Flame Staff and Ancient Knowledge

Ingel_Riday

Braffin wrote: »

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.

Not to derail the thread, but a feature is arguably something planned. Being able to cancel animations to block, dodge, and interrupt was planned. A feature to make combat more dynamic and let you de-commit from an offensive action to save yourself from a mace to the face. Animation canceling for LA and HA wasn't planned. It was a bug, or at the very least an unintended quirk, which the developers didn't remove because it became widely used by the community to boost dps and removing it would have resulted in riots and subscription cancels. So... it stayed. Looks awkward, isn't very fun to do, creates an awkward performance gap between veteran players who know about it and new players who would never imagine ".85 to .90 light attacks per second" being an intended gameplay mechanic (CLICK CLICK CLICK), and so on... but it stays. Too embedded into the community now.

Anyhoots, good to know about lightning LA weaving. I'm guessing that you're right that lightning staves will replace flame staves, since a 12% bonus to dots is far more appealing than 500 bonus damage to only the initial tick of burning... which makes me wonder what the goal of ZOS is here. DW still outperforms staves, and staves will go from two options (Flame for most everything and Lightning for heavy attack builds) to ONE viable option (Lightning for most everything and Lightning for heavy attack builds).

Why not fire for dots, lightning for aoe, and frost for single target? Just dump the frost staff tanking stuff that NEVER caught on and give each staff a very clear, very defined dps role. Won't happen, but eh.

Oi. *shrug*

Edit addition: as an addendum, if they did the Fire = Dots, Lighting = AOE, Frost = Single Target thing, I'd have reason to mix up staves on characters. The magicka dragonknight and magicka templar would probably want to stay fire, but my sorcerer and nightblade do a lot more single target and might like frost. I'd have some choices to make and theorycrafters to consult.

As is... all four of my characters use 2 flame staves, and after update 39 they'll likely all be stuck using 2 lightning staves... just to lessen the impact of this nerf. I'll wind up with slightly worse dps and the same lack of variety, but out 64 rosin. I should have known this update would smack me after Update 38 left me relatively unscathed. Guffaw.

lQrukl

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

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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

I join the rest, it makes much more sense
And fits much better with sorc identity than boring HA slave

CameraBeardThePirate

This is going to be laughably OP with a charged staff chucking Force Pulses with Draugrkin. Draugrkin and Force Pulse was already an obscene amount of damage.

Ingel_Riday

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

This is going to be laughably OP with a charged staff chucking Force Pulses with Draugrkin. Draugrkin and Force Pulse was already an obscene amount of damage.

The cynic in me thinks this won't be an issue... they'll nerf the lighting staff passive to 3%/6% bonus to dots in update 40 and 2%/4% in update 41, so it'll be fine. Incidentally, I'll wind up right back on my flame staves at that point.

I'm going to get off these forums for a while. The PTS update 39 notes have soured my mood, haha.

FayJolyn

I'm not sure what to think about the changes to the fire staff. It feels like a nerf. Flame staff with these possible changes don't look appealing at all to put on any bar. The new effect just reads very underwhelming and we're also losing a 10% single target damage buff. I'm not sure which direction they want to take the fire staff in. But's it's only day 1 so I expect things to change.

Tannus15

so i've done some testing with a 1 pet mag sorc build.

this is the build:



flame staff parse


ice staff parse


I haven't done a lightning staff parse, though i should to see how much difference the sorc passive matters

but here is the real gem
bow parse


bow front bar is way stronger with the change to the bow passive. 5% to all damage with a passive crit bonus stomps all over extra damage for status effects

NyassaV

Tannus15 wrote: »

so i've done some testing with a 1 pet mag sorc build.

this is the build:



flame staff parse


ice staff parse


I haven't done a lightning staff parse, though i should to see how much difference the sorc passive matters

but here is the real gem
bow parse


bow front bar is way stronger with the change to the bow passive. 5% to all damage with a passive crit bonus stomps all over extra damage for status effects

I had a feeling this would be the case.

