Destruction Staff Feedback

ESO_Nightingale

I've been a destruction staff player for 6 years, and for many of them, i played frost warden, which, as many of us can remember, was not a viable build in endgame content until recently (not without it's own problems), which is to say that i've had a fair share of experience in making suggestions for destruction staves for a long time now. I think that the direction as a whole that ZOS wants to move in is an awesome idea as i have been campaigning for every destruction staff to be an option for a very long time. for too long now has the fire staff been best in slot for ranged magicka dps regardless of class theme and build type.

However, i along with many of the other players here feel as if the directions that the individual staves went in is not going to fix the problem, only instead to flip to the other side where instead of flame being used in almost every situation, instead it is now shock staves or bows that will be the best instead. I do not want to cover the bows here as that is not my area, but i do want to bring up some problems with the changes listed and bring up my thoughts.

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Tri-Focus

Changes and Developer Comment:

Flame Staff: This passive now applies a Damage over Time equal to power of a standard Damage over Time effect, over 10/20 seconds with a fully charged Heavy Attack, rather than increasing the damage done of your fully charged Heavy Attacks by 6/12%
Ice Staff: Increased the damage shield granted by this passive to 16.5/33% of your Max Health, up from 12.5/25%.
Lightning Staff: This passive now only triggers on fully charged Heavy Attacks, rather than any tick of a Heavy Attack.

Developer Comment:
Since this passive is meant to help reward fully charged Heavy Attacks, we've reigned in some of the effects with Lightning Staves to make them more in line with other weapons while retaining their unique gameplay with builds that go all in on them. In addition, we've tried to sweeten the rewards for the other two staff types that in general don't Heavy Attack as much.

Feedback:

There's a lot to talk about here with tri focus, and the first thing i want to bring up is that this passive is the only one in the game that actively hurts dps players, it specifically hurts frost damage dealers. changing block cost to magicka is not a net positive change, and even with a nice damage shield on the heavy attack it is still terrible because actively trying to block an attack hemorrhages damage dealing resources crazy fast on frost warden which is already heavily strapped for magicka sustain, we cannot afford it and thus we literally do not put any points into the passive at all. Moving on

Flame Staff changes: it's an interesting idea to put a damage over time effect onto this passive upon heavy attacking, however, when testing the flame staff, i never felt like there was a reason to heavy attack with it. spamming heavy attacks simply re-apply the dot which goes against a heavy attack spamming type playstyle, and actively heavy attacking every 20 seconds to re-apply it is still a downgrade in dps and it feels really strange. the only way i see this being useful is as a way to lessen the punishing nature of heavy attacking with a flame staff.

Lightning Staff changes: i think this is a reasonable step to rein in the extremely high aoe potency of lightning staff heavy attacks. it's good.

Ice Staff changes: an increased shield is whatever, frost damage dealers still will have literally no reason to put points into this passive so long as the magicka block cost remains.

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Ancient Knowledge

Changes and Developer Comment:

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%.
Lightning Staff: This passive now increases your damage done with over time and channeled attacks by 6/12%, rather than increasing your damage done with Area of Effect attacks by 5/10%.
Developer Comment:
We've received a lot of feedback from many sources talking about how this passive hasn't lived up to standards with numerous aspects like build crafting, kit synergy, and raw power. We're shifting the gameplay aspects around slightly to help aid in more overall exciting build choices, while simultaneously trying to keep in line with element types' strengths. Flame focuses on trying to batter and burn your foes down with status effects by adding a nice chunk of damage to their initial hits. Lighting doubles down on turning your foes to dust with powerful over time effects and channels, including the fan favorite Heavy Attack builds. It's our hope that these changes help make staves of all types feel better as front bar options and lead to more interesting build crafting and kit interactions overall!

Feedback:

Flame Staff changes: this is an extremely odd direction for flame staff, for most classes and builds this is a catestrophic nerf as 10% increased single target damage was a pretty big bonus, and now this change reduces the impact of the staff to a niche role for only certain builds. Dragonknight, Warden and Arcanist are the only classes that get big boosts to status effect application rates and damage, outside of this such as with sorcerer, that does not, from @Tannus15's parse on sorcerer we can see that the bonus was so small it was barely an increase over the ice staff's damage which is extremely bad, it almost might as well not even have a damage bonus at all.

