Flame Staff and Ancient Knowledge

techprince

Destruction Staff
Ancient Knowledge
Flame Staff: This passive now increases your damage done by the initial hit of status effects by 250/500, rather than increasing single target damage done by 5/10%.

This seems VERY underwhelming as the status effects themselves are chance based unless you use Elemental Susceptibility or Destructive Touch/Reach.
Not to mention the loss of 10% single target damage is huge.

At least Lightning Staff will be widely used by Templars and Arcanists.

PrinceShroob

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this. Practically speaking, it doesn't affect me very much aside from the minor annoyance of deconstructing inferno staves and changing them to lightning staves, but I feel like this change tanks inferno frontbar in PvE (and they were already heavily declining) while possibly being too good in PvP with Vateshran inferno and Elemental Susceptibility. That sort of polarization doesn't seem great.

I fully accept that I could be wrong, though, so I'll wait and see how things play out as people test on PTS.

jaws343

I wonder if the Aslyum staff will provide a fairly substantial DPS increase though.

MashmalloMan

We've been begging them to introduce some diversity into destruction staves for a long time and this achieves that. Lets wait for tests using the different staves for different classes before we jump the gun. It's much more interesting in my opinion then slapping a Fire Staff on every single Mag build beside maybe a Frost Warden and Heavy Attack Shock Sorc as previously done.

jaws343

techprince wrote: »

Destruction Staff
Ancient Knowledge
Flame Staff: This passive now increases your damage done by the initial hit of status effects by 250/500, rather than increasing single target damage done by 5/10%.

This seems VERY underwhelming as the status effects themselves are chance based unless you use Elemental Susceptibility or Destructive Touch/Reach.
Not to mention the loss of 10% single target damage is huge.

At least Lightning Staff will be widely used by Templars and Arcanists.

It's definitely going to be an adjustment and I think they still need to do a bit more for these changes, but I kind of like decoupling the single target damage aspect a bit. It opens up choice a bit more, and can provide some direct buffs to AOE skills that may also apply status effects.

Stamicka

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this. Practically speaking, it doesn't affect me very much aside from the minor annoyance of deconstructing inferno staves and changing them to lightning staves

Quality of Life Patch!

In all seriousness, what even is this change? Feels weird and out of place.

Syiccal

techprince wrote: »

Destruction Staff
Ancient Knowledge
Flame Staff: This passive now increases your damage done by the initial hit of status effects by 250/500, rather than increasing single target damage done by 5/10%.

This seems VERY underwhelming as the status effects themselves are chance based unless you use Elemental Susceptibility or Destructive Touch/Reach.
Not to mention the loss of 10% single target damage is huge.

At least Lightning Staff will be widely used by Templars and Arcanists.

Not on Arc, Deltia just test live v pts and lighting is a Loss of dps as no longer buffs flail

MashmalloMan

Stamicka wrote: »

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this. Practically speaking, it doesn't affect me very much aside from the minor annoyance of deconstructing inferno staves and changing them to lightning staves

Quality of Life Patch!

In all seriousness, what even is this change? Feels weird and out of place.

How so? Why did a fire staff, typically used as the "status effect or dot" element in other fantasy games, give 10% single target damage? That feels out of place to me. They've clearly leaned into each staff having a clear and understandable niche instead of slapping on Fire staves 99% of the time for the most dps because Light Attack weaving is a thing.

Also, staves in general already all get +100% status effect chance so it's nice each staff plays off the idea of elements better.

AndreNoir

TBH I don't find any logic there. Change lightning staff to a dot weapon at the time makes flame staff dot-apply weapon ? Looks like lightning become even more niche and flame even more suck

Syiccal

Dw is still superior I think even with the changes

MashmalloMan

Syiccal wrote: »

Dw is still superior I think even with the changes

Until they make a melee magicka weapon we can expect this to remain true. Thats just an obvious game design decision by the team to reward being in melee with up to 10% more dps.

