Is this just a bad joke?

Veg

Engulfing Flames (morph): This morph’s bonus damage taken now scales with a mixture of your Weapon and Spell Damage, rather than Spell Damage and Max Magicka. The cap is reached when your combined Weapon and Spell Damage is over 9000!

So an ability that cost magic, does fire damage and is based on max magic+spell damage will now be based on spell damage+weapon damage...

I don't get it...

I mean my 10% damage increase is now 6% which is fine I guess but what is going on here? Why would a magic ability that has literally nothing to do with stamina be affected by weapon damage? Did the devs forget that engulfing flames has a stamina morph?

was this all for an old miss translation joke? (it was 8000 not 9000).

Tannus15

it's so that a stamdk can still give 10% fire damage if they run engulfing on a stam build. you should have no issues on either stam or mag dk build hitting 9k spell + weapon damage.
my mag sorc was sitting on something like 11k total.

Veg

Tannus15 wrote: »

it's so that a stamdk can still give 10% fire damage if they run engulfing on a stam build. you should have no issues on either stam or mag dk build hitting 9k spell + weapon damage.
my mag sorc was sitting on something like 11k total.

ummm... why would a stam dk want to do fire damage? Groups buff? Shouldn't that be limited to mag DK's? My mag DK pvp build gets 6% with the new change. Now I don't use this ability (I use flames of oblivion instead) but this change actually looks like it's 100% made for an over 9000 joke.

Urzigurumash

Veg wrote: »

ummm... why would a stam dk want to do fire damage?

Because point for point Fire Damage is stronger than Poison Damage, on account of the abundance of Flame Damage Taken Debuffs and the paucity of Poison Damage Taken Debuffs. Right?

This used to be somewhat equaled out between MagDK and StamDK because of Minor Brutality, but now that all Flame skills will have dynamic scaling, I guess there's some chance StamDKs turn to the Flame Morphs for Breath and Claw outside of Morag Tong groups in PvE and Werewolf hunting in PvP. Although for that latter activity these skills were disappointingly weak against WWs even when they were everywhere.

Perhaps some Poison Encratis awaits us. The addition of Witch Knight's Defiance was quite welcome for us PvP StamDK. Anyhow we've had dynamically scaled Flames of Oblivion for a long time and Whip for the last patch.

Tannus15

no, it's really strong and it's a fine change.

i don't think you understand it.

IronWooshu

Tannus15 wrote: »

no, it's really strong and it's a fine change.

i don't think you understand it.

Please explain

Faulgor

"Weapon Damage" has been a misnomer ever since they made the change to have it affect all stamina skills, instead of, you know, your weapon skills.

Don't think too much about it.

Seraphayel

Tannus15 wrote: »

no, it's really strong and it's a fine change.

i don't think you understand it.

I think most people don’t fully grasp the changes to buffs and skill scaling yet. The official explanation was a bit so-so, I don’t blame them.

Vaoh

Faulgor wrote: »

"Weapon Damage" has been a misnomer ever since they made the change to have it affect all stamina skills, instead of, you know, your weapon skills.

Don't think too much about it.

Spell Damage and Weapon Damage are identical stats in U33... I think going back to Weapon Damage being for weapon abilities would make sense. Maybe even just make them a modifier for stuff like Light Attacks and Heavy Attacks.

Maybe that would help ZOS to create ways to spec into purely light or heavy attacks for all the people asking for that. Something like a Weapon Damage jewelry glyph being buffed by 100%. A new set granted huge amounts of only weapon damage. Etc.

RaddlemanNumber7

I think it's sad the way ZOS are trying to camouflage their muddled game changes using exclamation marks. The announcements about account-wide achievements are littered with exclamation marks, and what a dog's breakfast that turned out to be. Do they really think we are that gullible.

IxskullzxI

What build are you using? You should be hitting pretty close to 9k combined. I think on live I'm over 8. Try switching any spell damage glyphs to weapon also. There's no reason not to on dk anymore since you get the minor brutality for casting earthen heart abilities. Free 10% wrap damage.

sneakymitchell

You should be hiring for 9k at least you get both major sorcery and major brutality easily. Wearing some medium will help.

BronzeCaiman

I think this change was made so your DK tank will find it harder to pull the max value so DK DPS is more desirable, but I could be wrong.

Urzigurumash

IxskullzxI wrote: »

There's no reason not to on dk anymore since you get the minor brutality for casting earthen heart abilities.

Maybe I'm missing something, but any DK using Spell Damage enchants or the Apprentice should switch to Weapon Damage enchants or the Warrior, and vice-versa for Templar. Right?

TPishek

Most sources of spell damage and weapon damage are hybridized now, so really you just have to hit around 4500. You can pretty easily shoot over that with a berserker glyph and major buffs you'd have built in. Here's what I had doing a test parse earlier.

Tannus15

Urzigurumash wrote: »

IxskullzxI wrote: »

There's no reason not to on dk anymore since you get the minor brutality for casting earthen heart abilities.

