Wall of Elements, it's morphs and varients, and other Destruction Staff discussion.

ESO_Nightingale

WALL OF ELEMENTS

Wall of Elements is a crucial part of any PvE Magicka DPS build. it procs our backbar glyph on cooldown, buffs our light and heavy attack damage via the maelstrom staff and it plays a decent part to achieving max dps.

There are essentially 6 versions of this skill availiable to us.

Unstable Walls of Fire/Frost/Shock
and
Blockade of Fire/Frost/Shock

each have differences from eachother based on either their morph effect or their elemental effect. or in one case, both (Unstable Wall of Frost).

The problem i have with these skills is just how much of a disaparity between the dps that there is between the elemental varients of unstable wall of elements.

if we look at Unstable Wall of Fire, we can see that it's damage is buffed by a hefty 20% when damaging a burning enemy, and this also includes it's explosion which all up makes it a decent little chunk of your damage since your target will often be burning.

if we look at Unstable Wall of Shock, we can see that it applies off balance to enemies afflicted with concussed. this was once great for group supports who would run the blockade version of the skill to keep as much off balance uptime on the enemy for the old CP point that increased damage by 10%. this effect no longer occurs, and now off balance doesn't have nearly as many uses outside of heavy attacks or some few choice skills that use it as a proc condition. while on the same bar as it, which isn't too often, it's damage will also increase by 8% when you factor in ancient knowledge. this overall performance leaves this varient feeling stunted. since running a shock staff for your backbar is not a hugely useful addition. it's often instead used for your frontbar in clearing trash or on some pvp classes.

if we look at Unstable Wall of Frost, we can see that it applies a projectile specific damage shield, costs more, applies another smaller damage shield when it explodes and immobilises chilled enemies. This is a lot of effects for a DPS morph. And most of them really aren't desireable and entirely support based. While it's been established that the ice staff is supposed to function as both a dps and support weapon, having both morphs apply a damage shield and cost more isn't really a good idea anymore. Especially when frost blockade is definitely more geared to a supportive role than unstable wall of frost, since it doesn't explode for more dps, has a longer duration and larger area. if we look at the success that Frost Reach and Frost Clench have had this patch, i think it's clear that we apply this type of design to the wall morphs as well. But perhaps on a larger scale.

Would it be too much to suggest that the unstable varients of frost and shock walls gain either the same, or similar damage boosts that wall of fire has, while the blockade varients focus on supportive effects? I know that unstable wall of frost would absolutely LOVE this same wall of fire effect but for chilled, while the blockade varient should stay exactly as is.
while this would not fix the existing problem of Engulfing Flames and Encratis's Behemoth making unstable wall of fire even better than it's other varients, those group buffs are a whole problem on their own separated from this specific skill.

Ignoring the encratis and engulfing problem, this would really open up backbar options for classes, such as frost wardens that want to use unstable wall of frost for their backbar, but currently don't have a huge incentive to because wall of fire is simply much much better and a rotation can be accomodated for to keep brittle uptimes incredibly high even with an ice/fire settup. This would also allow shock sorcs to be at least a little bit more promenent as well.

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SHOCK CLENCH

On that same topic. Shock Clench could definitely use the same single target base damage that frost reach just obtained to help it stand out as a great shock spammable. currently it has the same general purpose as shock pulsar/impulse which feels bizarre and not well thought out. this would definitely help out Shock DPS, by giving them a good thematic spammable skill and it may help to increase their overall damage to a decent degree where running fire in most situations wouldn't be as necessary as it currently is.

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OTHER FROST BASED EFFECTS

Switching topics, The frost specific effects for impulse and icy rage are simply not very helpful especially when compared to the other elemental effects

Starting with Impulse

the effects are:

Fire: a small additional tick of damage is given to enemies in the radius who are burning known as afterburn, this damage increases by up to 400% based on the health of the enemy target. essentially making this skill a conditional execute
Shock: increases damage done per enemy in the radius
Frost: gives minor protection in an aoe for 6 seconds

Immediately we can see that frost impulse does not give a damage based effect. and the effect it does give, is minor protection for an incredibly short duration. this is 5% mitigation. immediately, this effect says it's for a tank, but a tank generally does not use this skill unless trying to proc brittle in aoe which is an incredibly niche scenario, and given the radius of the skill, probably isn't going to be giving many people this buff in the first place. DPS who would be using this skill don't care about the mitigation at all they would rather have an actual damaging effect that matches the output that the other varients have. an execute in aoe and increased damage per enemy in the radius absolutely just destroys a very minor duration of a minor amount of mitigation. a majority of tanks have minor protection included in their class kits as well in some form either for themselves or in aoe such as necromancer. the only exceptions are sorcerer and dragonknight tanks. even then, spending such a large amount of magicka for such a small effect is not really a good use of a GCD or resources. any other effect like minor force for a decent duration, some form of DoT or even a standardised form of the flame impulse execute would significantly help dps that want to use this skill while not changing the general purpose of the skill for tanks in the slightest. even a direct applied snare would be better than aoe minor protection for a short duration.

