Rework ideas (Abilities, Passives, Race, Weapon, Guilds, etc.)

Styxius

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.
Warden's Piercing cold being reworked as such: Instead of 10% increase in magic and frost damage, maybe we adjust it to 10% magic and 12% frost to help our frosty friends.
Dragonknight getting stamina whip for all their desires.
Make Venom Skull's 3rd cast not deal 20% more damage but have a unique DoT to stack onto their passives, or similar to how Carve works. Stamina necromancers have grabbed onto carve because it fits what they're looking for.
Of course, I'm not saying my ideas are the best, just trying to spark conversation. What are some thoughts/ideas you guys have?

MashmalloMan

Styxius wrote: »

Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

Surprise attack being a spammable in the shadow tree allows damage dealers to get close to 100% major resolve uptime for free, while other classes have dedicated abilities for them they need to manage on a 15-20s cooldown. I know this has been a long standing request amongst some NBs, but the benefits of it's current placement far outweigh something like getting only 2% crit chance for slotting. There is nothing else in the Shadow skilline that a Damage Dealer would use on a 6 second cooldown in most content, the closest is Dark Cloak for pvp.. but thats only pvp, while Surprise attack benefits both playstyles.

Besides RP, what benefit would Blur have to be in the Shadow tree anyway? The skill lasts 26 seconds which doesn't line up with having 0 Heavy armor (6s of Major Resolve) or 7 Heavy Armor (16.5s of Major Resolve). As a tank, you have Dark Cloak for Minor Protection and the 5s duration implies you'll want to use it at least 33% of the time to get that 16.5s anyway.

Styxius wrote: »

Warden's Piercing cold being reworked as such: Instead of 10% increase in magic and frost damage, maybe we adjust it to 10% magic and 12% frost to help our frosty friends.

I'd like to see Stam Warden's get a damage type specialization into bleed and mag Warden's to be streamlined into Frost, rather than the generic Magicka damage type that doesn't really suit them (suits Templar/NB way more imo).

Eg. No more 10% Magic damage, but 10% Bleed and Frost damage. Coupled with this, multiple skills should be changed to reflect this idea like Bear morphs have a a dot that gets applied for Frost/Bleed with their special attacks. Scorch morphs changed to Bleed/Frost. Etc.

Honestly, as a whole I'd like all the classes to have more unique damage specializations and I was hoping something like this idea was focussed on for CP 2.0.. but it ended up just being another % based stat boost like CP 1.0 becoming super generic.

• Sorc = Physical/Shock (5% each)
• DK = Poison/Flame (5% each)
• Warden = Bleed/Frost (10% each)
• NB = Diseased/Magic (Focus on negative "dark" debuffs)
• Templar = Physical/Magic (Focus on positive "holy" buffs)
• Necro = Flame/Frost/Shock/Poison/Disease (Elementalist - 15% dot)

For the most part, the kits for the classes highlight these ideas pretty well.. but it would be fun if they took it 1 step further.

The DK's kit is in a pretty good place next patch. With the 5% passive damage to both damage types, resource return on poisoned/burning and extra damage on those status effects, DK's fit their theme very well.

Warden does this to a lesser extent for Frost with the higher 10% and Critical Damage done to Chilled enemies, but besides that, their kit has very little frost damage, magic damage doesn't seem to fit them at all and stam wardens have no real specialization.

Sorcs have a great kit with many unique abilities, they've stood the test of time, what identity issues Stam Sorc once had are minor now that we have Bound Armaments and Crystal Weapon, while still enjoying the strong passives and unique skills that brought us to the class in the first place like Hurricane, Crit Surge, Streak and Dark Deal, but again.. the unique damage typ synergy of the class isn't there and is probably the weakest of the 3 elemental classes with only 5% physical/shock damage and nothing else to support that.

At one point, we had the passive called Implosion (now called Amplitude). The passive made physical/shock damage feel more unique to sorcs and it promoted a playstyle that made you think about your build more. Instead of giving a reverse execute of 10-1% damage done based on health, it did the following: Whenever you deal Shock or Physical Damage you have a 6% chance to instantly disintegrate or pulverise enemies under 15% Health, dealing 4372 Shock or Physical Damage.

It was pretty strong and RNG based by auto executing low health targets in pvp, which is why it was changed (for some reason it's okay for templars to keep burning light but w.e lol), but it was based on the damage types of the class and had a unique synergy with stacking damage over time ticks from skills like Hurricane/Blade Cloak/Boundless Storm/Absorbtion Field, etc.

So idk exactly what I'd change, but my point is, I want Sorcs and Wardens to be more like DK's in that their damage types can be found in almost all their class skills while also having unique effects for them that makes them think about their skill choice. The fact that DK's actually want to use sets like Elfbane and traits like Charged is a testament to how well they're designed. Again, to a lesser extent, Frost Warden's and frost staves are becoming a thing.. but we can't say the same for Shock Sorcs or Stam Wardens.

A cool idea I had for CP 2.0 was a slottable that had a 5% chance on any shock damage to proc "Forked Lightning" that would hit up to 3 enemies at up to 5m apart from each other (including the original target), but maybe this could be a Sorc passive instead that works for Physical Damage in some way too.

Styxius

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

Surprise attack being a spammable in the shadow tree allows damage dealers to get close to 100% major resolve uptime for free, while other classes have dedicated abilities for them they need to manage on a 15-20s cooldown. I know this has been a long standing request amongst some NBs, but the benefits of it's current placement far outweigh something like getting only 2% crit chance for slotting. There is nothing else in the Shadow skilline that a Damage Dealer would use on a 6 second cooldown in most content, the closest is Dark Cloak for pvp.. but thats only pvp, while Surprise attack benefits both playstyles.

