Please Implement Small Changes to Destruction Staff

Tannus15

bachpain wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

The problem with the Devs logic on this is EVERYONE is buttonholed into using dual wield front bar in order to do the most DPS because of this mechanism. We aren't using a single dual wield skill, we are only using them for the passives. It honestly stinks. Why are we arguing ranged vs melee when the barriers are being shredded in all other forms of identity of playstyle? Mag vs Stam, Ranged vs Melee, if we are getting hybridization at least let my caster use a staff and still do the same damage and not be nerfed because "ranged you know."

I'm pretty sure it's because they do most of their balancing from a PvP perspective where ranged is a huge benefit. While PvE we're all sitting in a stack on the bosses rear end and the benefits of being ranged are minimised.

the1andonlyskwex

GetAgrippa wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

This game is almost 10 years old lol

Not only that, but a gamewide rebalance of passives was supposedly in the works 3-4 years ago, and as far as I can tell nothing significant came from it.

ZOS talks about all of their grand rebalancing plans, but they don't have enough updates per year to make anything significant happen. They could make bigger changes in every patch, but then you get stuff like the Elsweyr DOT meta (that got reverted, and more, 3 months later). What they really need is a faster balance update cadence (e.g. monthly, like a lot of other games) so their small changes can accumulate faster over time, and they can make bigger changes without having to risk 3 months of bad press if things go wrong.

With respect to destruction staff specifically, I definitely think it needs changes, and fixing Penetrating Magic so it applies before other effects instead of after them would be a good start. I have mixed feelings on increasing the weapon/spell damage because I do find the ranged vs melee argument compelling in the abstract, but I also think that balance can be achieved in a way that doesn't also affect all of your non-weapon skills which aren't necessarily ranged just because your weapon is. For example, they could increase the weapon/spell damage and then reduce light/heavy attack and skill scaling to compensate.

Aces-High-82

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

Given the slow projectile travel speed one has to stay on top of his target anyway.
Thet ranged skill access argument falls apart pretty quickly as except snipe for a Bowblade ganker there ain't a single weapon skill in the destro/bow line that hasn't a better alternative via other skill lines (class, psijic etc).

ExistingRug61

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

@ZOS_Kevin
I understand and agree with the rationale here, but isn't this accounted for by the fact that ranged attacks, including light attacks, are already scaled to do lower damage than a melee attack given the same damage and stat values by having lower skill coefficients?
(I think ranged abilities are generally set to have coefficients of something like ~90% that of melee abilities?)
So even if they had the same damage values on the weapon the ranged attacks would still be less damage due to the lower coefficients.
Given this, why does there also need to be a lower weapon/spell damage value for staves and bows?

It seems like you are doubly penalising ranged attacks by both giving their weapons lower damage values but also lower damage coefficients.
This leads to several strange scenarios that don't really follow the rationale, ie:
- weapon agnostic melee abilities do less damage if you have staff/bow vs 2H/DW
- weapon agnostic ranged abilities do more damage if you have 2H/DW vs staff/bow
- healing abilities heal for more if you have 2H/DW vs staff/bow
(ignoring effects of passives that change from the various weapon lines)

Wouldn't it make more sense to have the damage penalty to ranged attacks only come from one source, ie: the damage skill coefficients, and make all the weapons that require two hands have the same damage values?
(it makes sense that 1H and Shield is lower as that gives extra armour instead of extra damage)

Obviously this would be a balance shift as it would simply give all staves and bows an extra 235 weap/spell damage, but it would somewhat simplify the system.

AndreNoir

Tannus15 wrote: »

bachpain wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

The problem with the Devs logic on this is EVERYONE is buttonholed into using dual wield front bar in order to do the most DPS because of this mechanism. We aren't using a single dual wield skill, we are only using them for the passives. It honestly stinks. Why are we arguing ranged vs melee when the barriers are being shredded in all other forms of identity of playstyle? Mag vs Stam, Ranged vs Melee, if we are getting hybridization at least let my caster use a staff and still do the same damage and not be nerfed because "ranged you know."

