Destruction Staff Passives vs Melee Passives

OnGodiDoDis

We all know which passives are better. Let us discuss why this is not good for PvP combat.

Destruction staves offer plenty of buffs, but they lock their wielders in specific playstyles. For example, someone using an Inferno Staff will predominantly want to slot single-target skills, and AoE skills while using a Lightning Staff. I can only think of one class that could reap the full benefits of the single-target bonus damage from an Inferno staff: Nightblade. Every other class has some mix of AoEs and Single-target skills. Using any type of destruction staff will result in the loss of burst potential in all other classes. This is why 2-handed and dual-wield are more popular amongst all magicka and stamina builds. Their passives apply to all skills, single-target and AoE. They provide more penetration, crit damage/chance, spell/weapon damage, and they have a higher base spell/weapon damage. So all the bonus passives are active all the time without having to use specific skills, except for dual wield's stun bonuses.

For this reason, I use 2-handed on my magicka warden build. It buffs all of my skills, and since it has a higher base spell/weapon damage it buffs my healing as well. Destruction staves don't do any of that. Most of the passives are tied to destruction skills, which are not the best. This is a good thing, I believe that class skills should outperform Weapon and Guilds skills. The problem is that since Class skills are slowly becoming more competitive than the latter, we need the destruction passives to change in order to favor Class skills as well. The tree is outdated and needs a rework.

Perhaps make Penetrating Magic apply to all skills. Get rid of the AoE and single-target bonuses from destruction staves and make a passive that grants 8% bonus damage when using a destruction staff so that we can use any skills we want, including a Frost staff which currently has no damage bonus.

Proposition for Lightning Staff:
Using this staff now grants bonus damage to off-balance targets.
Proposition to Inferno Staff:
Using this staff now grants bonus damage to Burning targets.
Proposition to Frost Staff:
Using this staff now grants bonus damage to Crowd-controled targets, since Frost is the CC element.

This can all be implemented while adding the new passives that will grant 8% bonus damage and penetration while using any destruction staff.

Turtle_Bot

OnGodiDoDis wrote: »

We all know which passives are better. Let us discuss why this is not good for PvP combat.

Destruction staves offer plenty of buffs, but they lock their wielders in specific playstyles. For example, someone using an Inferno Staff will predominantly want to slot single-target skills, and AoE skills while using a Lightning Staff. I can only think of one class that could reap the full benefits of the single-target bonus damage from an Inferno staff: Nightblade. Every other class has some mix of AoEs and Single-target skills. Using any type of destruction staff will result in the loss of burst potential in all other classes. This is why 2-handed and dual-wield are more popular amongst all magicka and stamina builds. Their passives apply to all skills, single-target and AoE. They provide more penetration, crit damage/chance, spell/weapon damage, and they have a higher base spell/weapon damage. So all the bonus passives are active all the time without having to use specific skills, except for dual wield's stun bonuses.

For this reason, I use 2-handed on my magicka warden build. It buffs all of my skills, and since it has a higher base spell/weapon damage it buffs my healing as well. Destruction staves don't do any of that. Most of the passives are tied to destruction skills, which are not the best. This is a good thing, I believe that class skills should outperform Weapon and Guilds skills. The problem is that since Class skills are slowly becoming more competitive than the latter, we need the destruction passives to change in order to favor Class skills as well. The tree is outdated and needs a rework.

Perhaps make Penetrating Magic apply to all skills. Get rid of the AoE and single-target bonuses from destruction staves and make a passive that grants 8% bonus damage when using a destruction staff so that we can use any skills we want, including a Frost staff which currently has no damage bonus.

Proposition for Lightning Staff:
Using this staff now grants bonus damage to off-balance targets.
Proposition to Inferno Staff:
Using this staff now grants bonus damage to Burning targets.
Proposition to Frost Staff:
Using this staff now grants bonus damage to Crowd-controled targets, since Frost is the CC element.

This can all be implemented while adding the new passives that will grant 8% bonus damage and penetration while using any destruction staff.

interesting buffs to destro staves, my only worry is the lightning staff may become too strong with that combined with the CP that does the same buff and this is generally what most people are asking for with buffs to staves.

btw, there's a lot of interesting ideas put forward on this post.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/614820/destruction-staff-in-pvp-is-a-joke#latest

hopefully the devs look at buffing staves and light armor in U37, would be cool to see staff/light armor builds become viable in pvp again and remake that meta triangle that swapped between the 3 armor types and different weapons that used to naturally balance out the meta over the duration of a patch and kept it really fun and interesting to play.

Amottica

I doubt many players avoid using an AoE skill because they are using an inferno staff.

In fact, one AoE does more damage already to burning targets with an inferno staff equipped. It may be to OP if it were getting a double bonus to its damage because the target had the burning debuff.

