I really hate the current PvE meta / Give mages back the destrostaff

Parasaurolophus

I consider myself an end gamer. Despite this, I'm far from being a player who looks exclusively at the numerous numbers on my screen. For me, impressions and sensations are no less important.
Don't misunderstand. I support hybridization. Although this has brought some confusion to the classic roles, there are still more advantages. It still matters what resource you use. The rest is a balance issue. And this is where the problems start...
It annoys me wildly that I am literally forced to use dw / 2h on my magical characters, completely abandoning the staves. Some even use bows. And in my opinion this is not correct. Yes, good, hybridization is good because it made us freer. But for a year the staves have become like bows - not an acute weapon.
Please ZoS balance this. Return the staves to the mages.

Dr_Con

You could run double inferno instead and swap out stampede for unstable wall depending on your set-up... There is utility in having long range sometimes, being on the butt of a mob and dealing max possible dps or having the safety of being 14-28 meters away is a fair tradeoff. I don't think that the people using cloth armor with pointy weapons should be punished, it is high risk high reward.

Destyran

VMA staffs are still BiS for 4 man content same as 6-7 light

Artim_X

My damage went up once they fixed the maelstrom staff bug. Although I'm not out here trying to mid max to the point of using stamina weapons.

Klingenlied

Destyran wrote: »

VMA staffs are still BiS for 4 man content same as 6-7 light

Disagreed. With AE major and minor breach and additional penetration from the passives, Warden goes medium now. And for a lot of the recent content, I'd advice going medium no matter the class as long as you know what you are doing. More speed just lets you run through a lot of the new content way faster - and thus safer! And that's pretty important for trifecta. Oh and on maelstrom staff: doesn't matter. If you want to cleave through content faster, you slot direct damage AE now or go for high damage cleave spamable options.

Personally, I do enjoy staff frontbar and bow backbar right now the most. Might seem weird, but works incredibly well with fluid, uninterrupted rotations allowing for highly efficient and safe gameplay.

Anyway, this is the perspective from someone who runs and enjoys trifecta dungeons on a regular base in varying teams.

In terms of dps and melee vs range, after you mastered your rotation, uptime will be the deciding factor on your real dps in content. If you manage even a slightly better uptime with staff, you likely will out-perform people going for melee, especially with positions being out of sync at times. That said, I don't want to imply that we are at a perfect balance right now. However, I don't mind dw outperforming ranged options, even by a more significant amount. Do mind however dw outperforming 2hand - because those 2 should be relatively close. On how much better melee vs ranged options should be .. this is difficult. In PvP the difference should be negligable, in PvE slightly more pronounced. Thus - difficult ^^

PrincessOfThieves

I don't like hybridization. ESO always had issues with class diversity, but before the hybrid patch, we at least had 2 versions of each class, magicka and stamina. Now it's all the same, with daggers, stampedes and what have you. Even the same sets for magicka and stamina.

ixthUA

I once tried to solo craglorn with medium armor and melee weapons, failed, then soloed in light armor and frost staff. DPS is lower, but overall i am stronger this way.

GlassHalfFull

ixthUA wrote: »

I once tried to solo craglorn with medium armor and melee weapons, failed, then soloed in light armor and frost staff. DPS is lower, but overall i am stronger this way.

Did the light armor work better for you because your crit was increased? I have been soloing dungeons and noticed 7 light made a nice difference in my DPS.

Soarora

You're not forced to use dw/2h, not unless you're scorepushing or doing a trial trifecta (that is probably not something like AS lol). Even then, there's support dps (brittleden and ec cro) that use staves. I use staves fine (dw/inferno, ice/inferno, ice/ice), though I won't pretend dw doesn't do more damage than a destro... assuming you're in melee range anyway.

Raammzzaa

I'm not really sure who is forcing you to not run a destro staff. Perhaps your only focus is hitting those sweet >120k parses then I guess you might be limited. I've been running a vMA inferno backbar in raids, and no one has mentioned it. The toon that I use for arena leaderboards still uses dual inferno staffs. I didn't know it wasn't allowed.

Parasaurolophus

Raammzzaa wrote: »

I'm not really sure who is forcing you to not run a destro staff. Perhaps your only focus is hitting those sweet >120k parses then I guess you might be limited. I've been running a vMA inferno backbar in raids, and no one has mentioned it. The toon that I use for arena leaderboards still uses dual inferno staffs. I didn't know it wasn't allowed.

