Conditional Damage Procs deserve more aggressive Scaling

Urzigurumash

Damage Procs which have a difficult condition should be more rewarding to use at high Weapon Damage values. Just compare the tooltips on Galerion's Revenge and Assassin's Will, for instance. I don't mean a buff at baseline Weapon Damage, but a steeper curve/line. I suggest this as a solution to the "tank meta" in PvP and to increase the diversity of efficient builds in all content.

Many have suggested that Healing should be separated from Weapon Damage. Many of us disagree and feel this is contrary to the basic design of the game. I believe this may provide a nice alternative to increase damage output while decreasing healing power.

chessalavakia_ESO

No

Assassin's Will does burst damage that exceeds some ultimate abilities so I wouldn't really recommend considering it a normal item even though it is quite similar to the item you compared.

Personally, I run tanky builds as my more active characters in Cyrodiil because of the sheer amount of damage and the amount of distance you have to travel to get back into combat makes playing the other characters unrewarding when you aren't with a group and aren't very good. On my tank, I can participate in fights for minutes gradually getting things done. On my DPS it's killed x, killed y, oops died. Now it's time to spend the next few minutes riding/waiting on the ground and repeat.

Increasing the damage isn't going to make me get off a tank build unless the damage gets so high that even a tank build can't survive.

Increasing scaling just drives up the gap between players.

You also ram into the issue that some of the more difficult procs are kind of annoying. For example, I'm goofing off with Belharza's Band at the moment. Thus far, it feels rather underpowered for the effort to proc it. However, you'd want to be careful with buffing it since you really don't want something that annoying to actually be meta.

YandereGirlfriend

No

I would prefer them to shave a few more % off of the Battle Spirit mitigation coefficient.

Amottica

No

What is funny is there was a thread about a week ago complaining that the assassin's will was too strong. Personally, it is fine and the fact that threads with such differing opinions are created so close to each other it seems to be the case.

Urzigurumash

Yes

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I would prefer them to shave a few more % off of the Battle Spirit mitigation coefficient.

I agree that should be done either way, but the other thing with Conditional Procs is that they lend much more diversity to the array of efficient sets, and post-Hyrbidization we don't see much diversity in set selection - PvP theorycrafying has had more satisfying eras. There's only so much you can do to differentiate which stats sets accomodate which classes or playstyles - they pretty much all can use the most efficient stats sets equally. Not so with Conditional Procs, many of them are extremely limited as to their effective playstyles.

Look at the meta in stats sets. Magma, Rallying, Wretched, Markyn. That's a tank meta right? So buff more Damage stat proc sets, like Way of Air or Seventh or even Hex Siphon. Well, those all buff Self-Healing too.

Damage Procs don't, and there's dozens of them.

Theorycrafting doesn't deserve to be forever sacrificed at the altar of skillfullness so we can all go spamming Whip in Rallying Cry for eternity. Scaled Procs offered a promise of an alternative to a homogenized tank meta and this promise has never been fully realized on account of their weak, unaggressive scaling.

Necrotech_Master

by "conditional" do you mean "chance to occur" procs?

the vast majority of procs are guaranteed to happen when dealing dmg now, there are only a few cases which are not guaranteed (stormfist, nerieneth, infernal guardian, maw of infernal, morkuldin, scavenging demise just for a few that come off top of my head)

Urzigurumash

Yes

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

by "conditional" do you mean "chance to occur" procs?

the vast majority of procs are guaranteed to happen when dealing dmg now, there are only a few cases which are not guaranteed (stormfist, nerieneth, infernal guardian, maw of infernal, morkuldin, scavenging demise just for a few that come off top of my head)

And those guaranteed proc sets can stay, but they should have weak scaling and be inefficient since so they're so easy to use.

By conditional I mean proc sets that make you actually do something to proc them, especially if it's something you might not otherwise do, or would only do if it happened to really work out with your normal playstyle. The more conditional, the more damage its scaling should offer. I mentioned Galerion's, look also at its friend Vicecannon.

Personally I'm a Doylemish devotee but this comes from a time when it was more easily procced off D Swing's knockback.

But yes the remaining percentile chance sets should offer more too, why should 999,999 out of 1 million PvPers choose Balorgh over Kra'agh? Balorgh also perpetuates a tank/kite meta in encouraging players to prance or turtle until 500 Ult and then enjoy overpowered Self-Healing. Kra'agh doesn't, all it does is make crab legs pop out of your shoulders. If they did real damage, people would wear it.

Urzigurumash

Yes

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

You also ram into the issue that some of the more difficult procs are kind of annoying. For example, I'm goofing off with Belharza's Band at the moment. Thus far, it feels rather underpowered for the effort to proc it. However, you'd want to be careful with buffing it since you really don't want something that annoying to actually be meta.

That's a great example. It especially deserves a buff since I assume it didn't get one after the recent scaling reduction for Light Attacks.

And no of course it shouldn't be buffed such that everybody is encouraged to run around just doing melee light attacks. But it should be buffed such that somebody doing melee light attacks would think about wearing it over Markyn.

As I said, Conditional Damage Procs should be buffed both to increase damage without increasing healing and to diversify building for specific playstyles.