Besides RP, what benefit would Blur have to be in the Shadow tree anyway? The skill lasts 26 seconds which doesn't line up with having 0 Heavy armor (6s of Major Resolve) or 7 Heavy Armor (16.5s of Major Resolve). As a tank, you have Dark Cloak for Minor Protection and the 5s duration implies you'll want to use it at least 33% of the time to get that 16.5s anyway.

Styxius wrote: »

Warden's Piercing cold being reworked as such: Instead of 10% increase in magic and frost damage, maybe we adjust it to 10% magic and 12% frost to help our frosty friends.

I'd like to see Stam Warden's get a damage type specialization into bleed and mag Warden's to be streamlined into Frost, rather than the generic Magicka damage type that doesn't really suit them (suits Templar/NB way more imo).

Eg. No more 10% Magic damage, but 10% Bleed and Frost damage. Coupled with this, multiple skills should be changed to reflect this idea like Bear morphs have a a dot that gets applied for Frost/Bleed with their special attacks. Scorch morphs changed to Bleed/Frost. Etc.

Honestly, as a whole I'd like all the classes to have more unique damage specializations and I was hoping something like this idea was focussed on for CP 2.0.. but it ended up just being another % based stat boost like CP 1.0 becoming super generic.

• Sorc = Physical/Shock (5% each)
• DK = Poison/Flame (5% each)
• Warden = Bleed/Frost (10% each)
• NB = Diseased/Magic (Focus on negative "dark" debuffs)
• Templar = Physical/Magic (Focus on positive "holy" buffs)
• Necro = Flame/Frost/Shock/Poison/Disease (Elementalist - 15% dot)

For the most part, the kits for the classes highlight these ideas pretty well.. but it would be fun if they took it 1 step further.

The DK's kit is in a pretty good place next patch. With the 5% passive damage to both damage types, resource return on poisoned/burning and extra damage on those status effects, DK's fit their theme very well.

Warden does this to a lesser extent for Frost with the higher 10% and Critical Damage done to Chilled enemies, but besides that, their kit has very little frost damage, magic damage doesn't seem to fit them at all and stam wardens have no real specialization.

Sorcs have a great kit with many unique abilities, they've stood the test of time, what identity issues Stam Sorc once had are minor now that we have Bound Armaments and Crystal Weapon, while still enjoying the strong passives and unique skills that brought us to the class in the first place like Hurricane, Crit Surge, Streak and Dark Deal, but again.. the unique damage typ synergy of the class isn't there and is probably the weakest of the 3 elemental classes with only 5% physical/shock damage and nothing else to support that.

At one point, we had the passive called Implosion (now called Amplitude). The passive made physical/shock damage feel more unique to sorcs and it promoted a playstyle that made you think about your build more. Instead of giving a reverse execute of 10-1% damage done based on health, it did the following: Whenever you deal Shock or Physical Damage you have a 6% chance to instantly disintegrate or pulverise enemies under 15% Health, dealing 4372 Shock or Physical Damage.

It was pretty strong and RNG based by auto executing low health targets in pvp, which is why it was changed (for some reason it's okay for templars to keep burning light but w.e lol), but it was based on the damage types of the class and had a unique synergy with stacking damage over time ticks from skills like Hurricane/Blade Cloak/Boundless Storm/Absorbtion Field, etc.

So idk exactly what I'd change, but my point is, I want Sorcs and Wardens to be more like DK's in that their damage types can be found in almost all their class skills while also having unique effects for them that makes them think about their skill choice. The fact that DK's actually want to use sets like Elfbane and traits like Charged is a testament to how well they're designed. Again, to a lesser extent, Frost Warden's and frost staves are becoming a thing.. but we can't say the same for Shock Sorcs or Stam Wardens.

A cool idea I had for CP 2.0 was a slottable that had a 5% chance on any shock damage to proc "Forked Lightning" that would hit up to 3 enemies at up to 5m apart from each other (including the original target), but maybe this could be a Sorc passive instead that works for Physical Damage in some way too.

Honestly love the reply, but nightblades as stamina DPS in PvE actually use 2 shadow abilities in their highest parses at this time. Same for Magicka dps actually, 3 if you include surprise attack. They run Twisting path (does almost 9k dps on it's own single target) and our shade pal which both trigger that passive making assassination the better route for them. Moving Mirage to Shadow benefits tanks by providing them more passive stats that are more advantageous than that of the assassination skill line.

I see your point about damage specializations but I think there should be a slightly higher push for them in terms of playstyle as that could help break cookie cutting that replicates between classes at times.

I think Stamina warden seeing something new from it's passives would be nice. I think the passive idea you mentioned certainly sounds interesting for their playstyles. I like having the bleed added to warden of the magic aspect honestly. I also wish ZoS did more enemy variations in example Haj Mota's with the exception of like 1-2 of them take reduced damage on the sides/rear. I would like to see more aspects like this introduced into the game to give variety to encounters where it's not just stand in the back and hit them if that makes sense.

Highly appreciated how much time you put into your reply pal!

ESO_Nightingale

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Warden's Piercing cold being reworked as such: Instead of 10% increase in magic and frost damage, maybe we adjust it to 10% magic and 12% frost to help our frosty friends.

I'd like to see Stam Warden's get a damage type specialization into bleed and mag Warden's to be streamlined into Frost, rather than the generic Magicka damage type that doesn't really suit them (suits Templar/NB way more imo).

Eg. No more 10% Magic damage, but 10% Bleed and Frost damage. Coupled with this, multiple skills should be changed to reflect this idea like Bear morphs have a a dot that gets applied for Frost/Bleed with their special attacks. Scorch morphs changed to Bleed/Frost. Etc.