ESO_Nightingale

lQrukl wrote: »

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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

I join the rest, it makes much more sense
And fits much better with sorc identity than boring HA slave

The thing about dot versus direct is it is a better mix of single target and aoe and is more of a build/class decision

Tannus15

Lighting staff dps on a sorc is basically the same as ice staff. might be better if i was using a hard cast frag build ... but i'm not.
As I expected the sorc lighting damage passive is still less than the flame damage passives already built into the dummy. Since the only extra damage you're getting out of the staff is 5% to your light attacks it's not enough to matter.

flame staff still has the edge on dps, but it's a much smaller margin than it used to be. honestly the extra damage on status effects isn't enough. I tried a charged force pulse build and it was still bad, so i'd avoid.

bow is noticeably stronger than staff now, so if you're going for a range build, I'd recommend that.

for sorcs specifically, when combined with the bound aegis change you can swap out scamp for something like poison arrow which really helps sustain having that extra stam skill in there.
or you can go camo hunter / inner light or mages wrath.
having the passive from bound aegis really makes up for a chunk of that lost scamp damage with 8% max mag, plus you get minor protection and minor resolve as well as the sorc health buff at all times.
it's really really good.

1 pet builds are much more viable now.

WrathOfInnos

Syiccal wrote: »

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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

It probably depends on the build. Flail is only about 5-7% of my damage, so losing 10% is 0.5-0.7% DPS loss. Beam alone is 35-40% so even the 2% gain there is 0.7-0.8% DPS, outweighing the Flail loss. Not a big difference either way, but with the Dagger nerf Lightning staff could end up close.

NuarBlack

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

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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

The problem is they messed up from the start with heavy attacks. Lightning is a channel and dot till the final hit. They gutted heavy attack damage unless you use broken soul. Given that this change makes sense.

Now If they reworked the heavies to match that would actually be awesome. I love the idea of Lightning pairing better with sorc and potentially giving magsorc a cool heavy instant bolt to go with crystal frags.

Faulgor

It's just weird to buff the first hit of status effects, when its' Frost and Shock status effects that have a single damage component whereas Fire is mostly a DoT.
You'd think this would synergize well with Warden's frost boost, but then you'd have to sacrifice +12 damage from using a frost staff. It just feels so mismatched.

KlauthWarthog

So far, it is looking like I am going to just replace all my front bar inferno staves with bows.
And most of the front bar lightning staves as well, since the explosion on unstable wall and the front damage on shards will not benefit from those anymore. Yes, radiant oppression will benefit from lightning staff passives, but... it also benefits from the extra damage bows are getting, and bows also buff critical rate. And burning light will also benefit from the bow passives, but get ignored by the staff passives, and that is just the templar...
... what a horribly convoluted mess.

Cast_El

Big nerf for mag sorc pvp using fire staff.
Dev you could just increase the existing value of ancient knowledge : 12% up from 10% ...

ESO_Nightingale

Faulgor wrote: »

It's just weird to buff the first hit of status effects, when its' Frost and Shock status effects that have a single damage component whereas Fire is mostly a DoT.
You'd think this would synergize well with Warden's frost boost, but then you'd have to sacrifice +12 damage from using a frost staff. It just feels so mismatched.

It's actually 10% increased damage when using a frost staff in addition to 2% damage done regardless and that passive is another can of worms anyway. I still think that fire staff should be +10% dot damage done, shock staff should be +10% direct damage done, and the frost staff could probably gain a lesser version of fire's random status effect damage boost seeing as frost warden is a status effect build and that synergises better.

Ecgberht_confused

Sometime around U37 people were complaining staff passives were lacking. ZoS said they'll have a look.

Apparently what they had in mind is to force all mages to become archers.

Amazing...

I really liked having a staff

Syiccal

Does it even matter when dw is still clearly ahead in terms of dps

Ecgberht_confused

Syiccal wrote: »

Does it even matter when dw is still clearly ahead in terms of dps

Yes, some of us like to play ranged. I was OK with being a bit worse off than with DW, now my flame staff magsorc will have to carry a bow instead. Completely arbitrary nerf...

techprince

Tannus15 wrote: »

so i've done some testing with a 1 pet mag sorc build.

this is the build:



flame staff parse


ice staff parse


I haven't done a lightning staff parse, though i should to see how much difference the sorc passive matters

but here is the real gem
bow parse


bow front bar is way stronger with the change to the bow passive. 5% to all damage with a passive crit bonus stomps all over extra damage for status effects

Fire Staff lost all of its value.

katorga

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

This is going to be laughably OP with a charged staff chucking Force Pulses with Draugrkin. Draugrkin and Force Pulse was already an obscene amount of damage.