OnGodiDoDis

Amottica wrote: »

I doubt many players avoid using an AoE skill because they are using an inferno staff.

In fact, one AoE does more damage already to burning targets with an inferno staff equipped. It may be to OP if it were getting a double bonus to its damage because the target had the burning debuff.

I never said that people won't use AoEs when running an inferno staff. On the contrary, I said that they do, and that's why they suffer a damage loss. Additionally, nobody uses Wall of Elements in PvP.

Amerises

The changes to Elemental Susceptibility seem to be a good step in the right direction. 30 second burning, concussed, and chilled? Added to some of the warden changes, and that’s kind of interesting. How do you all feel about that?

OnGodiDoDis

Amerises wrote: »

The changes to Elemental Susceptibility seem to be a good step in the right direction. 30 second burning, concussed, and chilled? Added to some of the warden changes, and that’s kind of interesting. How do you all feel about that?

It's a good change, but considering most builds, will there really be any room for anyone to slot Ele Sus? ZoS is asking us to change our builds yet again because they completely missed the mark with warden changes. Wielding an Ice Staff will affect every warden build. It's a nerf for overall damage, regardless of which angle you approach it from.

ESO_Nightingale

the frost staff one is useless against bosses. not a fan.

LeHarrt91

Yeah i would change them all to the status effect like inferno staff since both Off Balance and CC have cooldowns.
So chilled and concussed enemies take more damage.

DrSlaughtr

it would be drastically unbalanced to give an 8% damage increase to all types of damage just for slotting a destro staff. The reason why it is broken up the way it is so you can choose what your main damage focus will be. If most of your rotation is direct damage, inferno. If most of your rotation is setting up a big AOE burst, lightning.

Caribou77

A somewhat narrow but related consideration for destro staves: ranged magicka skills are dodged over 50% of the time in pvp.

Dual wield (whirling blades) and 2h (dizzy/executioner) are not.

This greatly impacts the skills’ effectiveness.

Turtle_Bot

ninjagank wrote: »

it would be drastically unbalanced to give an 8% damage increase to all types of damage just for slotting a destro staff. The reason why it is broken up the way it is so you can choose what your main damage focus will be. If most of your rotation is direct damage, inferno. If most of your rotation is setting up a big AOE burst, lightning.

The problem with this is that the niches that the staves got broken up into, aren't comparable to each other, especially when the passives and status effects are also taken into account.

Flame staff increases single target dps which is most spammables in the game, adds a decently strong dot (burning) that also procs other sets (like BSW).

Lightning staff increases AoE damage, which helps most DoTs (that all got nerfed hard) in pve, but does very little for most other abilities, especially with AoE spammables being much weaker than their single target counterparts due to "balance". It does provide minor vulnerability through concussed, but that debuff is super common so often might as well just not exist at all, we've only just recently (U35) received a set that procs off shock damage, but it's a proc set that has a mediocre proc at best so unlike BSW that increases everything through a raw damage buff, you get a mediocre proc that can't compete with the current meta sets.

Frost staff, this got pigeonholed into being a tank option that it just doesn't have any dps buffs in the passives.

Simply put, Flame staff is the best option (even for builds with lots of AoE) simply due to the fact that the main damage sources (the spammable and burst) are more often single target abilities and that the DoT provides significant unique and stacking passive damage. Lightning staff cannot compete because the main dps abilities don't get buffed by it, the debuff it inflicts is so common that you might as well get it from another source and run a better weapon and frost staff has been relegated to tank weapon with no dps passives.

8% to all damage seems pretty strong on paper but considering there are no raw damage passives in the staff line to compound that 8% buff like what exists for DW and 2h, an 8% buff to everything would be just fine. If we look at the % value that the +284 raw damage from the melee weapons provide, that equals a +21% damage buff that gets compounded by every other % buff (sorcery/butality) due to providing flat stats.

considering all the other passives;
- dual wield has essentially a max cap of +41% + 284 flat damage increase (assuming swords and no nirnhoned) and a 15% cost reduction.
- 2h has possible +10% as well as the +284 flat damage increase (again, swords and no nirn) and a 30% recovery buff, LA/HA become AoE and a 15% cost reduction and has 236 more base damage on the weapon than every other weapon has.
- staves give +10% pen to staff abilities only, +100% status chance (only really relevant for equipped poisons as other status are super easy to apply already) and 10% to either ST or AoE, not both and 3600 restore on kill.

Considering all the passives that dual wield and 2h get, a flat +10% to all staff skill damage wouldn't make staves stronger than dual wield and only get them somewhat closer to 2h (remember this buff doesn't affect healing like the raw stats from the melee weapons does).
If they want to keep the niche aspect for each staff, make the passive buff all staff ability damage by 10% (to roughly match the raw stats the melee weapons grant) and then all abilities who's damage type matches the staff's specific type gets buffed by 10% as well.
Not only does this split make more sense than the current niche of single/aoe/tank, but it would add to the class identity and build diversity of sorcs, dks and wardens who can now choose to focus on their actual thematic elements instead of seeing everyone currently use flame staff only for BiS dps regarding using staves, if they even go for a staff at all.