Frankly, people focus too hard on DPS parses which will always use the highest DPS option because it's a stationary target. There are so many scenario's where having a ranged weapon can yield more dps or more sustain.

lQrukl

TBH I don't find any logic there. Change lightning staff to a dot weapon at the time makes flame staff dot-apply weapon ? Looks like lightning become even more niche and flame even more suck

Simple rework: remove additional penetration, add 5-10% damage done to all destruction staves. And then add something niche and not important.

I am playing ESO for 4 years and still cannot play sorc with lightining staff (I wanna actually play, not drinking beer using HA build). And after all that years Zos making Deadly Aim 2.0 from this staff. Just... WTF??
Templar and Arcanist is really need to be forced to use it instead of just being sutable for sorc at least?

Let anything in your game synergizes thematically, its RPG, not only MMO!

Remiem

techprince wrote: »

Destruction Staff
Ancient Knowledge
Flame Staff: This passive now increases your damage done by the initial hit of status effects by 250/500, rather than increasing single target damage done by 5/10%.

This seems VERY underwhelming as the status effects themselves are chance based unless you use Elemental Susceptibility or Destructive Touch/Reach.
Not to mention the loss of 10% single target damage is huge.

Charged is already one of the strongest offensive traits.
It will make elemental susceptibility even more oppressive and force pulse spamming with draugrkin (+ optional asylum staff) even stronger, and it's already pretty strong right now. Ranged magplar will become even stronger, but I guess it's needed to keep up with the buffed Relequen bow sorcs and nightblades.
Probably not a good change but not like I care at this point with the new necro ""buffs"", plenty of good new releases right now.

Stx

I think this is a good change to bring other destro staves closer to fire staves. But it’s not going to help bring destro staves closer to dual daggers (unless that has changed I might be out of the loop).

This new passive is interesting but it has the potential to either be useless or OP if you build around it. We will have to test and see.

jaws343

Remiem wrote: »

techprince wrote: »

Destruction Staff
Ancient Knowledge
Flame Staff: This passive now increases your damage done by the initial hit of status effects by 250/500, rather than increasing single target damage done by 5/10%.

This seems VERY underwhelming as the status effects themselves are chance based unless you use Elemental Susceptibility or Destructive Touch/Reach.
Not to mention the loss of 10% single target damage is huge.

Charged is already one of the strongest offensive traits.
It will make elemental suceptibility even more oppressive and force pulse spamming with draugrkin (+ optional asylum staff) even stronger, and it's already pretty strong right now. Ranged magplar will become even stronger, but I guess it's needed to keep up with the buffed Relequen bow sorcs and nightblades.
Probably not a good change but not like I care at this point with the new necro ""buffs"", plenty of good new releases right now.

Oh man, I wasn't even thinking about the PVP implications of this.

Since the adjustment applies to the initial hit, and you can guarantee status effect hits with the Asylum staff, every second cast is going to hit crazy hard. Especially with draugrkin. The burst potential here is crazy.

KlauthWarthog

I think making inferno staves buff DoTs would make it fall more in line with the implied "burn" aspect.
So... yeah, I am not really a fan of this change, both mechanically, and flavorfully.

Ingel_Riday

Hm...

Since they've built a lot of the game around the "bug as a feature" light weaving, and you can't particularly light weave with a lightning staff, I'm still not going to use one. Unless you're making a niche heavy attack build, lightning staves just don't cut it.

What I'm getting out of all this is that I'm still a flame staff guy, but I've lost 10% of the damage from my single target attacks (which is going to be marvelous on my sorcerer and nightblade) in exchange for an increase to the intiial tick of the burning status effect... which isn't great.

Color me unenthusiastic.

Flame has gone from a clear identity as "single target staff" to "buff to initial tick of status effect and applies dot from heavy attack."

Lighting is now "giant buff to dots... but you can't weave, so it's still not particularly viable outside of niche heavy attack builds... which were on the chopping block not a few updates ago. Wanna roll the dice and hope you don't fall out of favor again?"