Shock Staff changes: i don't believe this is a terrible bonus as it is useful in both aoe and single target situations, however i do think that direct damage is more suited towards the lightning staff than damage over time, as flame damage and skills are generally more damage over time focused.

Suggestion:

I believe that the bonuses for the flame and shock destruction staves should be:
Increased damage over time for flame staves
and
Increased direct damage for lightning staves

These bonuses allow both weapons to be good depending on build and class rather than only being strong inside single target or aoe, this would also mean that they're better in-tune for sorcerer and dragonknight designs. i think increased status effect damage is a very nice passive as i play frost warden, but it's so incredibly niche for certain types of builds that it might be better to apply it to the entire destruction staff skill line, or perhaps even just to the frost staff itself.

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Penetrating Magic

Changes and Developer Comment:

This passive now causes your Destruction Staff attacks to ignore 1487/2974 Spell Resistance, rather than 5/10% of the target’s Spell Resistance.
Developer Comment:
Due to the ease of access of potent armor shredding effects like Major Breach, percent-based penetration frequently feels extremely weak so we’re converting this to be flat to offer some guaranteed, consistent power.

Feedback:

This is good.

Jazraena

Increasing DoT damage I feel is... questionable. DoTs typically aren't at the top of your damage sources, so in most cases this will simply shift the meta from fire to lightning.

I'm honestly even wondering if Fire, Lightning and Frost need different passives. It doesn't matter as much with melee weapons since we can just change their appearance anyway, but I'm increasingly leaning towards one passive for all of them and leave the element to simple choice in power fantasy instead of punishing people just because they want to play a lightning/fire/frost mage or whatever.

Turtle_Bot

As a magsorc main (mostly PvP), the change to ancient knowledge is such a huge nerf.

It's a 10% nerf across the board to my damage abilities which is insane since I cannot make this up by switching to lightning staff since all of my abilities are either instant cast or cast time and direct damage so don't get anything from the rework to lightning staff either now and I can't run melee weapons or bow since I heavy attack to keep up with sustain and bow weaving is just clunky if you have a ping over 100ms.

Staff is just dead as a weapon for sorcerer now and with it, magsorc is just dead. Why even play a magsorc now when I can slot a bow, become a stamsorc and not only have superior damage, but also better crit rate (for better healing with crit surge) and easy access to major expedition.

I like your proposed suggestion for staves, it would fit thematically too with lightning staff being BiS for sorc and flame staff BiS for DK (alongside frost being BiS for warden).

Jazraena

As a magsorc PvP main, and at least occasional magsorc PvE player... Ayup. Why bother with a staff now?

I mean, mine is an Imperial even. That Stam option is looking more tempting by the minute.

preevious

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I cannot make this up by switching to lightning staff since all of my abilities are either instant cast or cast time and direct damage so don't get anything from the rework to lightning staff

Does that mean that crystal fragment is not a "channeled" attack? It does not benefit from the ligthning staff's passive?

ESO_Nightingale

Jazraena wrote: »

Increasing DoT damage I feel is... questionable. DoTs typically aren't at the top of your damage sources, so in most cases this will simply shift the meta from fire to lightning.

I'm honestly even wondering if Fire, Lightning and Frost need different passives. It doesn't matter as much with melee weapons since we can just change their appearance anyway, but I'm increasingly leaning towards one passive for all of them and leave the element to simple choice in power fantasy instead of punishing people just because they want to play a lightning/fire/frost mage or whatever.

while dot damage may not be the higher of your damage, there is also the consideration that they could tune the dot passive much higher than that of the direct increase.

Turtle_Bot

preevious wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I cannot make this up by switching to lightning staff since all of my abilities are either instant cast or cast time and direct damage so don't get anything from the rework to lightning staff

Does that mean that crystal fragment is not a "channeled" attack? It does not benefit from the ligthning staff's passive?

correct, frags is a cast time ability and not a channeled ability, so it won't get boosted by the reworked lightning staff passive and it doesn't get boosted by the deadly strikes set or other sets/effects that boost channeled abilities.

preevious

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

I cannot make this up by switching to lightning staff since all of my abilities are either instant cast or cast time and direct damage so don't get anything from the rework to lightning staff

Does that mean that crystal fragment is not a "channeled" attack? It does not benefit from the ligthning staff's passive?

correct, frags is a cast time ability and not a channeled ability, so it won't get boosted by the reworked lightning staff passive and it doesn't get boosted by the deadly strikes set or other sets/effects that boost channeled abilities.