Honestly, as a whole I'd like all the classes to have more unique damage specializations and I was hoping something like this idea was focussed on for CP 2.0.. but it ended up just being another % based stat boost like CP 1.0 becoming super generic.

• Sorc = Physical/Shock (5% each)
• DK = Poison/Flame (5% each)
• Warden = Bleed/Frost (10% each)
• NB = Diseased/Magic (Focus on negative "dark" debuffs)
• Templar = Physical/Magic (Focus on positive "holy" buffs)
• Necro = Flame/Frost/Shock/Poison/Disease (Elementalist - 15% dot)

For the most part, the kits for the classes highlight these ideas pretty well.. but it would be fun if they took it 1 step further.

The DK's kit is in a pretty good place next patch. With the 5% passive damage to both damage types, resource return on poisoned/burning and extra damage on those status effects, DK's fit their theme very well.

Warden does this to a lesser extent for Frost with the higher 10% and Critical Damage done to Chilled enemies, but besides that, their kit has very little frost damage, magic damage doesn't seem to fit them at all and stam wardens have no real specialization.

100% Warden really needs to explore frost and bleeds more. the frost shalks suggestion would at the very least give us some reason to use deep fissure in pve in the coming patches even if nothing else is changed for it since it'd have more synergy with frostbite and would likely be less of a damage loss in that case.

we also just lack another actual damage skill in winter's embrace. Arctic Blast was so close to becoming what we have asked for, for a very long time. but zos decided to keep the healing and buff it which caused the tank warden problem until the nerf in blackwood instead of buffing our lacking 1GCD burst heals in green balance. blast exists now as a pseudo damage skill that is pretty solid per tick, but the problems being the severe lack of duration and massive cost along with unneeded utility in terms of pve. i think that this rework dubbed AB4.0, would fix some important issues on the class:


(to create this i just modified the client side html of eso skillbook.)

1. It adds a new, powerful and flavourful Frost Damage skill for magicka warden that can apply chilled and benefit from sets such as frostbite. This would be good in both pve and pvp for regular magicka wardens and frost wardens.
2. it is similar in design to deep fissure, being another "frontal aoe burst" skill. this would help to further build magicka warden's identity in that direction, though would differ in being a line traveling aoe with a decent speed to it. helping diversify magicka warden's skills from other classes.
3. it gives the class a solid offensive stun of appropriate cost (it is, however, blockable.) while removing the obnoxious blast stun that many people have complained about from both directions as blast in it's current state is incredibly hard to combo with due to it's delayed and melee ranged nature, and annoying to play against since it doesn't require active imput from the player to stun the target(s). Magicka Wardens have always needed an offensive CC that keeps the enemy in place. over time we have lost several stuns that have done this and are now only left with arctic blast 3.0 and flame clench, both of which are bad for their own reasons.

master_vanargand

Styxius wrote: »

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

This idea nerf NB.

ESO_Nightingale

master_vanargand wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

This idea nerf NB.

how? it'd make surprise attack give crit when slotted, and it'd make mirage give max health while slotted and a cast of it would give major resolve? that sounds like a solid buff to me.

Faulgor

Yes on all the Sorc suggestions. Concussed should play a larger role in their toolkit.

And while we're at it, rework the Lightning Splash morphs. They are unimaginative as hell, having remained largely unchanged since release (one for size, one for duration). I don't think we need a stamina morph, but anything else would be appreciated - higher chance for status effects like Winter's Revenge, execute damage, the shock equivalent to Engulfing Flames, whatever.
Sorcerers also have a lot of magic damage, including their spammable Crystal Frags. It would be nice to have a shock spammable as an option, similar to the frost spammable provided by Destructive Reach.

Stamina Templars also need some significant help. If you look at the toolkits of Stamina and Magicka Templars, there is no reason to ever play Stamina. They offer absolutely nothing that their magicka counterpart doesn't do better. This is largely because their skills are so similar, and the superiority of jabs makes weapon skills that could differentiate the two builds unappealing.
As long as jab builds are dominant, I'm not certain how to solve this issue, but in principle one more stamina morph (either for Sun Fire or Solar Flare?) that is substantially different from the magicka version (see Crystal Fragments vs Crystal Weapon, for example) seems the way to go.

My skill of choice for this would be Vampire's Bane. Using the status-effect concept for classes, it might look something like this:
Sun Fire: Now applies Major Savagery as well as Major Prophecy
Vampire's Bane: Converts into a Stamina ability. Imbues your weaopn with holy light, increasing your chance to apply the Sundered status effect by 300%. While slotted, Sundered enemies take x more damage from your Physical attacks (think DK's Stagger, but only applying to your attacks).
Power of the Light: Replaced Minor Breach with Minor Cowardice.
Biting Jabs: Replaced Major Savagery with Minor Lifesteal.

master_vanargand

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

This idea nerf NB.

how? it'd make surprise attack give crit when slotted, and it'd make mirage give max health while slotted and a cast of it would give major resolve? that sounds like a solid buff to me.

You don't understand PvP.
Your idea is a nightmare.
Also, health +3% is important in PvE DPS.

Elo106

Major Expedition to DK Wings, Dragonfire Scales and Protective Plate

ESO_Nightingale

master_vanargand wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

This idea nerf NB.

how? it'd make surprise attack give crit when slotted, and it'd make mirage give max health while slotted and a cast of it would give major resolve? that sounds like a solid buff to me.

You don't understand PvP.
Your idea is a nightmare.
Also, health +3% is important in PvE DPS.