And Frost... not useful for dps roles and a tank without a shield is never a popular kiddo.

Oh well. At least grim focus will be less tedious and it sounds like I might be able to get away with slotting bound armor on only one bar without losing the passive effects... so I'll focus on those, even though all my characters are magicka dps and this change hits all of them right in the jaw with yet another dps loss (which after updates 35, 36, and 37... I did not need). We'll see what the theorycrafters ascertain.

Braffin

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

Hm...

Since they've built a lot of the game around the "bug as a feature" light weaving, and you can't particularly light weave with a lightning staff, I'm still not going to use one. Unless you're making a niche heavy attack build, lightning staves just don't cut it.

What I'm getting out of all this is that I'm still a flame staff guy, but I've lost 10% of the damage from my single target attacks (which is going to be marvelous on my sorcerer and nightblade) in exchange for an increase to the intiial tick of the burning status effect... which isn't great.

Color me unenthusiastic.

Flame has gone from a clear identity as "single target staff" to "buff to initial tick of status effect and applies dot from heavy attack."

Lighting is now "giant buff to dots... but you can't weave, so it's still not particularly viable outside of niche heavy attack builds... which were on the chopping block not a few updates ago. Wanna roll the dice and hope you don't fall out of favor again?"

And Frost... not useful for dps roles and a tank without a shield is never a popular kiddo.

Oh well. At least grim focus will be less tedious and it sounds like I might be able to get away with slotting bound armor on only one bar without losing the passive effects... so I'll focus on those, even though all my characters are magicka dps and this change hits all of them right in the jaw with yet another dps loss (which after updates 35, 36, and 37... I did not need). We'll see what the theorycrafters ascertain.

What exactly do you mean by "can't LA weave with a lightning staff"?

NyassaV

I like the change to Lightning staves but for fire staves I absolutely hate it. In a parse the effect is noticeable but in other content I hate the loss of damage.

ESO_Nightingale

Stx wrote: »

I think this is a good change to bring other destro staves closer to fire staves. But it’s not going to help bring destro staves closer to dual daggers (unless that has changed I might be out of the loop).

This new passive is interesting but it has the potential to either be useless or OP if you build around it. We will have to test and see.

Other destro staves? You mean just lightning staff right? Outside of frost warden, frost staves remain terrible for dps.

Wolf_Eye

I'm just....tired of nerfs. I'm a very casual player, and this is going to gut my build. I'm tired of having to change my build every single year just to do halfway decent damage.

I'm just tired. I'm done. I've given up on ever attempting to get strong enough to do the harder content in the game. I just give up.

ESO_Nightingale

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

I think making inferno staves buff DoTs would make it fall more in line with the implied "burn" aspect.
So... yeah, I am not really a fan of this change, both mechanically, and flavorfully.

I thought they were gonna do fire=dot and lightning= direct

Tyrant_Tim

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

I think making inferno staves buff DoTs would make it fall more in line with the implied "burn" aspect.
So... yeah, I am not really a fan of this change, both mechanically, and flavorfully.

I thought they were gonna do fire=dot and lightning= direct

That would make the most sense, yeah.

Wolf_Eye

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

I think making inferno staves buff DoTs would make it fall more in line with the implied "burn" aspect.
So... yeah, I am not really a fan of this change, both mechanically, and flavorfully.

I thought they were gonna do fire=dot and lightning= direct

That would make the most sense, yeah.

Yeah, that would have made more sense.

Tyrant_Tim

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

I think making inferno staves buff DoTs would make it fall more in line with the implied "burn" aspect.
So... yeah, I am not really a fan of this change, both mechanically, and flavorfully.

I thought they were gonna do fire=dot and lightning= direct

That would make the most sense, yeah.

Yeah, that would have made more sense.

Last I checked, burning things deteriorate over time while if someone gets struck by lightning they immediately fall over.