Now I'm doing a GS with my raid and I see how the destro staff is significantly inferior in damage to the dual weapon. Naturally, for such tasks, I must be as efficient as possible

Ksariyu

In my casual opinion, the reason for this boils down to the game's mechanics, both for the player and enemies, not clearly distinguishing the pros and cons of a melee vs. ranged playstyle. With the ever-present stack-on-their-butt style of encounter design, it's rather safe to play melee range and simply stand still behind bosses and parse. The amount of movement you avoid by going ranged is not nearly enough to compensate for the reduced damage their skills deal. In most cases (Obviously a few exceptions), the amount of mechanics you have to dodge is the same whether your ranged or melee, so if melee just statistically does more damage, then there's no reason to not use it.

This also is fed by the fact that the game doesn't really distinguish between burst and sustained DPS either. In theory, if you wanted to play melee and be a sustained damage dealer, you'd expect to have to wear medium and likely even some heavy armor to keep yourself alive. If you want to wear lighter armor with better damage stats, you should lose enough survivability that you're forced to adopt a more bursty playstyle, pulling out of the fight somewhat frequently to avoid taking prolonged damage. That's just not the case in-game though, where you can run 7 light pieces with a greatsword and still parse like it's a target dummy.

Remathilis

It's funny that two years ago, stamina was considered inferior and you could get kicked from vet trials for running stamina DPS. Now everyone is running stamina weapons and medium armor on mag DPS.

peacenote

Soarora wrote: »

You're not forced to use dw/2h, not unless you're scorepushing or doing a trial trifecta (that is probably not something like AS lol). Even then, there's support dps (brittleden and ec cro) that use staves. I use staves fine (dw/inferno, ice/inferno, ice/ice), though I won't pretend dw doesn't do more damage than a destro... assuming you're in melee range anyway.

Yea, no one is forced to do anything, but part of the reason I have made so many characters over the years is that it was fun for me to have so many setups and I could explore different weapons. I would have the "best" set up for mag and stam and that would look different.

It is kind of lame that working towards the "best" means working towards the same gear for the bulk of my characters now. I would rather the complete opposite actually. An optimal class/playstyle for all the weapons so I could have one of each. The variety of pre-hybridization gave me more to do in game, personally.

I remember back when front bar swords were BIS for templar healers and it was so very annoying. I rejoiced when it was changed and am bummed that this type of play is back. At least with the constant change we will probably get our staves back, eventually.

Drammanoth

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Dojohoda wrote: »

Onions?

I think they meant ogres orcs. Jk

Eeeeee ooooooh! Eeeeee ooooooh!

Oh, wait, he could control that. It's the Puss in Boots who could not when they switched.

A brilliant reference @spartaxoxo

Raammzzaa

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Raammzzaa wrote: »

I'm not really sure who is forcing you to not run a destro staff. Perhaps your only focus is hitting those sweet >120k parses then I guess you might be limited. I've been running a vMA inferno backbar in raids, and no one has mentioned it. The toon that I use for arena leaderboards still uses dual inferno staffs. I didn't know it wasn't allowed.

Now I'm doing a GS with my raid and I see how the destro staff is significantly inferior in damage to the dual weapon. Naturally, for such tasks, I must be as efficient as possible

Ok, gotcha. I understand, and I agree with you now. From your original post it wasn't clear to me that what content you were doing. Nor that you were disappointed that for a Godslayer prog, any trial perfecta really, that you can't really run a destro staff now since it is not meta and DW/2H currently is.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

asalemi

Simple solution. I simply don’t listen to these “experts”. I use a destro front and back. So u lose a few thousand dps. Big deal.
My idea of a sorcerer in general terms is always a staff IMO. not a great sword and daggers. So don’t worry the Target Dummy won’t tell anyone or hit back

Everest_Lionheart

Artim_X wrote: »

My damage went up once they fixed the maelstrom staff bug. Although I'm not out here trying to mid max to the point of using stamina weapons.

I actually switched over to a master staff backbar and lean hard Into the 20 second dots like what you get with flame reach, which will proc your enchant as well for 20 seconds. Combo it with trap, degen, and a couple other 20 second class dots and you can lean hard into your spamabale. The end result is better single target damage and because they nerfed the hell out of aoe and dot damage you may as well lean into your hardest hitting skills.

