Would you like instant abilities for weapon spammables and/or their respective morphs (2H, DW, Bow)?

Armanie

Larcomar

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

God yes. Leaving aside the time delay is irritating, trying to use abilities with a cast time in cyro when it's laggy is just hopeless.

Zastrix

Well I mean, of course I would like to have faster stamina spammables, although I don't feel a need for them to be updated. I'm quite content at least in PvE. The only ONLY issue I have sometimes is when using Stampede -> Carve because sometimes either stampede doesn't fire at all and I just light attack or that carve doesn't fire after stampede so I have to use the awkward moving forward otherwise I can't cancel the animation.

aurelius_fx

maybe if we could all get a third morph update, removing cast time from the base ability would also need a decrease in damage of those abilities to balance it out

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

I generally dont like any thing with a cast time, Jabs, Hardcast Frags, Wrecking Blow, Snipe, Rapid Strikes, whatever. I think it is disruptive to your rotation in combat and ultimately only serves to increase the skill gap that they have claimed for years they are trying to shrink.

For anything with a channel time under 1 second, a really good player can just weave it like normal. Its an annoyance at best. For your average to bad player, they lose pace, fumble with the weave, mess up swaps, etc. This widens the DPS gap for really no good reason.

For things like spammables, I would be in support of removing all channel/cast times. Certainly, some things would probably need a small nerf for balance. Either that, or go the opposite direction. Make the channels longer than one second so you by design can't keep it in the 1 second GCD, but then a buff would be required for some.

These 0.8 second channels are a bad design. Full stop.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

For target-based abilities, any interruption causes a failure at the end of the cast.

0.0s Start casting Crystal Fragments
0.7s Interrupted (stunned, bashed, los break, etc)
1.0s Start casting Crystal Fragments
1.8s Crystal Fragments hits target for 3000

versus

0.0s Cast Crushing Shock and hits target for 2850
0.3s Target not in sight
0.5s Target not in sight
0.7s Target not in sight
1.0s Cast Crushing Shock and hits target for 2850

Good luck killing any pillar-hugging players with cast time abilities.

0.0s Start casting ability
0.7s Interrupted (los break)
1.0s Start casting ability
1.7s Interrupted (los break)
2.0s Start casting ability
2.7s Interrupted (los break)
3.0s Start casting ability
3.8s Ability finally lands but only because the enemy feels bad for you

Ksariyu

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

First off, can anyone explain why we have spammables in a game with a light and heavy attack system?

But yeah, I don't know why they would keep cast times on spammables anymore. None of them are impactful enough to justify a telegraph, and given how the devs have pushed the game to promote LA weaving, it's just illogical to punish a player's weapon choice with a needless penalty.

ESO_Nightingale

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

would be nice to have an instant bow spammable that worked with the kit and didn't feel bad to use.

Hescrow

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Hardcast Frags

You mean Crystal weapon as well?

If so it is the perfect name especially in PvP with 2h weapons haha

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

Hescrow wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Hardcast Frags

You mean Crystal weapon as well?

If so it is the perfect name especially in PvP with 2h weapons haha

I am mostly talking about Crystal Fragments. When I say hard cast, I mean casting with the full channel, not the instant cast version. Crystal Weapon is instant cast, so no real issue with weaving. My only issue with Crystal Weapon is that its basically Crushing weapon (psijic line), not exactly the same, but its pretty darn close. Crushing is better in PVP, Crystal is better if you have another source of major breach, but its a very small distinction.

Crystal Fragments however is bad design in my opinion. Historically, it was really only used on proc. You would run another spammable, and actually hard casting frags (where you channel it), was essentially a mistake or a sign of a noob. Now, people have starting using it as a spammable because I think the channel duration was lowered at some point (I blame RevelX for making a vid and pointing it out, dude was ridiculously good, Haha). It is I believe, a 0.8second channel.

So what does this mean, well now, you drop the traditional spammable and run this, or at least good players do. Nothing wrong in theory as it gives you a bar slot, so what's the problem?

Well, one you can't bar swap off the cast without losing pace. This alone is massively frustrating in a dynamic rotation. Two, the weave pace is altered. Both of these are a problem for a newer player. Lastly, the work around is to run a very static rotation so you can plan your bar swaps to not be after a frag, but then it effectively removes the mini game of casting your frags when they proc (which I think is historically very fun), because in a static rotation, you dont really do that. If you want to play dynamically, well, the power gap between a skilled and unskilled player is widened, unnecessarily in my opinion.

In PVE, If you removed the channel, made the base skill a standard spammable, and left the proc as cheaper but more powerful, you would do very little to the DPS ceiling, but I think you would significantly raise the floor. In PVP, it would at best give sorcs a much needed bar slot. Frags is dodgeable so its not the best spammable against another opponent with a brain. I think most people would still run something like crushing shock or crushing weapon, and mostly used proc'ed frags for their burst combos (which sorcs have been doing since launch).

Armanie

I made this poll to see if channeled spammables are actually popular, by the looks of it I'm not the only one who dislikes them. One drawback that wasn't mentioned is that you can't activate synergies while casting these skills, which can be super annoying when, for example, you're trying to "catch" Orbs.

Amottica

What are players willing to give up with these skills to get the instant action? It would likely be a reduction in damage since the reaction time is not available.

Armanie

Absolutely, instant cast + same damage as other spammables. I wonder if that would make Snipe too strong because of the Hawk Eye passive.

Arthtur

Well i dont have a problem with channeled abilities. Also there is set buffing those spammables so making all of them instant would just most likely kill it.

I would say that instead of making everything instant they should make already instant abilities better.
Also making those skills instant would most likely reduce their damage a lot... Which in my opinion is not worth it.

Of course they could make 1 of morphs instant but what if both morphs are popular? Yeah... It wont be nice.
And how u want use Rapid Strikes without channel time? I dont think its even possible...

ZOS said they will work on those in U35 and U36 so we will see soon what they will do.

xylena_lazarow

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

Cast times on melee abilities were still one of the worst changes ever made to this game. The U34 combat preview showed off a buff to Teleport Strike that completely misses the point. The ability is already plenty strong on paper, but the cast time makes it pretty much unplayable in PvP.

Freelancer_ESO

No, keep the cast time

Channeled abilities while harder to use at times have the benefit that they can feel more impactful because your character is actively putting effort in and they also have more counter play. Perhaps in some cases replacement might make sense but, I wouldn't do it universally.

If they are getting outdone by the instant abilities I'd argue the solution is to start scaling down the instant abilities rather than making more non-instant abilities instant.

Cheveyo

No, keep the cast time

I'll be entirely honest, the fact that spam is how you fight stuff in this game is one of the things that always ends up causing me to take a break from the game.

I just get tired of spamming abilities. I get tired of switching bars to buff, then switching back to spam.

I think the game could do with a lot less spam.

universal_wrath

Yes, same as destruction staff spammable

Cheveyo wrote: »

I'll be entirely honest, the fact that spam is how you fight stuff in this game is one of the things that always ends up causing me to take a break from the game.

I just get tired of spamming abilities. I get tired of switching bars to buff, then switching back to spam.

I think the game could do with a lot less spam.

You would probably need more than 5-6 actives skills and cooldowm applied on all these skills like other MMOs that have 20 skills with some of them over 3 secs cast time.