Well, *** .... thanks for the answer !

Jazraena

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Increasing DoT damage I feel is... questionable. DoTs typically aren't at the top of your damage sources, so in most cases this will simply shift the meta from fire to lightning.

I'm honestly even wondering if Fire, Lightning and Frost need different passives. It doesn't matter as much with melee weapons since we can just change their appearance anyway, but I'm increasingly leaning towards one passive for all of them and leave the element to simple choice in power fantasy instead of punishing people just because they want to play a lightning/fire/frost mage or whatever.

while dot damage may not be the higher of your damage, there is also the consideration that they could tune the dot passive much higher than that of the direct increase.

That is of course also an approach to mitigate this on some classes.

Still, I dislike the idea that people should be shoehorned into specific staves like that.

Let me play with fire as a sorcerer.

ESO_Nightingale

Jazraena wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Increasing DoT damage I feel is... questionable. DoTs typically aren't at the top of your damage sources, so in most cases this will simply shift the meta from fire to lightning.

I'm honestly even wondering if Fire, Lightning and Frost need different passives. It doesn't matter as much with melee weapons since we can just change their appearance anyway, but I'm increasingly leaning towards one passive for all of them and leave the element to simple choice in power fantasy instead of punishing people just because they want to play a lightning/fire/frost mage or whatever.

while dot damage may not be the higher of your damage, there is also the consideration that they could tune the dot passive much higher than that of the direct increase.

That is of course also an approach to mitigate this on some classes.

Still, I dislike the idea that people should be shoehorned into specific staves like that.

Let me play with fire as a sorcerer.

with the tanking focused staff, its now kinda here to stay. magicka has no other weapons that have skills that scale with it's cost, so it's all we have really. we desperately need something like a spellsword line for additional weapon options.

Lalothen

I've been thinking about things for the past couple of days, and I would actually like to see the heavy attack for all three staff types converted to a 3-tic channel like lightning staff. That then standardises ALL staves as having a channeled 3-tic HA. With that in mind I would then propose the following:

Trifocus:
Flame Staff - keep the DoT but give it a respective 10/20s cd or stop the overwrite so it's not constantly being refreshed
Lightning staff - increase the AoE DD to 60/120%
Ice staff - procs a shield for 15/30% of the caster's HP each channeled tic - which refreshes rather than stacks - and drop the conversion to magicka block cost (add it as a passive CP star instead so players can still choose it if they want).

Ancient Knowledge:
Flame Staff - increases channeled & over time attacks by 6/12%
Lightning staff - increases direct damage attacks by 6/12%
Ice staff - maintain the current block-related bonuses

Additionally Ancient Knowledge would increase the initial status damage by 250/500 for the effect type associated with the staff's damage type.

This would do the following:

1) Open up HA build options to all three staff types.
2) Open up staves as a more interesting option for non-HA builds.

EDIT: the above proposition for Ancient Knowledge is also a much better fit for the respective Unstable Wall, Destructive Clench & Pulsar/Ele Ring destro skill morphs.

Shock Clench, Pulsar/Ring and the explosion portion of Unstable Wall - all being AoE DD - would then be buffed by Lightning Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. The flame-related Afterburn DoT from Flame Pulsar/Ring and the AoE DoT of Unstable Wall would be buffed by Flame Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. This would serve to further delineate Flame staff as the "burn 'em over time" staff, whilst Lightning would be more appropriately set up as the "shock 'em hard" staff, and it increase the overall cohesion between the passive and destro skills rather than add a counterintuitive element as things stand with the current iteration in U39.

Lucifer9th

They can extend penetration magic to other magicka skills and don't change ancient knowledges to finally put destruction staff in a good place

Really now the inferno staff is really useless

emilyhyoyeon

Lalothen wrote: »

I've been thinking about things for the past couple of days, and I would actually like to see the heavy attack for all three staff types converted to a 3-tic channel like lightning staff. That then standardises ALL staves as having a channeled 3-tic HA. With that in mind I would then propose the following:

Trifocus:
Flame Staff - keep the DoT but give it a respective 10/20s cooldown so it's not constantly being refreshed
Lightning staff - increase the AoE DD to 60/120%
Ice staff - procs a shield for 15/30% of the caster's HP each channeled tic - which refreshes rather than stacks - and drop the conversion to magicka block cost (add it as a passive CP star instead so players can still choose it if they want).

