Please give us more than staves?

Sililos

Want to Heal? Well thats a no brainer, Use a staff.
Mage? also no brainer, use a staff.

Want to do any kind of DPS as a non mage? Use a staff or fail.
Want to tank? You better believe you should use a staff according to most builds! (that I have seen)

So please, give us some variety! The other weapons just dont seem to match up, just gotta look what everyone's builds and what they deem optimal.

Im a hybrid between Templar Magicka DPS and Healing, Id love to be able to use something with a bit more variety than staves but the reality is, nothing else stacks up.
Out of magic? Just safely use a heavy attack or two at range. Cant do that with a sword and board.
Want too channel a weapon attack that does constant damage? Wont do that with a bow.
Want to attack without being in AOE or cleave range? Not gonna get that with Maces, Swords, daggers or axes.

If you want to play ESO in any form and succeed?, gotta use damn boring staves I keep being told and experience.

Im a Templar, id love to wear heavy armor, a sword and shield and be able to magic attack and heal as effectively as being in light armor and using a staff. Paladin style!
With the way the game is designed though, not gonna last long in a fight trying to do that.

Morgha_Kul

There are a couple of other things they could use instead of staves.

Wands leap to mind, as a one handed weapon. Wizards could carry a shield, or perhaps conjure a magical one.

Rods are another such, again as a one handed device.

Wizards tend to have relatively few options for weapons because wizards wouldn't have been soldiers or warriors. Wizards are about study and scholarship. This leads to another option for an offhand "device": the Spellbook. This might be used to add secondary effects to the wand, perhaps.

(eg. a fire wand would hurl fireballs like the staff does, and would have skills like the staff, but the spellbook would add different secondary effects... so that fire wand would do the fire damage and perhaps also root, or stun, or what have you.)

lolo_01b16_ESO

Actually this sword and shield, heavy armour Paladin playstyle is quite strong in PvP and 4 player dungeons.
In PvP when you wear light armour and a staff it's increadibly difficult to stay alive. Especially on a class with low mobility like templars.
And in 4 player dungeons, having one player who can tank the boss and heal the group at the same time is great. This allows you to take 3 dds in your group, killing stuff much faster than with 2 dds.

SilverBride

I want a wand or an orb.

hundergrn

Sorry to say, ESO is not your classical fantasy... there are no paladins in eso. As a templar, you are closest to it.

You have a circle of healing that does amazing work to keep you goin, you have a shield that protects and can explode, you heal and recover resources off your fallen foes, you have the jebus beam, and jabs for days.

You can do other weapons and still succeed... It will be trickier as you lose passive bonuses tied to Light armor and LA/HA resource sustain... but there is enough gear in eso for you to be able to be competent with how you want to play and still succeed in content.

Meta pushes staffs for magicka due to passive bonuses and sustain. Don't expect a no sacrifice build of big dps, big heal, mega tanky paladin. This isn't wow. We don't get the 'ok you can have all that but you are slow as ***' excuse here. If you can figure out the sustain of how you want to play your templar, you can still get high in the dps and heals while in heavy armor while throwing down with shield and mace. Might be burst spike damage, might be the long fight, but the possibility is there.

Ratzkifal

Skyrim had people cast spells with their hands. Oblivion and Morrowind had a spell key that allowed you to use a spell no matter what weapons you have equiped. Sometimes your equiped items even allowed you to use a spell.

While I can see that these things wouldn't work for ESO the way it is now, I still can't help but feel that ESO's magic system is the most limiting of them all.
Wouldn't it be cooler if the destruction and healing staff lines were world skill lines and your staff weapon would only be for light/heavy attacks and enchantment application? Then you could use wall of elements while using sword and shield! Then it would really be "play the way you want", but also probably quite the mess to rebalance all that.

Eyro

It is time for another magical weapon. Staves are just so boring. Not only do I get to use one staff, I get to use two! Yeah!!!

Of course I don’t think we will ever see another weapon added. To many models to make.