WrathOfInnos

8% to all damage types would not be too strong. That only results in about 6% dps from the passive since it is additive with other things, and would be about 2% dps gain over the current Inferno Staff. This could bring it in line with bow, but would not compete with daggers/greatsword. Consider that just the crit from daggers is 5% dps, not to mention the extra enchant/status effect procs and weapon/spell damage.

However, I would prefer destruction staves get buffed in a way that keeps them distinct. Merging inferno and lightning seems boring, especially when there are so many passives that could use a buff.

DrSlaughtr

You can say it isn't too strong until someone blows up an entire group with a lightning heavy attack. Right now it only does 100% of the heavy damage to others. Add another 8% to every target and pair it with the right CP and right heavy attack set and AOE, like Mail and Azureblight.

WrathOfInnos

ninjagank wrote: »

You can say it isn't too strong until someone blows up an entire group with a lightning heavy attack. Right now it only does 100% of the heavy damage to others. Add another 8% to every target and pair it with the right CP and right heavy attack set and AOE, like Mail and Azureblight.

I don't see heavy attack builds as a threat, there are better ways to use GCD's than holding LMB, especially after Empower was removed. Even in this scenario, the splash damage would not double dip, it would get the 8% boost exactly once, just as it should now (to every target except the main). I certainly wouldn't call this example justification for the state of destruction staves.

DrSlaughtr

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

ninjagank wrote: »

You can say it isn't too strong until someone blows up an entire group with a lightning heavy attack. Right now it only does 100% of the heavy damage to others. Add another 8% to every target and pair it with the right CP and right heavy attack set and AOE, like Mail and Azureblight.

I don't see heavy attack builds as a threat, there are better ways to use GCD's than holding LMB, especially after Empower was removed. Even in this scenario, the splash damage would not double dip, it would get the 8% boost exactly once, just as it should now (to every target except the main). I certainly wouldn't call this example justification for the state of destruction staves.

So you would eliminate all damage buffs to individual staves, essentially nerfing both inferno and lightning, for a flat 8% damage buff. I doubt that would be very popular. You would also take away frost staff being useful for tanks.

WrathOfInnos

ninjagank wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

ninjagank wrote: »

You can say it isn't too strong until someone blows up an entire group with a lightning heavy attack. Right now it only does 100% of the heavy damage to others. Add another 8% to every target and pair it with the right CP and right heavy attack set and AOE, like Mail and Azureblight.

I don't see heavy attack builds as a threat, there are better ways to use GCD's than holding LMB, especially after Empower was removed. Even in this scenario, the splash damage would not double dip, it would get the 8% boost exactly once, just as it should now (to every target except the main). I certainly wouldn't call this example justification for the state of destruction staves.

So you would eliminate all damage buffs to individual staves, essentially nerfing both inferno and lightning, for a flat 8% damage buff. I doubt that would be very popular. You would also take away frost staff being useful for tanks.

Nope, that is not what I would do at all. That is why I said this:

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

However, I would prefer destruction staves get buffed in a way that keeps them distinct. Merging inferno and lightning seems boring, especially when there are so many passives that could use a buff.

They should be buffed at least as much as the flat 8% idea would bring, but keep each staff unique with Ancient Knowledge buffing a certain damage type by 10%. Instead I think damage should be improved through updating Tri-Focus and Penetrating Magic. Both are incredibly situational and weak.

DrSlaughtr

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

ninjagank wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

ninjagank wrote: »

You can say it isn't too strong until someone blows up an entire group with a lightning heavy attack. Right now it only does 100% of the heavy damage to others. Add another 8% to every target and pair it with the right CP and right heavy attack set and AOE, like Mail and Azureblight.

I don't see heavy attack builds as a threat, there are better ways to use GCD's than holding LMB, especially after Empower was removed. Even in this scenario, the splash damage would not double dip, it would get the 8% boost exactly once, just as it should now (to every target except the main). I certainly wouldn't call this example justification for the state of destruction staves.

So you would eliminate all damage buffs to individual staves, essentially nerfing both inferno and lightning, for a flat 8% damage buff. I doubt that would be very popular. You would also take away frost staff being useful for tanks.

Nope, that is not what I would do at all. That is why I said this:

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

However, I would prefer destruction staves get buffed in a way that keeps them distinct. Merging inferno and lightning seems boring, especially when there are so many passives that could use a buff.

They should be buffed at least as much as the flat 8% idea would bring, but keep each staff unique with Ancient Knowledge buffing a certain damage type by 10%. Instead I think damage should be improved through updating Tri-Focus and Penetrating Magic. Both are incredibly situational and weak.