Ancient Knowledge:
Flame Staff - increases channeled & over time attacks by 6/12%
Lightning staff - increases direct damage attacks by 6/12%
Ice staff - maintain the current block-related bonuses

Additionally Ancient Knowledge would increase the initial status damage by 250/500 for the effect type associated with the staff's damage type.

This would do the following:

1) Open up HA build options to all three staff types.
2) Open up staves as a more interesting option for non-HA builds.

EDIT: the above proposition for Ancient Knowledge is also a much better fit for the respective Unstable Wall, Destructive Clench & Pulsar/Ele Ring destro skill morphs.

Shock Clench, Pulsar/Ring and the explosion portion of Unstable Wall - all being AoE DD - would then be buffed by Lightning Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. The flame-related Afterburn DoT from Flame Pulsar/Ring and the AoE DoT of Unstable Wall would be buffed by Flame Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. This would serve to further delineate Flame staff as the "burn 'em over time" staff, whilst Lightning would be more appropriately set up as the "shock 'em hard" staff, and it increase the overall cohesion between the passive and destro skills rather than add a counterintuitive element as things stand with the current iteration in U39.

yeah I like these. Not the main focus but I especially like the magicka blocking being moved to a passive CP star. I think I've seen Nightingale suggest that as well. I'm surprised they haven't done that yet.

I still hate trifocus's ice feature being a shield though. But I've given up hope that they return ice to the single player games' standards.

ESO_Nightingale

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

Lalothen wrote: »

I've been thinking about things for the past couple of days, and I would actually like to see the heavy attack for all three staff types converted to a 3-tic channel like lightning staff. That then standardises ALL staves as having a channeled 3-tic HA. With that in mind I would then propose the following:

Trifocus:
Flame Staff - keep the DoT but give it a respective 10/20s cooldown so it's not constantly being refreshed
Lightning staff - increase the AoE DD to 60/120%
Ice staff - procs a shield for 15/30% of the caster's HP each channeled tic - which refreshes rather than stacks - and drop the conversion to magicka block cost (add it as a passive CP star instead so players can still choose it if they want).

Ancient Knowledge:
Flame Staff - increases channeled & over time attacks by 6/12%
Lightning staff - increases direct damage attacks by 6/12%
Ice staff - maintain the current block-related bonuses

Additionally Ancient Knowledge would increase the initial status damage by 250/500 for the effect type associated with the staff's damage type.

This would do the following:

1) Open up HA build options to all three staff types.
2) Open up staves as a more interesting option for non-HA builds.

EDIT: the above proposition for Ancient Knowledge is also a much better fit for the respective Unstable Wall, Destructive Clench & Pulsar/Ele Ring destro skill morphs.

Shock Clench, Pulsar/Ring and the explosion portion of Unstable Wall - all being AoE DD - would then be buffed by Lightning Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. The flame-related Afterburn DoT from Flame Pulsar/Ring and the AoE DoT of Unstable Wall would be buffed by Flame Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. This would serve to further delineate Flame staff as the "burn 'em over time" staff, whilst Lightning would be more appropriately set up as the "shock 'em hard" staff, and it increase the overall cohesion between the passive and destro skills rather than add a counterintuitive element as things stand with the current iteration in U39.

yeah I like these. Not the main focus but I especially like the magicka blocking being moved to a passive CP star. I think I've seen Nightingale suggest that as well. I'm surprised they haven't done that yet.

I still hate trifocus's ice feature being a shield though. But I've given up hope that they return ice to the single player games' standards.

i have suggested it in the past. it'd be a solid compromise imo.

danno8

Lalothen wrote: »

I've been thinking about things for the past couple of days, and I would actually like to see the heavy attack for all three staff types converted to a 3-tic channel like lightning staff. That then standardises ALL staves as having a channeled 3-tic HA. With that in mind I would then propose the following:

Trifocus:
Flame Staff - keep the DoT but give it a respective 10/20s cd or stop the overwrite so it's not constantly being refreshed
Lightning staff - increase the AoE DD to 60/120%
Ice staff - procs a shield for 15/30% of the caster's HP each channeled tic - which refreshes rather than stacks - and drop the conversion to magicka block cost (add it as a passive CP star instead so players can still choose it if they want).

