Completely killing accessibility builds - Maelstrom lightning staff heavy attack changes

malistorr

ZOS, you have nerfed heavy attack builds over the years to the point that they are barely viable to pass even normal level content now. For many years people were using a lightning staff build that included the Maelstrom lightning staff on the back back infused with a shock glyph and another lightning staff on the front bar (probably Undaunted Infiltrator, Undaunted Unweaver, or Noble Duelist Silks). They paired 2-sets like Undaunted Infiltrator and Noble Duelist silks to get 2 heavy attack buffs and would get a 3rd buff for those attacks from the Maelstrom staff as well (using Wall of Elements). These 3-buffs allowed those who cannot light attack weave (or don't want to) to have a viable DPS build that would allow them to at least complete any normal level content in the game. With the change to the Maelstrom lightning staff you're removing 1 of the huge buffs to damage for thousands of people with these builds and they will no longer be able to do enough damage to pass most content. This proposed change is just another incredibly foolish and shortsighted change by your teams who clearly don't understand the game and how many people play it. Please don't make this change go live as if you do, me and many others won't be able to play PVE successfully any longer. You've nerfed lightning staff heavy attack builds so much over time but this would completely kill those builds.

"Crushing Wall: This set now increases the damage of your Wall of Elements by 1250, rather than increasing the damage done with your Light and Heavy Attacks against enemies in your Wall of Elements by 1358."

jaws343

Huh?

The maelstrom staff changes are actually a fairly significant buff to solo heavy attack gameplay. As, with the changed staff, every single enemy, whether you light/heavy attack them or not takes additional damage per WoE tick. It nearly doubles the damage you staff does just by casting the skill.

OolongSnakeTea

But the big issuse with the maelstrom weapons, as a whole, is that they are not working at all if you are on the front bar, while the move it enhances is active on the back bar. It makes no sense.

jaws343

OolongSnakeTea wrote: »

But the big issuse with the maelstrom weapons, as a whole, is that they are not working at all if you are on the front bar, while the move it enhances is active on the back bar. It makes no sense.

Maelstrom staff weapons are active from the bar you cast WoE on. Meaning, you can have the skill and weapon back barred and get the benefits on both bars.

malistorr

Jaws: Maybe you just worded that incorrectly? Either that or I don't understand what you said. They're removing the buff to heavy attack by WOE/Maelstrom staff completely and they are buffing WOE itself. You said "It nearly doubles the damage you(r) staff does just by casting the skill"

I think you mean that damage done period is about double? But please explain because I don't get it.

They are completely removing the 1358 extra damage that the lightning staff heavy attack does to each enemy in your WOE. They are replacing it with 1250 extra damage by WOE itself. So now the Maelstrom staff does no extra damage to the heavy attacks of enemies in your WOE. But WOE does more damage. Even if I assume that the 1250 damage is every tick/second like it is for the WOE/Maelstrom buff to heavy attack damage, that is still a decrease in damage and not double damage as you stated. But since the description is lacking detail I don't even know if the 1250 damage is per second or over the whole life of the skill. If it's over the whole life of the skill this is even worse than I thought.

OolongSnakeTea

jaws343 wrote: »

OolongSnakeTea wrote: »

But the big issuse with the maelstrom weapons, as a whole, is that they are not working at all if you are on the front bar, while the move it enhances is active on the back bar. It makes no sense.

Maelstrom staff weapons are active from the bar you cast WoE on. Meaning, you can have the skill and weapon back barred and get the benefits on both bars.

its bugged currently on the PTS. ;3

acastanza_ESO

OolongSnakeTea wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

OolongSnakeTea wrote: »

But the big issuse with the maelstrom weapons, as a whole, is that they are not working at all if you are on the front bar, while the move it enhances is active on the back bar. It makes no sense.

Maelstrom staff weapons are active from the bar you cast WoE on. Meaning, you can have the skill and weapon back barred and get the benefits on both bars.

its bugged currently on the PTS. ;3

To my knowledge it is unclear if it is actually a bug or not. ZOS hasn't commented as far as I know. But right now, on PTS @jaws343, this isn't how they work, if you cast Wall on your back bar using the Maelstrom staff, and then swap to your front bar (as you would do right now on live), the damage buff from the Maelstrom staff no longer carries over to the front bar.
Since they haven't commented (unless I missed it) we have no idea if this is intentional, unintentional and won't be fixed before release because they crammed this change into the last patch notes, or like the Empower change to only affect fully charged heavy attacks, got patched last minute. We'll only find out if ZOS makes a comment (somewhere) or when this gets pushed to live next week.

jaws343

malistorr wrote: »

Jaws: Maybe you just worded that incorrectly? Either that or I don't understand what you said. They're removing the buff to heavy attack by WOE/Maelstrom staff completely and they are buffing WOE itself. You said "It nearly doubles the damage you(r) staff does just by casting the skill"

I think you mean that damage done period is about double? But please explain because I don't get it.