I dunno man it's really not that bad. Dark cloak or Shadowy Disguise are also used as well on most nightblade builds, that will retain the major resolve buff no matter what route you go in, it'd make mirage a bit better, since currently I don't really see that run at the moment and casting it would give you that major resolve, you can also get it through shadow image or mass hysteria, provided you use that skill. 3% health is statistically less damage than 1.2% crit chance or whatever amount pressure points gives you. it's not a nerf, it's a useful re-adjustment for both pvp and pve.

MashmalloMan

master_vanargand wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

This idea nerf NB.

how? it'd make surprise attack give crit when slotted, and it'd make mirage give max health while slotted and a cast of it would give major resolve? that sounds like a solid buff to me.

You don't understand PvP.
Your idea is a nightmare.
Also, health +3% is important in PvE DPS.

Styxius wrote: »

Honestly love the reply, but nightblades as stamina DPS in PvE actually use 2 shadow abilities in their highest parses at this time. Same for Magicka dps actually, 3 if you include surprise attack. They run Twisting path (does almost 9k dps on it's own single target) and our shade pal which both trigger that passive making assassination the better route for them. Moving Mirage to Shadow benefits tanks by providing them more passive stats that are more advantageous than that of the assassination skill line.

Surprise Attack gives damage dealers a way to get 100% uptime of Major Resolve as they typically only get 6 seconds of it from anything cast in the shadow skill line, 7.5s if you happen to have 1 heavy armor piece, but thats more likely to happen in only in a pvp environment.

I'm aware they use Path/Shade in pve, I have one, but they're both long duration skills that go well beyond the 6s proc duration. Casting Path every 12 seconds and Shade every 20 seconds, does not cover the 6 second duration on Major Resolve for a Damage Dealer at all. You're lucky to get even 50% uptime.

For Tanks, this is not neerly as large of an issue because they have up to 14.5 to 16.5 seconds of Major Resolve with 5 to 7 pieces of Heavy armor. They can actually manage to use the longer duration defensive skills, the skilline provides while still getting 100% uptime. However, they don't really need to because they easily cover this by using Dark Cloak which gives Minor Protection (8s duration) and the HP % based heal ticks which happens to be pretty good on the PTS (about 10% health per second).

So to make it simple.. Tanks would effectively trade 2% crit chance(effects healing) for 3% health and no other benefit since Blur is not a reliable tank source for Major Resolve... while Damage Dealers trade 3% HP for 2% crit chance, but vastly lower Major Resolve uptime because Shade/Path do not come even close to the short 6s proc duration.

For pvp, it's a different story, more of the Shadow skill line is spammed for damage dealers, but it's still a bit obtrusive to expect a NB to recast many of those longer duration skills frequently to keep one of the most important buffs in the game. Not having a buff up like this can leave you with 0 Armor with the amount of penetration and debuffs available now. At that point, I'd rather them get their own 20 second Major Resolve buff skill because that's simply more reliable and kills what is suppose to be the ease of access from the passive. What is the point of the passive, if it's not easy to keep up for both roles.. Major Resolve skills for classes are typically some of the best and most unique skills in the game.

Elo106 wrote: »

Major Expedition to DK Wings, Dragonfire Scales and Protective Plate

Great idea, always thought this was a missed opportunity. DK wings have fallen off after the changes to them.. Unfortunately ZOS doesn't believe in double downing on buffs within a class kit, Major Expedition is obtained via chains for DK so unless that is swapped for something else, I can't see it happening.

NB's use to have 2 sources of Major Expedition, via Cripple and Path, but they changed it to only Path. Templars had 2 sources for Major Protection, same scenario..

@Faulgor Excellent point about Stamplar. About 2-3 years ago when I was still leveling alts with the purpose of having at least 1 stamina and 1 magicka damage dealer of every class, I saw almost 0 reason to create a stamplar over a magplar beyond stamina/medium armor and the weapon used. Beyond being lazy to create another DK, I see very little difference between the 2.

Nothing within the class kit itself FEELS any different. They have basically the same major skills, but less. Their minor buff is also for Spell Damage. To add insult to injury, this patch, the 6% weapon damage and spell resistance was changed to 6% weapon/spell damage and armor. While I love the change and I'm happy for the hybridization, this took away the only thing that made stamplar unique against magplar.

They way I look at it, Magplar Jabs heals them while stamplars simply gives the most common buff in the game, major savagery. POTL gives Minor Breach, another extremely common debuff in the game practically given for free via Jab spam, while Purifying Light gives even more healing. Ritual/Rune started out as magicka skills and behave esentially the same between the 2 roles anyway. Living Dark scaling from Health for Stamplar is worse than scaling for Magicka for Magplar (although, with hybrid sets, this may change). They have no specific ultimate as many people prefer Crescent Sweep to Empowering Sweep for the burst.

You can really go on and on, but Stamplars are basically Magplars with half the utility and a higher focus on generic skills from weapons or fighters guild skills slotted for more passive damage. It's boring, there is nothing unique to them besides being a Medium armor stamina build that some people prefer, but at this point, you can use Medium armor on Magplar pretty easily to get the best of both worlds. So really, playing a Stamplar, you're just trading for worse skills, different armor sets like Vat 2H, Rally and a different colour for your resource bar. Thats simply not enough to make them stand out..

MashmalloMan

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Warden's Piercing cold being reworked as such: Instead of 10% increase in magic and frost damage, maybe we adjust it to 10% magic and 12% frost to help our frosty friends.

I'd like to see Stam Warden's get a damage type specialization into bleed and mag Warden's to be streamlined into Frost, rather than the generic Magicka damage type that doesn't really suit them (suits Templar/NB way more imo).

Eg. No more 10% Magic damage, but 10% Bleed and Frost damage. Coupled with this, multiple skills should be changed to reflect this idea like Bear morphs have a a dot that gets applied for Frost/Bleed with their special attacks. Scorch morphs changed to Bleed/Frost. Etc.