For what it’s worth in content mag users can all run force pulse and get their missing cleave back against trash mobs that way. Build diversity and complex rotations are no longer needed to hit high single target DPS. Embrace the mediocrity!

Hapexamendios

Don't care about meta. I'm still using staves on both bars.

XxSuPeRNoVaXx

Im 100% with you Parasaurolophus.
It is horrible to see all mag players with daggers and greatswords.

Play like you want!!! But if you wanna do dmg YOU HAVE TO USE daggers or/and greatswords.

Sry but this is way too much pressure in one direction!!!!!!!

Everest_Lionheart

XxSuPeRNoVaXx wrote: »

Im 100% with you Parasaurolophus.
It is horrible to see all mag players with daggers and greatswords.

Play like you want!!! But if you wanna do dmg YOU HAVE TO USE daggers or/and greatswords.

Sry but this is way too much pressure in one direction!!!!!!!

For what it’s worth lots of players parse with daggers and great swords and end up switching to 1 or 2 staves depending on content. I have used the combination of dagger front and staff backbar and also staff front and great sword back. I have also use dual staff again depending on content and role. Like vCR portal I’m running double staff on blade and only leaving the middle of the room for elevator or to run an orb. Melee and greatsword make no sense. But if I’m ZenDK I am full melee and greatsword.

Iselin

Staves were caught up in the overall DOT nerf to the point that it's only worth running wall and morphs with a Maelstrom staff. They should be creating incentives to use Destro. Using DW or 2HD instead of staves for magicka builds was the meta even before U35.

malistorr

People are overlooking certain play styles or just not willing to consider them at all. Try using:

1. Oakensoul (empower = 80% HA buff)
2. Charged lightning staff with shock glyph + using Wall of Elements = concussion + off-balance = 70% HA buff (or at least used to be, assuming it's still the case)
3. Noble Duelist's Silks = big HA damage
4. Sergeant's Mail = big HA damage

Charge in on a mag sorc using Critical Surge and Boundless Storm and lay down Elemental Blockade. Then just heavy attack away and watch things melt. I ran vet Vateshran and got in the top 15 on the leaderboard without even trying using this build. I see ticks of my HA doing 35k+ damage at times. This is for PVE of course. I've been using a build like this for my whole time playing ESO over years. I don't use staff in PVP since it does significantly less damage.

Iselin

malistorr wrote: »

People are overlooking certain play styles or just not willing to consider them at all. Try using:

1. Oakensoul (empower = 80% HA buff)
2. Charged lightning staff with shock glyph + using Wall of Elements = concussion + off-balance = 70% HA buff (or at least used to be, assuming it's still the case)
3. Noble Duelist's Silks = big HA damage
4. Sergeant's Mail = big HA damage

Charge in on a mag sorc using Critical Surge and Boundless Storm and lay down Elemental Blockade. Then just heavy attack away and watch things melt. I ran vet Vateshran and got in the top 15 on the leaderboard without even trying using this build. I see ticks of my HA doing 35k+ damage at times. This is for PVE of course. I've been using a build like this for my whole time playing ESO over years. I don't use staff in PVP since it does significantly less damage.

I just tried that for fun since I have a ton of spare transmute orbs so making the two sets was no sweat. It's better than I thought especially since I already play at melee range for my Hurricane (which I use instead of Boundless Storm even on my mag sorc) so the uptime on Noble Duelist was 90% +.

I was getting some 50K+ crit ticks and was consistently doing 65-75% of the damage in a Hallowed Graves run with everyone at 1500CP+ It was ridiculous and a fun change of pace. I think I'll keep it for a while

haelgaan

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

For what it’s worth lots of players parse with daggers and great swords and end up switching to 1 or 2 staves depending on content.

this, 100%. daggers/2H is just to try for a max on the dummy parse. what you use in real content depends on the fight.

the more you understand your build, the more you can own it and not just copy it.

XxSuPeRNoVaXx wrote: »

But if you wanna do dmg YOU HAVE TO USE daggers or/and greatswords.

the emphasis added is yours only. no one is saying this. staves v daggers is rather negligible in trial content, and staves will out-parse daggers if you stay alive more .

Quethrosar

so what i am noticing is due to mechanics, daggers and swords suck for a lot of fights. all those fights you need to move away from the boss due to aoe or something, or boss flying around. You will miss alot of melee damage on those, but staff is still weaving just fine.

i am also finding the black rose prison staff and it's corresponding skill is best for AOE. wall and ma staff max at 13k crits, but i can get 20k+ with black rose staff.