They are completely removing the 1358 extra damage that the lightning staff heavy attack does to each enemy in your WOE. They are replacing it with 1250 extra damage by WOE itself. So now the Maelstrom staff does no extra damage to the heavy attacks of enemies in your WOE. But WOE does more damage. Even if I assume that the 1250 damage is every tick/second like it is for the WOE/Maelstrom buff to heavy attack damage, that is still a decrease in damage and not double damage as you stated. But since the description is lacking detail I don't even know if the 1250 damage is per second or over the whole life of the skill. If it's over the whole life of the skill this is even worse than I thought.

So, front bar back bar potential bug aside, the set now procs the 1250 on every tick of WoE on every enemy within the effect. There are youtube vids that have tested.

So on live now, in order to get the extra damage, you have to hit with a light attack or a heavy attack. Meaning, some enemies are going to be in your WoE but not receive any extra damage from WoE. Every time you miss a light attack weave, you miss maelstrom damage, every time you have to buff yourself or cast a heal or dodge roll, you miss damage. With this change, your wall is constantly doing this damage no matter what you are doing.

Again, it is a huge solo and AOE buff to damage for the staff.

Necrotech_Master

jaws343 wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Jaws: Maybe you just worded that incorrectly? Either that or I don't understand what you said. They're removing the buff to heavy attack by WOE/Maelstrom staff completely and they are buffing WOE itself. You said "It nearly doubles the damage you(r) staff does just by casting the skill"

I think you mean that damage done period is about double? But please explain because I don't get it.

They are completely removing the 1358 extra damage that the lightning staff heavy attack does to each enemy in your WOE. They are replacing it with 1250 extra damage by WOE itself. So now the Maelstrom staff does no extra damage to the heavy attacks of enemies in your WOE. But WOE does more damage. Even if I assume that the 1250 damage is every tick/second like it is for the WOE/Maelstrom buff to heavy attack damage, that is still a decrease in damage and not double damage as you stated. But since the description is lacking detail I don't even know if the 1250 damage is per second or over the whole life of the skill. If it's over the whole life of the skill this is even worse than I thought.

So, front bar back bar potential bug aside, the set now procs the 1250 on every tick of WoE on every enemy within the effect. There are youtube vids that have tested.

So on live now, in order to get the extra damage, you have to hit with a light attack or a heavy attack. Meaning, some enemies are going to be in your WoE but not receive any extra damage from WoE. Every time you miss a light attack weave, you miss maelstrom damage, every time you have to buff yourself or cast a heal or dodge roll, you miss damage. With this change, your wall is constantly doing this damage no matter what you are doing.

Again, it is a huge solo and AOE buff to damage for the staff.

that is my thought train with the maelstrom staff change (aside from any bugs going on)

overall more dmg per tick and affecting every enemy in the aoe

YandereGirlfriend

I'm not a Heavy Attack build player but I think that the OP is probably correct that they are losing tons of damage from this change.

Heavy Attack builds, as I understand them, always relied upon pumping up the base value of your Heavy Attack via sets like Maelstrom Destro, Infalliable Aether, Noble Duelist, etc. and then further leveraging that via a %-based Empower increase. Then, you had the three (or four) discreet hits from the Lightning Heavy channel (all of which were pumped up via the worn sets and Empower) and the result was Heavy Attack builds that could do, whatever, 50k-60k, maybe a lot more, on live.

The current Maelstrom is a buff to cleave against random trash mobs but it still seems like a giant nerf to actual Heavy Attack PvE builds that really needed that extra base damage boost for their attacks.

Necrotech_Master

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I'm not a Heavy Attack build player but I think that the OP is probably correct that they are losing tons of damage from this change.

Heavy Attack builds, as I understand them, always relied upon pumping up the base value of your Heavy Attack via sets like Maelstrom Destro, Infalliable Aether, Noble Duelist, etc. and then further leveraging that via a %-based Empower increase. Then, you had the three (or four) discreet hits from the Lightning Heavy channel (all of which were pumped up via the worn sets and Empower) and the result was Heavy Attack builds that could do, whatever, 50k-60k, maybe a lot more, on live.