Honestly, as a whole I'd like all the classes to have more unique damage specializations and I was hoping something like this idea was focussed on for CP 2.0.. but it ended up just being another % based stat boost like CP 1.0 becoming super generic.

• Sorc = Physical/Shock (5% each)
• DK = Poison/Flame (5% each)
• Warden = Bleed/Frost (10% each)
• NB = Diseased/Magic (Focus on negative "dark" debuffs)
• Templar = Physical/Magic (Focus on positive "holy" buffs)
• Necro = Flame/Frost/Shock/Poison/Disease (Elementalist - 15% dot)

For the most part, the kits for the classes highlight these ideas pretty well.. but it would be fun if they took it 1 step further.

The DK's kit is in a pretty good place next patch. With the 5% passive damage to both damage types, resource return on poisoned/burning and extra damage on those status effects, DK's fit their theme very well.

Warden does this to a lesser extent for Frost with the higher 10% and Critical Damage done to Chilled enemies, but besides that, their kit has very little frost damage, magic damage doesn't seem to fit them at all and stam wardens have no real specialization.

100% Warden really needs to explore frost and bleeds more. the frost shalks suggestion would at the very least give us some reason to use deep fissure in pve in the coming patches even if nothing else is changed for it since it'd have more synergy with frostbite and would likely be less of a damage loss in that case.

we also just lack another actual damage skill in winter's embrace. Arctic Blast was so close to becoming what we have asked for, for a very long time. but zos decided to keep the healing and buff it which caused the tank warden problem until the nerf in blackwood instead of buffing our lacking 1GCD burst heals in green balance. blast exists now as a pseudo damage skill that is pretty solid per tick, but the problems being the severe lack of duration and massive cost along with unneeded utility in terms of pve. i think that this rework dubbed AB4.0, would fix some important issues on the class:


(to create this i just modified the client side html of eso skillbook.)

1. It adds a new, powerful and flavourful Frost Damage skill for magicka warden that can apply chilled and benefit from sets such as frostbite. This would be good in both pve and pvp for regular magicka wardens and frost wardens.
2. it is similar in design to deep fissure, being another "frontal aoe burst" skill. this would help to further build magicka warden's identity in that direction, though would differ in being a line traveling aoe with a decent speed to it. helping diversify magicka warden's skills from other classes.
3. it gives the class a solid offensive stun of appropriate cost (it is, however, blockable.) while removing the obnoxious blast stun that many people have complained about from both directions as blast in it's current state is incredibly hard to combo with due to it's delayed and melee ranged nature, and annoying to play against since it doesn't require active imput from the player to stun the target(s). Magicka Wardens have always needed an offensive CC that keeps the enemy in place. over time we have lost several stuns that have done this and are now only left with arctic blast 3.0 and flame clench, both of which are bad for their own reasons.

Ohhh I really like your idea for AB 4.0 (Wasn't a fan of the previous itterations if I'm honest). I think having the aoe frost dot is a must to give them that Frozen Blizzard vibe that Sorc/DK's get with Shock/Wind/Burning, so it's nice to see that remain.

The frozen tornado traveling in a straight line for an on demand stun is a nice touch and lines up with the idea behind Scorch which also attacks in a straight line in front of you. As long as they have the same distance/aoe size (I belive it's 20x8) it would feel very natural to cast.

I'd like to touch on the automatic stun point. I feel like this is a flaw with the class that they've seemed to have done twice actually. The auto purge on Betty has always been a hot topic since its change, while it was a much needed buff to the skill, it's now become a problem for Warden's due to the introduction of Plaguebreaker.

Core combat mechanics like Purging and Stunning should not be automatic and out of the control of the offender/defender, it causes more harm than good. Plaugebreaker really isn't a problem as long as you choose to purge away from your team. Warden's do not have this choice, in a 1v1 where the offender has very minimal negative effect stacking, Warden's will basically purge Plaguebreaker on cooldown.

So instead, why don't we go back to the original design? Still a free cost, purge on cast, except instead of the 1 negative effect it removes, increase the number to 2 or even 3 effects. You can already constantly recast Betty now to get free purges and a little tick of healing, so this isn't anything new, but it would allow you to be more reactive about purging, yet at the same time, more proficient since you can purge more at a time like how Necro/Templar perform. Maybe it's an unpopular opinion because why would you trade 25 seconds of 6 free auto purges, but I think it'd be more powerful for when you actually NEED to purge multiple effects. It adds a skill ceiling to the skill and combats any issues people had with it shutting down fighting them with the auto purge effect since you actually need to spend a GCD to purge things reactively.

ESO_Nightingale

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Warden's Piercing cold being reworked as such: Instead of 10% increase in magic and frost damage, maybe we adjust it to 10% magic and 12% frost to help our frosty friends.

I'd like to see Stam Warden's get a damage type specialization into bleed and mag Warden's to be streamlined into Frost, rather than the generic Magicka damage type that doesn't really suit them (suits Templar/NB way more imo).

Eg. No more 10% Magic damage, but 10% Bleed and Frost damage. Coupled with this, multiple skills should be changed to reflect this idea like Bear morphs have a a dot that gets applied for Frost/Bleed with their special attacks. Scorch morphs changed to Bleed/Frost. Etc.

Honestly, as a whole I'd like all the classes to have more unique damage specializations and I was hoping something like this idea was focussed on for CP 2.0.. but it ended up just being another % based stat boost like CP 1.0 becoming super generic.