I'm pretty sure it's because they do most of their balancing from a PvP perspective where ranged is a huge benefit. While PvE we're all sitting in a stack on the bosses rear end and the benefits of being ranged are minimised.

I'm pretty sure it's because you have no clue about pvp at all

AdamLAD

Ranged attacks allow people to assess and react to an encounter. Completely true. However it allows opponents to do exactly the same ????????? There's travel time on ranged attacks and is more telegraphed. What's easier to dodge or block , A light attack from a flame staff or from a melee weapon ? What's easier to block or rolldoge suprise attack or crystal fragments. The thought process of it people being able to assess and react is true. But it applies to BOTH the caster and the opposition. There's a reason why everyone in PvP has dropped staves over the years and it's simply because melee weapons offer FAR more than destruction staffs

thesarahandcompany

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

Thanks, Kevin This was really insightful!

Urvoth

Tannus15 wrote: »

bachpain wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

The problem with the Devs logic on this is EVERYONE is buttonholed into using dual wield front bar in order to do the most DPS because of this mechanism. We aren't using a single dual wield skill, we are only using them for the passives. It honestly stinks. Why are we arguing ranged vs melee when the barriers are being shredded in all other forms of identity of playstyle? Mag vs Stam, Ranged vs Melee, if we are getting hybridization at least let my caster use a staff and still do the same damage and not be nerfed because "ranged you know."

I'm pretty sure it's because they do most of their balancing from a PvP perspective where ranged is a huge benefit. While PvE we're all sitting in a stack on the bosses rear end and the benefits of being ranged are minimised.

It's not quite the case, though. Ranged vs melee doesn't really exist in PvP outside of the stereotypical bow sniper. In fights between competent players, the fight will pretty much always end up in melee range unless both players are ranged sorcs or something. They already have the light attack damage of "ranged weapons" at 90% of the "melee weapons" default values so I don't get the point of kneecapping them further, especially since every other non-weapon skill can be casted at range regardless of what weapon is equipped. Right now most mag "ranged" builds are just running around with dual wield on the front bar since the passives are vastly superior to other options and the damage loss from missing a couple of light attacks while out of range is far less than the raw stat boost to a build's skills from the dw.

thesarahandcompany

Urvoth wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

bachpain wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

The problem with the Devs logic on this is EVERYONE is buttonholed into using dual wield front bar in order to do the most DPS because of this mechanism. We aren't using a single dual wield skill, we are only using them for the passives. It honestly stinks. Why are we arguing ranged vs melee when the barriers are being shredded in all other forms of identity of playstyle? Mag vs Stam, Ranged vs Melee, if we are getting hybridization at least let my caster use a staff and still do the same damage and not be nerfed because "ranged you know."

I'm pretty sure it's because they do most of their balancing from a PvP perspective where ranged is a huge benefit. While PvE we're all sitting in a stack on the bosses rear end and the benefits of being ranged are minimised.

It's not quite the case, though. Ranged vs melee doesn't really exist in PvP outside of the stereotypical bow sniper. In fights between competent players, the fight will pretty much always end up in melee range unless both players are ranged sorcs or something. They already have the light attack damage of "ranged weapons" at 90% of the "melee weapons" default values so I don't get the point of kneecapping them further, especially since every other non-weapon skill can be casted at range regardless of what weapon is equipped. Right now most mag "ranged" builds are just running around with dual wield on the front bar since the passives are vastly superior to other options and the damage loss from missing a couple of light attacks while out of range is far less than the raw stat boost to a build's skills from the dw.

Plus, the ever-increasing number of gap closers (mist form being the latest) and subsequent procs like agony make it much more valuable to play melee-ranged because the sets are both melee-ranged proc damage and dual wield boosts procs more.

Marto

ForumBully wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

I keep seeing these comments that, from a developer perspective, a bad gameplay experience for several months is fine. Everyone just hang in there while we take our time having a good look.

From the perspective of the devs, it's better to have an underwhelming gameplay mechanic for a while before proposing a better version... than to rush to make a different version without proper internal testing, and create something that's going to be exploited, abused, or confuse the hell out of players.