The current Maelstrom is a buff to cleave against random trash mobs but it still seems like a giant nerf to actual Heavy Attack PvE builds that really needed that extra base damage boost for their attacks.

lightning staff would get a huge benefit to maelstrom because it was applying the fixed dmg increase to every tick of dmg (so all 4 ticks of the lightning staff would get +1350 dmg before crit calculations)

but i think that was fixed at some point to only apply the dmg on the final hit, and now they are just removing that entirely by just buffing the dmg of wall of elements (if you were using a lightning staff before your heavy attack naturally did aoe dmg anyway, so you were in essence getting the bonus on all targets since the dmg was distributed)

i think that this way will still provide a good bonus but it wont force a heavy attack user to use a lightning staff, a maelstrom back bar will be just as effective for any front barred weapon

malistorr

I have no idea what you said Necro sorry. They're removing a buff from lightning staff heavy attacks that did apply on every tick (not just the last one). It was also buffed even further from stats, CP, etc., etc.

They are replacing it with a smaller buff to WOE which I can't even confirm is every second as it doesn't say so in the skill description and I don't have access to the PTS. The best case scenario is that this is a minor nerf but it's looking more like a pretty substantial nerf.

Also factor in off balance and concussion and the 70% buff to that damage and you needed your lightning staff heavy attacks to be as strong as possible. Like I said they've nerfed them again and again over the course of a few years and this IS yet another nerf to a way of playing that many people have no choice but to use.

remosito

the buff to empower should make up for that, no?

MindOfTheSwarm

The Crushing Wall change was one of the rare good things that came with this patch….

… that is if it gets fixed to carry over its bonus onto front bar. Otherwise it’s poop.

jaws343

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

The Crushing Wall change was one of the rare good things that came with this patch….

… that is if it gets fixed to carry over its bonus onto front bar. Otherwise it’s poop.

I plan on pairing it with Oakensoul to put together a heavy attack pet build. So even then, if it is intended that the back bar doesn't work, it will still thrive with Oaken.

But, I would also say that it is likely a bug, because there is no reason it wouldn't work the same as the maelstrom bow with the changes.

Lalothen

malistorr wrote: »

ZOS, you have nerfed heavy attack builds over the years to the point that they are barely viable to pass even normal level content now. For many years people were using a lightning staff build that included the Maelstrom lightning staff on the back back infused with a shock glyph and another lightning staff on the front bar (probably Undaunted Infiltrator, Undaunted Unweaver, or Noble Duelist Silks). They paired 2-sets like Undaunted Infiltrator and Noble Duelist silks to get 2 heavy attack buffs and would get a 3rd buff for those attacks from the Maelstrom staff as well (using Wall of Elements). These 3-buffs allowed those who cannot light attack weave (or don't want to) to have a viable DPS build that would allow them to at least complete any normal level content in the game. With the change to the Maelstrom lightning staff you're removing 1 of the huge buffs to damage for thousands of people with these builds and they will no longer be able to do enough damage to pass most content. This proposed change is just another incredibly foolish and shortsighted change by your teams who clearly don't understand the game and how many people play it. Please don't make this change go live as if you do, me and many others won't be able to play PVE successfully any longer. You've nerfed lightning staff heavy attack builds so much over time but this would completely kill those builds.

"Crushing Wall: This set now increases the damage of your Wall of Elements by 1250, rather than increasing the damage done with your Light and Heavy Attacks against enemies in your Wall of Elements by 1358."

Have you actually tested an HA build on the PTS without the Crushing Wall buff? I did just this morning - I've been testing HA builds since PTS week 1 - and my one-bar Oakensoul sorc is pulling close to 85K, 50% of that damage being from lightning HAs. One-bar HA builds - let alone two-bar - are still going to be easily powerful enough to complete all normal content including normal DLC dungeons & trials.

Fresh parse for posterity:

remosito wrote: »

the buff to empower should make up for that, no?

This actually depends, because we already know they're going to make it impact fully-charged HAs only, but we don't know if the % value is going to be appropriately increased to compensate. If it's the same 80% applying to fully-charged HAs only, then that will be a fairly significant nerf to lightning staff (and resto, lol) HA builds.

THEN it would be an appropriate time to talk about HA builds being nerfed, but frankly only in the context of getting Empower buffed to a reasonable % - which is 160% (I've run my tests & calculations several times now and that's the sweet spot).

prof_doom

I think IF they fix they all, Maelstrom staff (and the rest of them) are still alright damage.

The bigger issue is going to be getting empower.
Once it stops boosting light attacks, odds are it's going to stop being part of the standard support rotation.

You do have choices, but it's somewhat limiting

• Oakensoul - which is very restrictive
• Molten Armaments - only if you're a DK
• Empowering grasp - only if you're a necro, and I suspect trying to keep it running is going to be a net negative for your DPS
• Mage's guild passive - which means you're gonna have to run at least one mage's guild skill.
• Solar Barrage - Only if you're a templar