• Sorc = Physical/Shock (5% each)
• DK = Poison/Flame (5% each)
• Warden = Bleed/Frost (10% each)
• NB = Diseased/Magic (Focus on negative "dark" debuffs)
• Templar = Physical/Magic (Focus on positive "holy" buffs)
• Necro = Flame/Frost/Shock/Poison/Disease (Elementalist - 15% dot)

For the most part, the kits for the classes highlight these ideas pretty well.. but it would be fun if they took it 1 step further.

The DK's kit is in a pretty good place next patch. With the 5% passive damage to both damage types, resource return on poisoned/burning and extra damage on those status effects, DK's fit their theme very well.

Warden does this to a lesser extent for Frost with the higher 10% and Critical Damage done to Chilled enemies, but besides that, their kit has very little frost damage, magic damage doesn't seem to fit them at all and stam wardens have no real specialization.

100% Warden really needs to explore frost and bleeds more. the frost shalks suggestion would at the very least give us some reason to use deep fissure in pve in the coming patches even if nothing else is changed for it since it'd have more synergy with frostbite and would likely be less of a damage loss in that case.

we also just lack another actual damage skill in winter's embrace. Arctic Blast was so close to becoming what we have asked for, for a very long time. but zos decided to keep the healing and buff it which caused the tank warden problem until the nerf in blackwood instead of buffing our lacking 1GCD burst heals in green balance. blast exists now as a pseudo damage skill that is pretty solid per tick, but the problems being the severe lack of duration and massive cost along with unneeded utility in terms of pve. i think that this rework dubbed AB4.0, would fix some important issues on the class:


(to create this i just modified the client side html of eso skillbook.)

1. It adds a new, powerful and flavourful Frost Damage skill for magicka warden that can apply chilled and benefit from sets such as frostbite. This would be good in both pve and pvp for regular magicka wardens and frost wardens.
2. it is similar in design to deep fissure, being another "frontal aoe burst" skill. this would help to further build magicka warden's identity in that direction, though would differ in being a line traveling aoe with a decent speed to it. helping diversify magicka warden's skills from other classes.
3. it gives the class a solid offensive stun of appropriate cost (it is, however, blockable.) while removing the obnoxious blast stun that many people have complained about from both directions as blast in it's current state is incredibly hard to combo with due to it's delayed and melee ranged nature, and annoying to play against since it doesn't require active imput from the player to stun the target(s). Magicka Wardens have always needed an offensive CC that keeps the enemy in place. over time we have lost several stuns that have done this and are now only left with arctic blast 3.0 and flame clench, both of which are bad for their own reasons.

Ohhh I really like your idea for AB 4.0 (Wasn't a fan of the previous itterations if I'm honest). I think having the aoe frost dot is a must to give them that Frozen Blizzard vibe that Sorc/DK's get with Shock/Wind/Burning, so it's nice to see that remain.

The frozen tornado traveling in a straight line for an on demand stun is a nice touch and lines up with the idea behind Scorch which also attacks in a straight line in front of you. As long as they have the same distance/aoe size (I belive it's 20x8) it would feel very natural to cast.

I'd like to touch on the automatic stun point. I feel like this is a flaw with the class that they've seemed to have done twice actually. The auto purge on Betty has always been a hot topic since its change, while it was a much needed buff to the skill, it's now become a problem for Warden's due to the introduction of Plaguebreaker.

Core combat mechanics like Purging and Stunning should not be automatic and out of the control of the offender/defender, it causes more harm than good. Plaugebreaker really isn't a problem as long as you choose to purge away from your team. Warden's do not have this choice, in a 1v1 where the offender has very minimal negative effect stacking, Warden's will basically purge Plaguebreaker on cooldown.

So instead, why don't we go back to the original design? Still a free cost, purge on cast, except instead of the 1 negative effect it removes, increase the number to 2 or even 3 effects. You can already constantly recast Betty now to get free purges and a little tick of healing, so this isn't anything new, but it would allow you to be more reactive about purging, yet at the same time, more proficient since you can purge more at a time like how Necro/Templar perform. Maybe it's an unpopular opinion because why would you trade 25 seconds of 6 free auto purges, but I think it'd be more powerful for when you actually NEED to purge multiple effects. It adds a skill ceiling to the skill and combats any issues people had with it shutting down fighting them with the auto purge effect since you actually need to spend a GCD to purge things reactively.

Thanks! AB4.0 was designed to be used by the class since it has natural synergies with Deep Fissure, Winter's Revenge AND northern storm. I wanted to give the class an offensive stun again, but one that actually worked with our current design unlike how AB3.0 works. we also really just need another fun and useful damaging skill that can fit into our niche since our class identity keeps going down the toilet.

In terms of betty I was never a massive fan of the auto purge in the first place, since no-one asked for it, and i knew it'd just make people point at us as a scapegoat even more. Now with plaguebreak I'd like to see them remove the auto purge but just keep the simple 1 purge on cast for it like it originally had. We never needed or wanted it just like we didn't need AB3.0's current iteration. It doesn't do what we needed or wanted.

Styxius

MashmalloMan wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

This idea nerf NB.

how? it'd make surprise attack give crit when slotted, and it'd make mirage give max health while slotted and a cast of it would give major resolve? that sounds like a solid buff to me.

You don't understand PvP.
Your idea is a nightmare.
Also, health +3% is important in PvE DPS.

Styxius wrote: »

Honestly love the reply, but nightblades as stamina DPS in PvE actually use 2 shadow abilities in their highest parses at this time. Same for Magicka dps actually, 3 if you include surprise attack. They run Twisting path (does almost 9k dps on it's own single target) and our shade pal which both trigger that passive making assassination the better route for them. Moving Mirage to Shadow benefits tanks by providing them more passive stats that are more advantageous than that of the assassination skill line.

Surprise Attack gives damage dealers a way to get 100% uptime of Major Resolve as they typically only get 6 seconds of it from anything cast in the shadow skill line, 7.5s if you happen to have 1 heavy armor piece, but thats more likely to happen in only in a pvp environment.