Kahnak

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

I don't like hybridization. ESO always had issues with class diversity, but before the hybrid patch, we at least had 2 versions of each class, magicka and stamina. Now it's all the same, with daggers, stampedes and what have you. Even the same sets for magicka and stamina.

Klingenlied wrote: »

Destyran wrote: »

VMA staffs are still BiS for 4 man content same as 6-7 light

Disagreed. With AE major and minor breach and additional penetration from the passives, Warden goes medium now. And for a lot of the recent content, I'd advice going medium no matter the class as long as you know what you are doing. More speed just lets you run through a lot of the new content way faster - and thus safer! And that's pretty important for trifecta. Oh and on maelstrom staff: doesn't matter. If you want to cleave through content faster, you slot direct damage AE now or go for high damage cleave spamable options.

Personally, I do enjoy staff frontbar and bow backbar right now the most. Might seem weird, but works incredibly well with fluid, uninterrupted rotations allowing for highly efficient and safe gameplay.

Anyway, this is the perspective from someone who runs and enjoys trifecta dungeons on a regular base in varying teams.

In terms of dps and melee vs range, after you mastered your rotation, uptime will be the deciding factor on your real dps in content. If you manage even a slightly better uptime with staff, you likely will out-perform people going for melee, especially with positions being out of sync at times. That said, I don't want to imply that we are at a perfect balance right now. However, I don't mind dw outperforming ranged options, even by a more significant amount. Do mind however dw outperforming 2hand - because those 2 should be relatively close. On how much better melee vs ranged options should be .. this is difficult. In PvP the difference should be negligable, in PvE slightly more pronounced. Thus - difficult ^^

"Disagreed. With AE major and minor breach and additional penetration from the passives, Warden goes medium now."

Maybe if you're in a fully optimized group, which most people aren't. If you are not, penetration is the best stat in the game.

"And for a lot of the recent content, I'd advice going medium no matter the class as long as you know what you are doing."

I'm just curious as to the size of the portion of the playerbase that you think 'knows what they are doing' or what that even means. I promise, that portion is much smaller than you think. Not to mention that builds drawing from one resource generally suffer from sustain issues. Not particularly helpful considering the OP's subject seems to be on behalf of Magicka players.

"More speed just lets you run through a lot of the new content way faster - and thus safer!"

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that moving faster makes you safer or that movement speed makes the content go quicker, especially considering there are a thousand other factors that aren't being taken into account.

Kahnak

XxSuPeRNoVaXx wrote: »

Im 100% with you Parasaurolophus.
It is horrible to see all mag players with daggers and greatswords.

Play like you want!!! But if you wanna do dmg YOU HAVE TO USE daggers or/and greatswords.

Sry but this is way too much pressure in one direction!!!!!!!

"Play like you want!!! But if you wanna do dmg YOU HAVE TO USE daggers or/and greatswords."

No, you definitely don't. Statements like this are totally unhelpful to the conversation and lack any kind of nuance. Stop basing your opinions off of ESO content creators.

Kahnak

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I consider myself an end gamer. Despite this, I'm far from being a player who looks exclusively at the numerous numbers on my screen. For me, impressions and sensations are no less important.
Don't misunderstand. I support hybridization. Although this has brought some confusion to the classic roles, there are still more advantages. It still matters what resource you use. The rest is a balance issue. And this is where the problems start...
It annoys me wildly that I am literally forced to use dw / 2h on my magical characters, completely abandoning the staves. Some even use bows. And in my opinion this is not correct. Yes, good, hybridization is good because it made us freer. But for a year the staves have become like bows - not an acute weapon.
Please ZoS balance this. Return the staves to the mages.

2H and Daggers have ALWAYS done more damage, because melee generally have more mechanics to avoid and generally takes a little more skill to use well. If everyone could stand at max range and do the same amount of damage as people who are having to avoid more mechanics, no one would use melee weapons. In many situations, staves are still a better option and good players are not sacrificing that much DPS making the switch and doing more damage when ranged is more appropriate. If you aren't switching from one to the other when the situation calls for it, you're not doing it right. Not every fight is 100% melee and not every boss is going to stand there and take it like a dummy will.

Quethrosar

people who needlessly run through dungeons to a boss and drag along 30 mobs for aoe and a boss *** me off. someone always dies!