And the ESO playerbase has already proven to react extremely strongly to changes.

If ZOS takes their time, they'll complain the meta is stale. If ZOS rushes, they'll complain the changes weren't well thought out.

If ZOS willingly lets a poorly balanced change through, and fine tunes it at a later time, players will complain "Wow ZOS just released it overpowered on purpose then nerfed it to make money!!" or something ridiculous like that.

ForumBully

Marto wrote: »

ForumBully wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

I keep seeing these comments that, from a developer perspective, a bad gameplay experience for several months is fine. Everyone just hang in there while we take our time having a good look.

From the perspective of the devs, it's better to have an underwhelming gameplay mechanic for a while before proposing a better version... than to rush to make a different version without proper internal testing, and create something that's going to be exploited, abused, or confuse the hell out of players.

And the ESO playerbase has already proven to react extremely strongly to changes.

If ZOS takes their time, they'll complain the meta is stale. If ZOS rushes, they'll complain the changes weren't well thought out.

If ZOS willingly lets a poorly balanced change through, and fine tunes it at a later time, players will complain "Wow ZOS just released it overpowered on purpose then nerfed it to make money!!" or something ridiculous like that.

This assumes internal testing and an ability to identify problems and Ive seen no evidence of either. They routinely conceive and release exploitable and abused sets and other changes so I don't really see how "ZoS want to be careful" is a valid excuse for anything.
If they were careful and fully thought through changes, we wouldn't see problems every single PTS without fail.

Urvoth

Marto wrote: »

ForumBully wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

I keep seeing these comments that, from a developer perspective, a bad gameplay experience for several months is fine. Everyone just hang in there while we take our time having a good look.

From the perspective of the devs, it's better to have an underwhelming gameplay mechanic for a while before proposing a better version... than to rush to make a different version without proper internal testing, and create something that's going to be exploited, abused, or confuse the hell out of players.

And the ESO playerbase has already proven to react extremely strongly to changes.

If ZOS takes their time, they'll complain the meta is stale. If ZOS rushes, they'll complain the changes weren't well thought out.

If ZOS willingly lets a poorly balanced change through, and fine tunes it at a later time, players will complain "Wow ZOS just released it overpowered on purpose then nerfed it to make money!!" or something ridiculous like that.

Destro has been underperforming compared to dual wield/2h for years, though. There's a reason just about everyone but RPers and magdens swapped to dw or 2h front bar as soon as the initial hybridization changes for passives went live. Both the passives AND abilities for dw and 2h are far superior to the destro options and have been like that for a long, long time. There's no "bad gameplay experience for several months" when the single magicka offensive weapon has been underwhelming since basically One Tamriel.

Derra

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

So ranged weapon have less power budged for being ranged and ranged skills also have a coded 200ms forced delay because they´re ranged?

That seems excessive in terms of adjusting ranged combat - esp with the meta being predominantly melee weapons for years now?

Rkindaleft

@ZOS_Kevin

I understand the notion of the combat team that Staves, or in general ranged weapons as a whole, are balanced in a way that they don't have as much damage as melee weapons. However, the meta has been melee weapons for several patches at this point in 95% of the endgame content, with essentially 2 older trials favouring more ranged setups, and in particular one of them being Asylum Sanctorium, bow/bow is favoured over a staff setup. There are logs of this and it's being used in basically all WR attempts.

You can still buff the staff LA damage (as their base LA damage is lower than that of melee, I think when it was changed they reduced it by 10%, it could be changed to 5%) or change it's flat standard Weapon/Spell Power without it outshining melee weapons, but staves definitely need at least a small buff, in my opinion.

WrathOfInnos

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

@ZOS_Kevin Thanks for the info. That does explain some skill differences, but leaves me questioning Pulsar. It is the same size as Whirling Blades, and can only hit enemies up to 6m from the caster. Surely this melee skill does not need to remain weak due to a staff range advantage.