I'm aware they use Path/Shade in pve, I have one, but they're both long duration skills that go well beyond the 6s proc duration. Casting Path every 12 seconds and Shade every 20 seconds, does not cover the 6 second duration on Major Resolve for a Damage Dealer at all. You're lucky to get even 50% uptime.

For Tanks, this is not neerly as large of an issue because they have up to 14.5 to 16.5 seconds of Major Resolve with 5 to 7 pieces of Heavy armor. They can actually manage to use the longer duration defensive skills, the skilline provides while still getting 100% uptime. However, they don't really need to because they easily cover this by using Dark Cloak which gives Minor Protection (8s duration) and the HP % based heal ticks which happens to be pretty good on the PTS (about 10% health per second).

So to make it simple.. Tanks would effectively trade 2% crit chance(effects healing) for 3% health and no other benefit since Blur is not a reliable tank source for Major Resolve... while Damage Dealers trade 3% HP for 2% crit chance, but vastly lower Major Resolve uptime because Shade/Path do not come even close to the short 6s proc duration.

For pvp, it's a different story, more of the Shadow skill line is spammed for damage dealers, but it's still a bit obtrusive to expect a NB to recast many of those longer duration skills frequently to keep one of the most important buffs in the game. Not having a buff up like this can leave you with 0 Armor with the amount of penetration and debuffs available now. At that point, I'd rather them get their own 20 second Major Resolve buff skill because that's simply more reliable and kills what is suppose to be the ease of access from the passive. What is the point of the passive, if it's not easy to keep up for both roles.. Major Resolve skills for classes are typically some of the best and most unique skills in the game.

Elo106 wrote: »

Major Expedition to DK Wings, Dragonfire Scales and Protective Plate

Great idea, always thought this was a missed opportunity. DK wings have fallen off after the changes to them.. Unfortunately ZOS doesn't believe in double downing on buffs within a class kit, Major Expedition is obtained via chains for DK so unless that is swapped for something else, I can't see it happening.

NB's use to have 2 sources of Major Expedition, via Cripple and Path, but they changed it to only Path. Templars had 2 sources for Major Protection, same scenario..

@Faulgor Excellent point about Stamplar. About 2-3 years ago when I was still leveling alts with the purpose of having at least 1 stamina and 1 magicka damage dealer of every class, I saw almost 0 reason to create a stamplar over a magplar beyond stamina/medium armor and the weapon used. Beyond being lazy to create another DK, I see very little difference between the 2.

Nothing within the class kit itself FEELS any different. They have basically the same major skills, but less. Their minor buff is also for Spell Damage. To add insult to injury, this patch, the 6% weapon damage and spell resistance was changed to 6% weapon/spell damage and armor. While I love the change and I'm happy for the hybridization, this took away the only thing that made stamplar unique against magplar.

They way I look at it, Magplar Jabs heals them while stamplars simply gives the most common buff in the game, major savagery. POTL gives Minor Breach, another extremely common debuff in the game practically given for free via Jab spam, while Purifying Light gives even more healing. Ritual/Rune started out as magicka skills and behave esentially the same between the 2 roles anyway. Living Dark scaling from Health for Stamplar is worse than scaling for Magicka for Magplar (although, with hybrid sets, this may change). They have no specific ultimate as many people prefer Crescent Sweep to Empowering Sweep for the burst.

You can really go on and on, but Stamplars are basically Magplars with half the utility and a higher focus on generic skills from weapons or fighters guild skills slotted for more passive damage. It's boring, there is nothing unique to them besides being a Medium armor stamina build that some people prefer, but at this point, you can use Medium armor on Magplar pretty easily to get the best of both worlds. So really, playing a Stamplar, you're just trading for worse skills, different armor sets like Vat 2H, Rally and a different colour for your resource bar. Thats simply not enough to make them stand out..

I would agree, however towards the pve argument Warden support running expansive cloak give this for the entire party. Making the gain from assassination surpass the loss from shadow. I love how engaged people are though in this discussion, there's lots of great ideas.

I like that artic blast idea a lot.

ESO_Nightingale

Styxius wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Styxius wrote: »

Class identity and homogenization have already lead to a lot of issues in the identity of classes and playstyles. In response, I thought it'd be fun to theorize as a community of what abilities would we like to see changed? Passives? Gear? Skills? Like for example;
Blur and Surprise attack switch skill lines, leaving mirage as a shadow ability as it gives a shadow-like effect.

This idea nerf NB.

how? it'd make surprise attack give crit when slotted, and it'd make mirage give max health while slotted and a cast of it would give major resolve? that sounds like a solid buff to me.

You don't understand PvP.
Your idea is a nightmare.
Also, health +3% is important in PvE DPS.

Styxius wrote: »

Honestly love the reply, but nightblades as stamina DPS in PvE actually use 2 shadow abilities in their highest parses at this time. Same for Magicka dps actually, 3 if you include surprise attack. They run Twisting path (does almost 9k dps on it's own single target) and our shade pal which both trigger that passive making assassination the better route for them. Moving Mirage to Shadow benefits tanks by providing them more passive stats that are more advantageous than that of the assassination skill line.

Surprise Attack gives damage dealers a way to get 100% uptime of Major Resolve as they typically only get 6 seconds of it from anything cast in the shadow skill line, 7.5s if you happen to have 1 heavy armor piece, but thats more likely to happen in only in a pvp environment.

I'm aware they use Path/Shade in pve, I have one, but they're both long duration skills that go well beyond the 6s proc duration. Casting Path every 12 seconds and Shade every 20 seconds, does not cover the 6 second duration on Major Resolve for a Damage Dealer at all. You're lucky to get even 50% uptime.

