Encase are a good CC too, but i do admit Shattering Prison is redundant with a lot of ability. Restraining prison is bringing utility and cc for tanks and mag dd who needs more survivability with its major vitality.
Daedric mines is already listed and i agree.

Susurrus · April 2021

Galarthor wrote: »

Sorcerers:
- Bound Aegis (all it does is give you 8% Max magicka for a skill slot, something other classes get passively, they even removed the cool looking glowing eyes ... the only real use for that ability!)
- Rune Prison -> especially Rune Cage, but to a lesser extend also Defensive Rune
- Encase & morphs(outside of ballgroups)
- Daedric Mines & morphs

This.

Especially Encases and it's morphs. Ball groups might use it, but it is completely useless in any PvE context and only useful in a small niche PvP context.

Daedric mines has niche uses as does rune prison, but they're like a Christmas tree stand - use it for a few days once a year then put it back in the attic.

I do use bound aegis however in arenas for the minor buffs, but agree it would be better if the mag was passive.

Draevik · April 2021

Draevik wrote: »

Crystal Weapon: So no one is going to mention it? I like the burst capabilities but the damage needs to increase or it should grant the user increased weapon and spell damage after it hits. Something, aside from the lame 1k pen

Rapid Strikes/Bloodthirst: Not sure how I feel about changes, as I have always used that because I tend to solo a lot. I will have to test. Either way rapid/bt are both inferior to dizzying in PVP. DS has so much utility attached it is insane. Why can they not apply something similar, like perhaps increases crit damage by 10% after 2 successful full flurries.

That's a good spammable that does not only increase the spell pen', making a useful spell for stamina dps (who cannot reach max pen until they invest in it or have a tank with alkosh) and Tank alike. It also reduce the cost of the future non-ultimate spell, improving the sustain of the sorcerer.
Ontop of that, Crystal Weapon is a recent addition to the sorcerer toolkit compared to others abilities.

Rapid strike/bloodthirst can have their utility as spammable in certain build in pvp. If they need a buff or not is not the topic.

[/quote]

Crystal Weapon is NOT a good spammable, everyone that wants more damage uses Rapid Strikes. CW is also clunky even if you practice forever to use it. The only use is for a burst window in PVP. All the other small utility attached it moot.

Rapid/BT: Rapid is only useful for PVE, in PVP it does less than Dizzying and has no other utility attached.
- Rapid Strikes - does damage
- Bloodthirst - does less damage, small heal
- Dizzying Swing does more damage, procs off-balance further increasing your damage output by 10% for 7 seconds AND when you hit them with the skill again it stuns them, if they cannot be stunned they are instead snared. The stun component also frees up a hotbar slot since they don't need a dedicated stun because they can spam their big DD ability and still stun their opponent.

Now tell me, does that really seem balanced in PVP? Go watch any duel, bg or cyro combat. 95% of people use dizzy as their spammable, that is a major problem.

Extinct_Solo_Player · April 2021

give ransack and heroic slash a pure dps option for a spammable. I'm sick and tired of having to use dizzying swing due to it being the only viable spammable that actually deals damage.

YandereGirlfriend · April 2021

@Marchastre Excellent list! This should be a roadmap for ZOS as they reevaluate the game's most neglected abilities.

The only other skill that I can think of that (at least at the moment) could also be added is Force Siphon and its morphs. It is outclassed by Elemental Drain for Minor Magickasteal and Minor Lifesteal is typically supplied (if at all, it's far from a mandatory buff, especially now that it's been nerfed to no longer proc set or passive effects) by the tank and Blood Altar. Quick Siphon is at least a morph worth preserving since Minor Expedition is so rare, but it's still an ability that you basically never see used in either PvE or PvP.

notyuu wrote: »

Marchastre wrote: »

Templar
Radiant Aura

Before that current iteration, that ability was a source of major fortitude, endurance and intellect. Now, we have an ability that can apply "Major magickasteal" on a large radius... Which can be ignored since the apparition of the Overcharged status.

Radiant Aura applies MINOR magicka steal and having it slotted grants MINOR Fortitude, Endurnace and Intellect
it's also free to cast and has a 28 meter range

Although it does need some work there's three simple options sitting on the table

1: Make it so you can get the restore from minor mag steal from more than one target at once
i.e. you hit three targets with minor mag steal on them you should get 168 X 3 instead of the X1 you get on live atm

2: Make it grant MAJOR magicka steal..then it'll have a reason to exsist

3: Make it into a mag version of repentance (if ya don't know, power eats corpses, heals 3K, restores 3K stam per corpse)

My simple fix for Radiant Aura is simply to apply the Minor sustain buffs on-cast to the caster for the stated duration. That way you don't need to worry about double-barring it if you want the buffs, they simply stick to you whenever you use the ability. It would greatly improve its general ease-of-use and would give a nice sustain bump for Templars.

KingExecration · April 2021

Should add unstable core to your list aswell. Pve it is unusable on anything that isn’t a trash mob. Pvp it is just clunky to magplars kit and too expensive for stamplar to sustain.