Urzigurumash

Yes

Here's another example to illustrate my point about "Damage according to Conditionality to accentuate Playstyles": Azureblight, a favorite for busting through cross-healing for a few years. It was still good after Proc Scaling - until recently, because its Conditionality was increased: you no longer get stacks from Status Effects or Alchemical Poisons. So, its Conditionality has increased, if its Damage were accordingly increased, it would again be a competitive choice for DoT builds to cut through cross-healing. Right now is that what you want on a DoT Build? Or you better off equipping a stats set, enjoying more mitigation to tank, more sustain to kite, or more Weapon Damage to buff healing?

Necrotech_Master

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

by "conditional" do you mean "chance to occur" procs?

the vast majority of procs are guaranteed to happen when dealing dmg now, there are only a few cases which are not guaranteed (stormfist, nerieneth, infernal guardian, maw of infernal, morkuldin, scavenging demise just for a few that come off top of my head)

And those guaranteed proc sets can stay, but they should have weak scaling and be inefficient since so they're so easy to use.

By conditional I mean proc sets that make you actually do something to proc them, especially if it's something you might not otherwise do, or would only do if it happened to really work out with your normal playstyle. The more conditional, the more damage its scaling should offer. I mentioned Galerion's, look also at its friend Vicecannon.

Personally I'm a Doylemish devotee but this comes from a time when it was more easily procced off D Swing's knockback.

But yes the remaining percentile chance sets should offer more too, why should 999,999 out of 1 million PvPers choose Balorgh over Kra'agh? Balorgh also perpetuates a tank/kite meta in encouraging players to prance or turtle until 500 Ult and then enjoy overpowered Self-Healing. Kra'agh doesn't, all it does is make crab legs pop out of your shoulders. If they did real damage, people would wear it.

in that case, sure

ill use nerienth as an example, this set sounds good on paper with a 3 sec cooldown, but only 10% chance to proc on direct dmg only means the only class that actually gets the most effectiveness out of it is templar using jabs

other cases though, like stormfist, are already VERY good, even though its a chance to proc it still procs very easy because its *any* dmg (and this set is actually considered pretty high tier on dmg for pve)

scavenging demise is another one that is already pretty potent, at least in pvp, for burst dmg, i dont remember if its only a direct chance to proc, but that it also relies on doing critical poison dmg to proc, however this one already hits like a truck, and is commonly used for gank builds in pvp

so i think it would have to be on a case by case basis how much it actually scaled, because some of the ones that are still chance to proc, are still good enough to be top tier, while others that you mention like vicecannon, are borderline underpowered especially for how difficult they can be to proc

React

No

I personally do not want to see damaging proc sets buffed.

I do think they could improve the proc conditions and functionality of certain sets to make them more viable, but I wouldn't want to see the actual damage numbers increased. Some examples would be nunatak applying brittle on hit rather than after multiple ticks, archdruid functioning like scavenging maw so it's a pbaoe on the target you proc it on that won't miss unless they dodge it, selenes having a much faster animation, velidreth AOEs gaining radius to account for the location desync, etc.

Not that the meta is great now, but historically every time proc sets have been the most viable offensive options, it has been generally unenjoyable to play pvp.

Urzigurumash

Yes

React wrote: »

Not that the meta is great now, but historically every time proc sets have been the most viable offensive options, it has been generally unenjoyable to play pvp.

That's true, but most those times in history involved unscaled, relatively unconditional procs which could be slapped on any old offense to the same degree of effectiveness. I guess another way to rephrase my poll question could be:

Given our past experiences with proc metas, is it worth the risk to see if some more aggressively scaled procs could make PvP more enjoyable?

I guess we could look at times in history when unscaled procs were used here and there on certain builds but not universally, maybe we can look at the the era between the Sload's Meta and the Malacath Meta, excepting the DoT meta of Scalebreaker and the subsequent HoT Meta of Dragonhold - or the era between the Viper's Meta and the Sload's Meta. That doesn't leave many patches really, but they were some good ones per my memory. But procs were still unscaled then so not a great predictor either.

On the other hand I'll freely admit I happily sought refuge in No Procrodiil at the height of the recent DC/PB metas, which were both scaled and somewhat conditional. And like many I did enjoy the Major League No Procrodiil patch, but mostly out of novelty.

AndreNoir

First of all such procs have to be uncleanseable and only then we can talk about them at all

dmnqwk

Yes

Conditional Procs - abilities which are luck-based and not skill-based should definitely have a better scaling.

Assassin's Will is not a conditional proc, however. It is a combo spender (the 5 charges reflecting an artificial cooldown).
Combo Spenders are a form of Heavy hitter ability which do more damage but have a requirement to activate.
Assassin's Will should be treated as all other (faux) cooldown abilities:
Shalks for Warden
Blastbones for Necro
Bound Armaments for Sorcerer
and to an extent:
Molten Whip for DK
(purifying/of the) light for Templars.

ESO will always struggle with 'burst' situations because it is very rudimentary in how it designed abilities. Other big MMOs have short term buffs, different styles of rotations and defensive cooldowns that all contribute to a more dynamic form of one on one pvp. ESO classes get a single ability that does 50% more than a spammable and ultimates. The ultimates do fill the role of 'short term buffs' in many respects, but PVP in ESO will always suffer because they simply cannot create a system wherein the skills cause deaths moreso than the gearing/setup.