But maybe just maybe we could get some magical morphs on some weapon skills. I mean they did go through and make Stan morphs for a lot of class skills,

VampReworkFailed

Morgha_Kul wrote: »

There are a couple of other things they could use instead of staves.

Wands leap to mind, as a one handed weapon. Wizards could carry a shield, or perhaps conjure a magical one.

Rods are another such, again as a one handed device.

Wizards tend to have relatively few options for weapons because wizards wouldn't have been soldiers or warriors. Wizards are about study and scholarship. This leads to another option for an offhand "device": the Spellbook. This might be used to add secondary effects to the wand, perhaps.

(eg. a fire wand would hurl fireballs like the staff does, and would have skills like the staff, but the spellbook would add different secondary effects... so that fire wand would do the fire damage and perhaps also root, or stun, or what have you.)

WANDS DO NOT EXIST in elder scrolls. This is not hogwarts.

At best you'd have spellbooks or skyrim-esque hand magic.

Morgha_Kul

There's staves, so wands aren't a long reach. In any case, the idea was simply to provide an alternative to the staff.

VampReworkFailed

Morgha_Kul wrote: »

There's staves, so wands aren't a long reach. In any case, the idea was simply to provide an alternative to the staff.

Nope, wands literally do not exist like that in Elder Scrolls.

In lore wands are cheap gimmicks used by non-mages to basically do 'party entertainment' style magic.

The available alternatives for staves include: Orbs, spellbooks, hand-magic, or spell + sword style magic.

tenryuta

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Skyrim had people cast spells with their hands. Oblivion and Morrowind had a spell key that allowed you to use a spell no matter what weapons you have equiped. Sometimes your equiped items even allowed you to use a spell.

While I can see that these things wouldn't work for ESO the way it is now, I still can't help but feel that ESO's magic system is the most limiting of them all.
Wouldn't it be cooler if the destruction and healing staff lines were world skill lines and your staff weapon would only be for light/heavy attacks and enchantment application? Then you could use wall of elements while using sword and shield! Then it would really be "play the way you want", but also probably quite the mess to rebalance all that.

technically we already use spells(any non-staff skill) with a bare hand(s), and aedric spear is more like an instance bound weapon x5(or 4, dont remember how of skills actually use the spear in that tree since i avoid it), like necro scythe sweep, or the many NB shadow/dark blades

Dagre2

just make one handed staves. or a short short staff. its not like these are staves used for physical combat so they can be as light as you can make them which would be easily held in one hand. you also likely don't need a 6-12 foot staff to wave around and throw a fireball. at least, i doubt there's anything in the lore that makes it mandatory for a staff to be long to have magicks.

xeNNNNN

Morgha_Kul wrote: »

There are a couple of other things they could use instead of staves.

Wands leap to mind, as a one handed weapon. Wizards could carry a shield, or perhaps conjure a magical one.

Rods are another such, again as a one handed device.

Wizards tend to have relatively few options for weapons because wizards wouldn't have been soldiers or warriors. Wizards are about study and scholarship. This leads to another option for an offhand "device": the Spellbook. This might be used to add secondary effects to the wand, perhaps.

(eg. a fire wand would hurl fireballs like the staff does, and would have skills like the staff, but the spellbook would add different secondary effects... so that fire wand would do the fire damage and perhaps also root, or stun, or what have you.)

Honestly a conjuration skill line would be better. Something thats been asked for since the game released. Like Conjuration and alteration magic is something I wish this game had.

SilverBride

I don't care what we get as long as there is a small replacement for staves. I hate walking around with a huge stick stuck to my back all the time.

ADarklore

This is the main reason I switched to Stamplar... I grew so tired of staff with no other options that could help cure the feeling of stagnation and boredom after tons of hours of repeating the same exact skill combination over and over. In general questing PVE, it's so brain-dead easy... which I am OK with... as long as there is some variety to cure the repetition... but with Magplar, there isn't. Switching to Stamplar, I have several weapon options that I can switch between to create a variety in playstyle which makes the easy overland content more tolerable.