For Tanks, this is not neerly as large of an issue because they have up to 14.5 to 16.5 seconds of Major Resolve with 5 to 7 pieces of Heavy armor. They can actually manage to use the longer duration defensive skills, the skilline provides while still getting 100% uptime. However, they don't really need to because they easily cover this by using Dark Cloak which gives Minor Protection (8s duration) and the HP % based heal ticks which happens to be pretty good on the PTS (about 10% health per second).

So to make it simple.. Tanks would effectively trade 2% crit chance(effects healing) for 3% health and no other benefit since Blur is not a reliable tank source for Major Resolve... while Damage Dealers trade 3% HP for 2% crit chance, but vastly lower Major Resolve uptime because Shade/Path do not come even close to the short 6s proc duration.

For pvp, it's a different story, more of the Shadow skill line is spammed for damage dealers, but it's still a bit obtrusive to expect a NB to recast many of those longer duration skills frequently to keep one of the most important buffs in the game. Not having a buff up like this can leave you with 0 Armor with the amount of penetration and debuffs available now. At that point, I'd rather them get their own 20 second Major Resolve buff skill because that's simply more reliable and kills what is suppose to be the ease of access from the passive. What is the point of the passive, if it's not easy to keep up for both roles.. Major Resolve skills for classes are typically some of the best and most unique skills in the game.

Elo106 wrote: »

Major Expedition to DK Wings, Dragonfire Scales and Protective Plate

Great idea, always thought this was a missed opportunity. DK wings have fallen off after the changes to them.. Unfortunately ZOS doesn't believe in double downing on buffs within a class kit, Major Expedition is obtained via chains for DK so unless that is swapped for something else, I can't see it happening.

NB's use to have 2 sources of Major Expedition, via Cripple and Path, but they changed it to only Path. Templars had 2 sources for Major Protection, same scenario..

@Faulgor Excellent point about Stamplar. About 2-3 years ago when I was still leveling alts with the purpose of having at least 1 stamina and 1 magicka damage dealer of every class, I saw almost 0 reason to create a stamplar over a magplar beyond stamina/medium armor and the weapon used. Beyond being lazy to create another DK, I see very little difference between the 2.

Nothing within the class kit itself FEELS any different. They have basically the same major skills, but less. Their minor buff is also for Spell Damage. To add insult to injury, this patch, the 6% weapon damage and spell resistance was changed to 6% weapon/spell damage and armor. While I love the change and I'm happy for the hybridization, this took away the only thing that made stamplar unique against magplar.

They way I look at it, Magplar Jabs heals them while stamplars simply gives the most common buff in the game, major savagery. POTL gives Minor Breach, another extremely common debuff in the game practically given for free via Jab spam, while Purifying Light gives even more healing. Ritual/Rune started out as magicka skills and behave esentially the same between the 2 roles anyway. Living Dark scaling from Health for Stamplar is worse than scaling for Magicka for Magplar (although, with hybrid sets, this may change). They have no specific ultimate as many people prefer Crescent Sweep to Empowering Sweep for the burst.

You can really go on and on, but Stamplars are basically Magplars with half the utility and a higher focus on generic skills from weapons or fighters guild skills slotted for more passive damage. It's boring, there is nothing unique to them besides being a Medium armor stamina build that some people prefer, but at this point, you can use Medium armor on Magplar pretty easily to get the best of both worlds. So really, playing a Stamplar, you're just trading for worse skills, different armor sets like Vat 2H, Rally and a different colour for your resource bar. Thats simply not enough to make them stand out..

I would agree, however towards the pve argument Warden support running expansive cloak give this for the entire party. Making the gain from assassination surpass the loss from shadow. I love how engaged people are though in this discussion, there's lots of great ideas.

I like that artic blast idea a lot.

Thanks! I try to fix a lot of issues that exist with the class when i suggest things. I believe AB4.0 would really clear up our biggest issues if introduced alongside a healing buff to enchanted growth/living trellis.

Ratzkifal

I think Mundus Stone effects should be updated for more customization.
Remember how CP1.0 had "are you magicka or stamina?" at the core of every of its "decisions"? CP2.0 improved on that by making it "do you want direct or dot, single target or AOE damage?" Mundus stones still follow the same old logic of CP1.0 and I honestly think that's pretty boring.
It would be more interesting if we had one universal sustain mundus, one universal raw damage mundus, a few specialized damage mundus options, a raw stat mundus and a bunch of mundus stones with cool unique effects that tempt you into not simply choosing "bigger numbers" (even if those might be yet another nail in the coffin of performance).
I'm just thinking about how the Shadow mundus could let you turn invisible in Skyrim, which was pretty cool. Or the Ritual could raise this zombie army. They weren't all stat based, so why should they still be that way here when CP2.0 showed us that these things don't have to be like that?

ke.sardenb14_ESO

All I want for DK is:
1. The stonegiant to weaved more consistently
2. The stonegiant to do posion damage for the extra 5% from the passive, the extra chance to apply poison for damage and resources, and the extra 10% for support sets like Morag Tong.
3. The stagger debuff scaled in the same way that engulfing flames does to dissentivise tanks using it, and increase its utility for solo play as well.

DARKSTER1

Rework ideas (Abilities, Passives, Race, Weapon, Guilds, etc.) Bookmark
VAMPIRE: litteraly stop nerfing it.
eviscerate: make its morphs:one stamina spammable and one magicka spammable
buff the drain's damage as it was before rework
COMPLETELY REMOVE the "extra regular ability cost"
strike from the shadows: remove it and place something else that can give us more spell and weapon damage through other conditions. in PVE only nightblades can truly proc it