At least for pvp.

PVE trials, probably DW, Bow, with lightning a distant 3rd.

Weckless

This change is stupid. Forces you to play a draugrkin/crushing shock pressure build while putting the nail in the coffin on swallow soul magblade. Its like theyre just trying to drive people away. At this point idk if ill even make it to see this patch go live Im just sick of these thoughtless changes. Who even comes up with these ideas ffs. Destro staves already were already pretty weak now unless you slap on the same cookie cutter build it will be shite. Class identity is truly dead.

katorga

Ecgberht_confused wrote: »

Sometime around U37 people were complaining staff passives were lacking. ZoS said they'll have a look.

Apparently what they had in mind is to force all mages to become archers.

Amazing...

I really liked having a staff

That's perfect!

ESO_Nightingale

Honestly looking at everyone's parses, i have no idea what they were thinking here. Status effect builds are niche for certain classes like frost warden and dk, frost warden uses an ice staff for increased chilled sources and because it's a great boost to their damage. Which just leaves dk. Why not make inferno staves buff dot damage, lightning staves buff direct damage, and give the frost staff that status effect bonus as a small side bonus

tsaescishoeshiner

Tannus15 wrote: »

so i've done some testing with a 1 pet mag sorc build.

this is the build:



flame staff parse


ice staff parse


I haven't done a lightning staff parse, though i should to see how much difference the sorc passive matters

but here is the real gem
bow parse


bow front bar is way stronger with the change to the bow passive. 5% to all damage with a passive crit bonus stomps all over extra damage for status effects

While I hope they adjust this further, it's reassuring that flame staff, frost, and bow are within 3k DPS of each other on a 100k+ parse. I wonder how dual wield compares, but those are pretty close margins.

There's probably always going to be 1 weapon that just slightly wins out for optimized DPS—but the weapons should offer different build options.

JerBearESO

Inferno staff is now the offensive version of ice staff backbar. HA into ele sus for a DoT and an extra 1500 damage I stead of the shield

SandandStars

Magsorc Main. Don’t like bows. Don’t like pets.

Looks like I’m done for a long while.

Ringeren

This inferno staff change will most likely kill PVE for 2 of my 4 characters and PVP for 3 of my 4 characters. Was hoping for a buff to compete with DW meta, but this looks like game over for me.

If they want to make niche status effect builds, make it a 5-set bonus, not an entire weapon category.

Ingel_Riday

Ecgberht_confused wrote: »

Sometime around U37 people were complaining staff passives were lacking. ZoS said they'll have a look.

Apparently what they had in mind is to force all mages to become archers.

Amazing...

I really liked having a staff

Oi... just awful. Here I've been, stubbornly sticking with my magic staff instead of switching to dual wield... and they turn me into a bowman. Bleh. Guess I should be glad that I leveled it up to 50 on my main for giggles?

What sadness. :-/

Tyrant_Tim

SandandStars wrote: »

Magsorc Main. Don’t like bows. Don’t like pets.

Looks like I’m done for a long while.

Do you want an insane MagSorc build? When I get back on my Desktop I can send you some clips from the PTS.

Tannus15

Exactly as @ESO_Nightingale points out, unless the live build already runs charged and you've got access to a lot of status effects, the inferno staff change is really bad.

Increasing the damage done by the status effect proc to make it viable for a class like sorc will affect status effects builds disproportionally making it too strong. Leave it as it makes it a terrible choice.

Likewise I find the change to lightning staffs amusing since while the channelled damage increase will help with lightning staff heavy attacks, the dot damage and channel buff will have little to no effect on classes like sorc, the class with the shock elemental "focus". Just like on live where sorc has almost no cleave, it also has almost no dots.

Once again I go back to @ESO_Nightingale suggestion for inferno staffs buffing dots and lightning staffs buffing direct damage and it all makes a lot more sense.

Sorcs, primarily a direct damage ranged class with shock damage buffs will use lightning staffs because synergy.
DK's, primarily a dot class will use inferno staffs.

DW will always be better than a staff if you can get away with it, but bow shouldn't be the strongest option for ranged magicka builds.