Icy Rage is quite a simple problem. it's effect is redundant.

lets compare the effects
Fire: +10% damage done
Shock: +2 seconds of duration
Frost: immobilises enemies for 3 seconds

Immediately this is redundant with wall of frost. Since applying chilled to an enemy is something that you are already doing anyway, so the immobilise is wasted value especially when compared to Firey Rage and Thunderous Rage which have either more duration or 10% more damage per tick. it is a 250 cost ultimate used to burst a group of enemies down as quick as possible and yet compared to the other varients of the skill, we deal less damage with our one while also keeping enemies who we want to further group up, on the edges of the ultimate since it immediately applies the immobilise the second an enemy takes damage from it. Instead, we could keep with the general theme of Thunderous Rage, and increase uptime by reducing the cost of Icy Rage down to something like 220 or 215 ultimate, we could increase it's critical damage dealt by 15% or a whole other list of effects, this would work nicely with allowing it to be as performant as the other 2 morphs. I've also experimented with the idea of Icy Rage applying major brittle, but i feel like this will reduce the overall damage that something like a frost warden dps can do, since we are currently so reliant on our bear to gain our max damage output, and tanks would begin to run it with Saxhleel's Champion.

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CONCLUSION/ TL:DR

There are some significant enough differences between the varients, with flame often being on top for dps. it's not necessary to nerf fire based destruction staff effects, but it's definitely better to buff our other varients. Wall Of Elements is a great contender since it is important for why backbar dps is always fire. shock mages would like to have a spammable in shock clench with the same base single target damage as frost reach. frost versions of impulse and destructive rage have bad/redundant effects that aren't useful compared to anything else that can increase damage.

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This is a roleplaying game but everyone is seemingly at least partially a fire mage because there's so little love given to non fire elements that it is really sad. on top of that there is also engulfing flames and encratis's behemoth which combined, increase a group's flame based damage by 15%.
When you compare everything it is so telling. The fact that it has taken this long for zenimax to finally start to give love to frost and shock playstyles has been pretty frustrating. It's not that we couldn't really play with these playstyles in the first place, it's that they've been so bad in comparison to the best weapon settups, that it has limited people that want to play how they want to play. because they'd likely never be allowed into some of the hardest pve content, because regardless of how good they can play, they may just not pull enough dps anyway because of how much their weapon subtype mattered. while also being encouraged along the way to just play with fire since it's just so much better. its hard to feel powerful when you know you're just gimping yourself. and then when there clearly aren't enough damage skills to even satisfy the theme or power fantasy like with frost, people have felt like it just wasn't something you should ever do. since minor brittle has come along and frostbite+frost reach, people are now beginning to see that it is possible for frost dps to be a real thing. it's not there just yet, but it's close and a lot of people have hope that it can be fully realised. here's hoping to double ice being better and more frost damage skills on warden. looking at you frost shalks.

LeHarrt91

It would be nice to see the other elements get as much love at Flame staves.

Tivnael

200% agree
Wall of frost should have one damage morph
Frost impulse should provide something more unique, and rather offensive like minor breach

Stx

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

It would be nice to see the other elements get as much love at Flame staves.

Add a utility effect somewhere that can rival the 5% and 10% boosters fire gets from monster set and dk skill... shock and frost should have something like this.

Also maybe buff shock light attacks. Shock light attacks are an insane amount lower than fire baseline. I think this is to make up for the higher amount of damage shock heavy attacks deal, but its not balanced at all currently.

Gundug

I’m not disagreeing with the original post, but looking at skills from the limited focus of “useful for a tank”, or “useful for a DPS” ignores all usage outside of organized PVE group play. Devaluing a skill because it provides some form of damage mitigation instead of another form of additional damage seems to be a statement that any other way of playing the game is of no importance.

I am not against reasonable changes to skills, and I am not suggesting the original poster’s suggestions are poorly thought out, but I would think a broader use than just PVE tank or PVE DPS (or PVE healer, which I didn’t see mentioned at all, and which hardly anyone seems to care about) should considered when thinking about skills. I am of the opinion that a sizable proportion of the PVE player base participates in only limited group play, and for solo play, damage mitigation and healing are not small details. For PVP, I feel it’s the same.

Vaoh

Awesome post!

This covers pretty much evert current issue between the staff types.

Frost Reach being buffed was an awesome start. I hope they keep this up.

BXR_Lonestar

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

It would be nice to see the other elements get as much love at Flame staves.

I personally would like to see the lightning staff passive be reworked so instead of granting additional damage to AoE's, it should simply be called "arcing." The arcing effect will cause ALL lightning attacks to arc between two or more enemies caught in a lightning AoE or hit with a lightning staff heavy attack. Arcing itself will be its own form of damage that will cause additional DoT based on the number of targets hit (lets just say 500 damage / .25 ms per target). This will make lightning staves super strong vs. trash mobs and large groups, but far less effective against single target bosses.

ESO_Nightingale

Vaoh wrote: »

Awesome post!

This covers pretty much evert current issue between the staff types.

Frost Reach being buffed was an awesome start. I hope they keep this up.

I really hope Frost Reach's change is indicative of more changes to come to the frost staff. It's such a good change that i seriously hope there is more to come for our variants. Hell. The same format needs to be followed in Winter's Embrace as well.

AinSoph

Dont forget that unstable fire can use any burning proc and that enemies can get affected by each players burning proc separately.

ESO_Nightingale

AinSoph wrote: »

Dont forget that unstable fire can use any burning proc and that enemies can get affected by each players burning proc separately.

yeah, in trial groups it's uptime is near constant.

ESO_Nightingale

given the crit cap next patch, it may now be alright if major brittle was given to icy rage since you could coordinate the max crit damage cap with your supports. it could read like it gives major brittle to enemies who step in the radius for 3 seconds.