Wolf_Eye

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Wolf_Eye wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

I think making inferno staves buff DoTs would make it fall more in line with the implied "burn" aspect.
So... yeah, I am not really a fan of this change, both mechanically, and flavorfully.

I thought they were gonna do fire=dot and lightning= direct

That would make the most sense, yeah.

Yeah, that would have made more sense.

Last I checked, burning things deteriorate over time while if someone gets struck by lightning they immediately fall over.

That's exactly it. Dying via fire can sometimes take a painful amount of time, depending on how much fire was used. Lightning strikes and electricity tend to be almost instantaneous though, as lightning can travel much, much faster than fire.

Ingel_Riday

Braffin wrote: »

What exactly do you mean by "can't LA weave with a lightning staff"?

I'll be honest: can you? When I came back in 2017-2018 and re-rolled my main, the complaint I constantly heard was that lightning staff weaving was miserable and broken. "Go flame staff. Parses better and the lightning staff has a habit of kicking you into a channeled dot heavy attack that can be interrupted and punished."

Even now, a google search results in page after page of grumbling and woe. Everything I have ever heard from every theorycrafter is "Lightning staff for heavy attack builds. Leave it there. Light attacks are a huge source of damage for you, and flame staffs are better for that. Go flame."

Did ZOS fix this? And by fix... I mean get the "bug that's now a feature" light weaving to work reliably with lightning staves? Are the theorycrafters just fundamentally wrong on the issue? This isn't bait, by the way. I'm genuinely curious. For a 9 year old game, things change so much so often that I find it hard to keep track of these things. I don't mind finding out I'm working on wrong, outdated assumptions and conclusions.

Lazarus_Rising

I hope we can move on from the inferno staff as the primary choice. I would like to see with that change that they implement different staves (oblivion, pure magic staff, poison).

emilyhyoyeon

TBH I hate current ancient knowledge and I hate this new one as well

Braffin

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

What exactly do you mean by "can't LA weave with a lightning staff"?

I'll be honest: can you? When I came back in 2017-2018 and re-rolled my main, the complaint I constantly heard was that lightning staff weaving was miserable and broken. "Go flame staff. Parses better and the lightning staff has a habit of kicking you into a channeled dot heavy attack that can be interrupted and punished."

Even now, a google search results in page after page of grumbling and woe. Everything I have ever heard from every theorycrafter is "Lightning staff for heavy attack builds. Leave it there. Light attacks are a huge source of damage for you, and flame staffs are better for that. Go flame."

Did ZOS fix this? And by fix... I mean get the "bug that's now a feature" light weaving to work reliably with lightning staves? Are the theorycrafters just fundamentally wrong on the issue? This isn't bait, by the way. I'm genuinely curious. For a 9 year old game, things change so much so often that I find it hard to keep track of these things. I don't mind finding out I'm working on wrong, outdated assumptions and conclusions.

Yes, I have no problems with LA weaving on lightning staff which weren't present on other staves too. Sure, on live you'll always achieve better results with a flamestaff, because of the passives which will be changed in U39. How these changes will work out will have to be tested on PTS over the next few weeks, but my first guess is, that lightning staves will replace flame.

Being kicked into a heavy attack is unfortunately still present, but all weapons are affected. You can simply blockcancel that.

On a sidenote: You're wrong with your "bug that's now a feature" attitude, as weaving is a consequence of the combat system itself. Animation cancelling is and always was an intended feature to ensure player can block, interrupt and dodge when needed without having to wait for the end of skill animations. The fact, that devs didn't realize this system of course works also with LA and HA doesn't make this oversight a bug. You may not like it (and of course you will deny my argument), but LA weaving has always been a feature, not a bug.

FriedEggSandwich

This is really disappointing for me. It's a big nerf to anyone who has build around a fire staff in pvp. It's just a sudden loss of 10% damage, with no way of really making up for that. Are fire staves a problem in pvp? Or is this just an unfortunate side effect of zos trying to encourage diversity in pve?