Ignoring 10% of spell resistance in the current meta is quite a lot of pen to ignore for free. They could change this so that it effects all damage with a staff, not just the destro skills, but that would probably have to be scaled back in that case.

100% up time on status effects is very effective. You will see chilled and brittle all over the place next update.

If you are building to a single target ultimate, 10% extra damage is strong. If you are building to an AOE ultimate, 10% extra damage is strong. The argument seems to be a desire to throw these out and have blanket damage so a player can use whatever sparkly stick they want rather than make the decision. I'm sure part of this is because the lightning heavy is much more preferred to inferno in many instances, but AOE damage is not currently meta in PVP.

Baconlad

I believe the 10% penetration only matters for staff abilities. So...if ur not using staff abilities then it's useless.

PS I hate staves in this game. So poorly implemented...like lightning being AoE and fire being single target? Terrible

DrSlaughtr

Baconlad wrote: »

I believe the 10% penetration only matters for staff abilities. So...if ur not using staff abilities then it's useless.

PS I hate staves in this game. So poorly implemented...like lightning being AoE and fire being single target? Terrible

This isn't unique to staves. Look at dual wield.

Slaughter
Increases damage with Dual Wield abilities by 20% against enemies with under 25% Health.

Controlled Fury
Reduces the Stamina cost of Dual Wield abilities by 15%.

the1andonlyskwex

Baconlad wrote: »

I believe the 10% penetration only matters for staff abilities. So...if ur not using staff abilities then it's useless.

Isn't it also only 10% of what's left after penetration and other resistance reductions like breach are applied?

WrathOfInnos

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Baconlad wrote: »

I believe the 10% penetration only matters for staff abilities. So...if ur not using staff abilities then it's useless.

Isn't it also only 10% of what's left after penetration and other resistance reductions like breach are applied?

Yes, that is the main issue, you don't get 10% of 18200 = 1820. Instead it is usually (18200-5948-2974-2108-6000)x10% = 117 penetration. Compare that to the DW or 2H penetration passives which give 3300.

The other problem is that it only applies to destruction skills. Nobody uses Force Pulse these days, since every class has a better spammable. This means the passive only helps Wall and Light/Heavy attacks, as well as the occasional destro ult. It's not a significant portion of damage, and you should build to reach the pen cap with other skills, which results in this passive having no effect.

The easy answer would be to make it a flat penetration value (like 3.3k) and have it apply to all skills. I don't love this idea though, since light armor magicka builds have a lot of penetration already. I would prefer to see this passive reworked into something more interesting, like a stacking spell damage buff or passive execute, maybe a buff/debuff related to the staff element, or a source of crit chance (needed to compete with daggers or bow).

Didgerion

On my magsorc I have:
2H Nirn Sword equipped on my back bar to buff up my Vigor
and I have
2H Sharpened Maul equipped on my front bar for max penetration and better base damage.

That should tell how bad destro and resto staff currently are.

Didgerion

Fire staff amplifying single target abilities by 10% doesn't make any sense.
And same goes for shock staff with 10% buff of AOE abilities. (My sorc is also backing me up on this one, she is really confused why she cannot run a shock staff (her class weapon of choice) and do no damage with it).

imo staff passives should be more in line with 2h weapons, something like this:
Fire staff could give penetration bonus same as the maul does.
Shock staff could have crit damage bonus same as the battle axe.
And Frost staff could have flat WD damage same as the long sword.

Also the base Weapon Damage should be the same as 2H weapons. Currently it doesn't make any sense why cripple all the skills only because you've equipped a staff.

Turtle_Bot

Didgerion wrote: »

Fire staff amplifying single target abilities by 10% doesn't make any sense.
And same goes for shock staff with 10% buff of AOE abilities. (My sorc is also backing me up on this one, she is really confused why she cannot run a shock staff (her class weapon of choice) and do no damage with it).

imo staff passives should be more in line with 2h weapons, something like this:
Fire staff could give penetration bonus same as the maul does.
Shock staff could have crit damage bonus same as the battle axe.
And Frost staff could have flat WD damage same as the long sword.

Also the base Weapon Damage should be the same as 2H weapons. Currently it doesn't make any sense why cripple all the skills only because you've equipped a staff.

Flame should be increased raw damage, shock for pen and frost for crit damage, since those are the closest to the current staff bonuses (reasoning being that flame adds a dot which is pure damage, shock inflicts vulnerability which is essentially pen and frost does brittle/chilled which buffs crit damage) and make them unique buffs like the 2h passives grant (this is part of the reason shock staves are so bad right now since minor vulnerability is so easily accessed by other means).

But yes, I agree with everything in principle here, bring staves in line with 2h, including the increased base damage of the weapon to go with the better and more versatile passives. Especially if they're going to leave the active skills (force pulse/reach) as weak as they currently are.