Sililos

All great replies so far, keep it up!

My desire i guess doesn't really work all that well.
Instead of a staff id like to be able to use any other weapon, existing or otherwise to do the same DPS and have the same survivability.

Staves are OP because their damage is channeled and they are very easy to use compared to even bows. Theres no other weapon that preforms like them or is as useful for both attack and defense.
Its why every min/max build uses them over anything else.

What i really want too see is the gap closed for damage and survivability between them and other weapons. Not by nerfing staves, but by buffing/redesigning how the other weapons work.
Imagine standing toe to toe with an enemy while using a sword and shield or any melee range weapon speced to damage but getting hit as little as you do with a staff while doing just as much damage?
Bows whose heavy damage is channeled like a staff and like a staff you cant miss?

It wouldn't be OP as staves currently have shown us, it would just be evening the playing field variety wise on some massively underpreforming options.

Eiagra

I use a restoration staff on my back bar, but mainly for the ultimate (which I haven't used much, so maybe i can swap that out.)

My main damage is dual-wield with Nirnhoned/Sharpened. It's not the meta, but I don't follow the meta. *shrug*

I use a couple of Trinimac blades in my outfit, as they resemble tuning fork blades, so I like to think of them as attuning and channeling magicka.

Just be you and don't worry about chasing the meta. That goal is always going to shift, and it's rarely going to match what you want to be.

Sililos

Yeah, Im doing that now. I hate having my skills over two bars for one spec for the same weapon so i have my main bar as DPS and my off bar as healing, do fine with it.
Im just tired of using two staves, i tried switching to sword and shield and found myself Magicka starved as I had to be toe to toe with the enemy who was knocking me down/stunning and having to move out of the red every time I wanted to heavy hit to recharge, unlike the staves, if you roll etc you dont get mana. With staves its interrupted sure, but because its channeled you are gaining per tick before its interrupted.

Blinx

what about something like elemental/destruction/restoration throwing cards/magicaL rune cards? you would keep them in your pocket until you had to use them, they would have an animation like a boomerang, hit several targets for damage, or several allies for healing/buffing?

RedSwallow

VampReworkFailed wrote: »

Morgha_Kul wrote: »

There are a couple of other things they could use instead of staves.

Wands leap to mind, as a one handed weapon. Wizards could carry a shield, or perhaps conjure a magical one.

Rods are another such, again as a one handed device.

Wizards tend to have relatively few options for weapons because wizards wouldn't have been soldiers or warriors. Wizards are about study and scholarship. This leads to another option for an offhand "device": the Spellbook. This might be used to add secondary effects to the wand, perhaps.

(eg. a fire wand would hurl fireballs like the staff does, and would have skills like the staff, but the spellbook would add different secondary effects... so that fire wand would do the fire damage and perhaps also root, or stun, or what have you.)

WANDS DO NOT EXIST in elder scrolls. This is not hogwarts.

At best you'd have spellbooks or skyrim-esque hand magic.

Hand magic is nice! I wouldn't mind running around and casting everything with my hands, plenty of class skills are being cast that way anyway. It would actually feel much smoother if I didn't have to pick up a staff to make a light attack in between two hands-free skills :0

Skjoldur

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Skyrim had people cast spells with their hands. Oblivion and Morrowind had a spell key that allowed you to use a spell no matter what weapons you have equiped. Sometimes your equiped items even allowed you to use a spell.

While I can see that these things wouldn't work for ESO the way it is now, I still can't help but feel that ESO's magic system is the most limiting of them all.
Wouldn't it be cooler if the destruction and healing staff lines were world skill lines and your staff weapon would only be for light/heavy attacks and enchantment application? Then you could use wall of elements while using sword and shield! Then it would really be "play the way you want", but also probably quite the mess to rebalance all that.

I never liked that ESO introduced classes. I would have preferred class skill lines that everyone can use and that classes were more like builds or templates, especially for new players.