The Afterburn effect is nowhere near Whirling's execute scaling, and if you are using the Inferno staff then Pulsar does not benefit from Ancient Knowledge's 10% bonus. This is on top of the higher cost, lower weapon/spell damage, and worse passives (missing out on crit from daggers).

Turtle_Bot

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

I would like to add that gap closers have existed for a long time now and they remove that range advantage completely since they close the gap (hence their name) and bring that ranged enemy into melee combat range. Not to mention how many pull sets and abilities do we have access to now that literally ping pong players across the map. There's no such thing as range anymore unless you're able to use that range from somewhere reasonably inaccessible which has very limited options (from a keep wall where that keep is not open yet).

The other main disparity between the weapon types is what the passives affect, the passives for dual wield and 2H apply to the raw damage stats that affect every skill and even heals in the game not just the weapon abilities, meanwhile destro passives only affect destro staff abilities. This is a huge disparity and is the main reason staves are in such a bad spot right now.

Rkindaleft

If you don’t wish to make changes to their base weapon/spell damage or their LA damage please consider reworking the skill lines passives into something more useful. They only work for destro staff skills where as DW/2h, which is currently the meta, affects essentially all their skills, so technically that weapon type is stronger in 3 ways.

This way destro staff will still see a buff, but it won’t outshine melee weapons with its spell damage and LA damage.

Destro staff is going to be even less relevant next patch because every dps spec gets free Major Berserk from a 2h frontbar so using one is a massive loss in damage.

thesarahandcompany

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the feedback on my post about Destruction Staves. It's exciting to see all the engagement on this post. As we are discussing, I want to highlight something key in my original post that is somewhat getting lost behind all the other points. Specifically, I noted that destruction staves were trailing behind stamina weapons.

@ZOS_Kevin: Please see my comments below that attempt to summarize and discuss the contents of this thread.

The issue is not a "ranged vs. melee" issue, but rather a magicka vs. stamina issue.

In order to demonstrate this point, let's consider the differences in destruction staff compared to bow. Both are intended to be ranged damage skill/weapon lines, and that provides us an approximately "all else equal" scenario to understand whether there is a theoretical gap at play. I think through this exercise you will see the gap.

Passives for destruction staff and bow are located in Table 1. The first noticeable gap is between Tri Focus and Hawk Eye, the two passives for Destruction Staff and Bow, respectively, that center around interacting with light and heavy attacking. The coefficient for Hawk Eye, at maximum stacks, is more than double the coefficient for bonuses to heavy attacks for inferno staves. Heavy attacks with inferno staves are not valuable in most PVE and PVP content, if ever. Ancient knowledge passive for destruction staves have a 2% smaller coefficient than the argmax of the Long Shot coefficient. Bow's receive a flat 15% cost-reduction to their abilities through the ranger passive, or a savings of 150 stamina per 1000 stamina spent. Whereas destruction staves provide sustain through elimination of enemies. Bow has more balanced and consistent sustain trends, whereas destruction staves require the target to die quickly in order to exploit value from the passive. In long boss fights or PVP engagements where eliminations of enemies are inconsistent, the Destruction Expert passive lags behind the Ranger passive.

Also consider that Destruction Staff, though suggested to be a ranged weapon/skill line like the Bow, has drastically lower ranges for its abilities. On average, Destruction Staff has ranges on its abilities that don't even really suggest that it's a ranged weapon. It's max ranged abililty is 35M -- and that's one morph of an ability that isn't even considered a damage ability. Compared to Bow which has a max ability range of 40M. A majority of the Bow weapon/skill line abilities have a range greater than 28M, while the Destruction Staff abilities are a majority under 28M.

This is not the only case where there's gaps. I would argue that there's gaps between Mages guild and Fighters guild. That Psijic Order and restoration staves doesn't really do anything for Magicka characters outside of support-focused players. And that the Soul Magic skillline could be expanded to provide more benefits to Magicka-focused players, including the addition of some stronger dots, sources of major buffs and other beneficial passives. Not to mention the Soul Assault ultimate should have been when the alleged Arcanist skill is going to be. So let's consider vamping up Magicka-focused lines and weapons in the coming quarters? Please