Maybe I'm missing something, but any DK using Spell Damage enchants or the Apprentice should switch to Weapon Damage enchants or the Warrior, and vice-versa for Templar. Right?

depends. i mean, this is kinda true and clever, however if you are relying on spell power pots for buffs then you can't get major brutality and major prophecy and magicka in 1 pot.

of course, dk can run FOO and molten weapons for that if they want...

Urzigurumash

Tannus15 wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

IxskullzxI wrote: »

There's no reason not to on dk anymore since you get the minor brutality for casting earthen heart abilities.

Maybe I'm missing something, but any DK using Spell Damage enchants or the Apprentice should switch to Weapon Damage enchants or the Warrior, and vice-versa for Templar. Right?

depends. i mean, this is kinda true and clever, however if you are relying on spell power pots for buffs then you can't get major brutality and major prophecy and magicka in 1 pot.

of course, dk can run FOO and molten weapons for that if they want...

Ah right, so neither Alchemy Reagents nor Alliance Pots are hybridized?

Yeah getting Savagery on Cauterize was excellent for PvP StamDK. The buff to Lotus Flower for Warden looks really nice too.

MashmalloMan

Vaoh wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

"Weapon Damage" has been a misnomer ever since they made the change to have it affect all stamina skills, instead of, you know, your weapon skills.

Don't think too much about it.

Spell Damage and Weapon Damage are identical stats in U33... I think going back to Weapon Damage being for weapon abilities would make sense. Maybe even just make them a modifier for stuff like Light Attacks and Heavy Attacks.

Maybe that would help ZOS to create ways to spec into purely light or heavy attacks for all the people asking for that. Something like a Weapon Damage jewelry glyph being buffed by 100%. A new set granted huge amounts of only weapon damage. Etc.

They already told us where things are heading, I doubt they're going to create a new stat JUST for weapons when the entire objective is to simplify things so we just choose what's fun or more fitting for a build instead of being forced to use only stamina or only magicka. Your idea would be only class skills or only weapon skills and history tells us people do not like using only weapon skills. Just look at how crappy people think Redguard is..

Plus, that is what weapon damage use to be when the game launched and it sucked, over time stamina builds became a thing, then we asked for more class morphs until we get to today where every skill is usable. They're not going to go the opposite direction and further segment things.

Weapon damage and spell damage will just be damage.
Weapon crit and spell crit will just be crit.

MashmalloMan

There is only a few sources in the game that don't give both now, so in theory, you really only need around 5k damage on your main focus to reach 10% on Engulfing Flames which is incredibly easy to hit.

Each character has 1k base, a weapon is 1.3k-1.5k golden.. without Nirn. Add in Major Brutality/Sorcery and you're already at 3k without any investment.

3 Jewelry Enchants and an Infused Damage Enchant is another 1.1k. Now you're at 4.5k with the bare minimum 20% from Major Brutality or/and Sorcery.

You still have race, gear, mundus, CP and group buffs.. most people have 6-9k damage at end game which combined is 12-18k. This post is really misguided, if anything the requirement should actually be raised slightly as I fear a tank will be able to use this depending on what group sets are active.

To be clear, they don't want tanks using Engulfing Flames which is why the requirement for Spell Damage/Mag Magicka was originally introduced, they're sticking to that idea with Weapon Damage/Spell Damage.

Faulgor

Vaoh wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

"Weapon Damage" has been a misnomer ever since they made the change to have it affect all stamina skills, instead of, you know, your weapon skills.

Don't think too much about it.

Spell Damage and Weapon Damage are identical stats in U33... I think going back to Weapon Damage being for weapon abilities would make sense. Maybe even just make them a modifier for stuff like Light Attacks and Heavy Attacks.

Maybe that would help ZOS to create ways to spec into purely light or heavy attacks for all the people asking for that. Something like a Weapon Damage jewelry glyph being buffed by 100%. A new set granted huge amounts of only weapon damage. Etc.

I could see that make a lot of sense, even though at the moment it looks more like ZOS wants to combine both stats.

Having to build for ability or light/heavy attack damage seems like a somewhat elegant approach to address the constant misgivings people have with "animation canceling", by giving them a low APM path to combat through the basic attacks, whereas players competent and satisfied with the current system can just continue as they are, albeit perhaps with lower light/heavy attack damage. Weaving would still be better than not, although not-quite-perfect rotations would become more forgiving.

Yeah, I dig it. Which means it's not going to happen.

MentalxHammer

Zenimax mentioned in the U33 preview that in the future they plan on merging sd/wd, spell/weapon crit into one stat similar to offensive penetration being merged. This is just a precursor to that.

I have no problem with this change as it will make the learning curve for new and first time MMO players less steep. Which if we’re being honest is what the genre needs.

GetAgrippa

They need to make both dk and templar passives give minor sorcery and brutality or else, as others have said, you'll have "magdks" with weapon damage enchants and "stamplars" with spell damage enchants. That makes no sense and it just shows how ill-thought these ideas are. Furthermore, I use pots for spell damage on my magdk and if those don't give both sorcery and brutality then I'll have to go back to using a skill for major brutality, to go with the weapon enchants.... ON MY MAGDK. I appreciate Zos trying to make hybridization viable but I don't want to be FORCED into it.