Ancient Knowledge:
Flame Staff - increases channeled & over time attacks by 6/12%
Lightning staff - increases direct damage attacks by 6/12%
Ice staff - maintain the current block-related bonuses

Additionally Ancient Knowledge would increase the initial status damage by 250/500 for the effect type associated with the staff's damage type.

This would do the following:

1) Open up HA build options to all three staff types.
2) Open up staves as a more interesting option for non-HA builds.

EDIT: the above proposition for Ancient Knowledge is also a much better fit for the respective Unstable Wall, Destructive Clench & Pulsar/Ele Ring destro skill morphs.

Shock Clench, Pulsar/Ring and the explosion portion of Unstable Wall - all being AoE DD - would then be buffed by Lightning Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. The flame-related Afterburn DoT from Flame Pulsar/Ring and the AoE DoT of Unstable Wall would be buffed by Flame Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. This would serve to further delineate Flame staff as the "burn 'em over time" staff, whilst Lightning would be more appropriately set up as the "shock 'em hard" staff, and it increase the overall cohesion between the passive and destro skills rather than add a counterintuitive element as things stand with the current iteration in U39.

For your Tri focus ideas:

Flame:The DoT just needs to apply a tick on the hit (or last tick of the channel if we are going with your flame channel idea), which it doesn't currently as there is a 2 second delay of the first tick right now. If it does that then it does not matter if it refreshes. In fact it's better that it refreshes.

Lightning: This would be fine. Lightning is losing a huge amount of AoE no matter how you slice it.

Ice: Currently you get a 25% of your health shield every ~2 second full channel. This change would give you (assuming something like 30k health) a 9k shield every tick that refreshes 3 times every over a ~2s channel. This would be the equivalent of spamming Harness Magicka for free but even faster than the GCD. I think you would be indestructible.

The Ancient Knowledge stuff looks good to me.

lQrukl

Lalothen wrote: »

I've been thinking about things for the past couple of days, and I would actually like to see the heavy attack for all three staff types converted to a 3-tic channel like lightning staff. That then standardises ALL staves as having a channeled 3-tic HA. With that in mind I would then propose the following:

Trifocus:
Flame Staff - keep the DoT but give it a respective 10/20s cd or stop the overwrite so it's not constantly being refreshed
Lightning staff - increase the AoE DD to 60/120%
Ice staff - procs a shield for 15/30% of the caster's HP each channeled tic - which refreshes rather than stacks - and drop the conversion to magicka block cost (add it as a passive CP star instead so players can still choose it if they want).

Ancient Knowledge:
Flame Staff - increases channeled & over time attacks by 6/12%
Lightning staff - increases direct damage attacks by 6/12%
Ice staff - maintain the current block-related bonuses

Additionally Ancient Knowledge would increase the initial status damage by 250/500 for the effect type associated with the staff's damage type.

This would do the following:

1) Open up HA build options to all three staff types.
2) Open up staves as a more interesting option for non-HA builds.

EDIT: the above proposition for Ancient Knowledge is also a much better fit for the respective Unstable Wall, Destructive Clench & Pulsar/Ele Ring destro skill morphs.

Shock Clench, Pulsar/Ring and the explosion portion of Unstable Wall - all being AoE DD - would then be buffed by Lightning Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. The flame-related Afterburn DoT from Flame Pulsar/Ring and the AoE DoT of Unstable Wall would be buffed by Flame Staff's Ancient Knowledge passive. This would serve to further delineate Flame staff as the "burn 'em over time" staff, whilst Lightning would be more appropriately set up as the "shock 'em hard" staff, and it increase the overall cohesion between the passive and destro skills rather than add a counterintuitive element as things stand with the current iteration in U39.

This! Zos please! This would be so so so much better!

Also, don't forget about lightining wall, offbalance looks pretty weak comparing with wall of fire (+10% damage to burning enemies).
What about shift additional damage of status effects to this skill?
Like "enemies in wall of storms reciving increased damage from Concussed inital proc"?

VixxVexx

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

JerBearESO

VixxVexx wrote: »

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

So beautiful

phaneub17_ESO

Random thought...

Inferno Staff
Ancient Knowledge: For every status effect you apply increases your damage done to the target by 2% for 6 seconds.
Tri-Focus: Light attacks apply a kindling charge to the target, up to 10. Heavy attack ignites all kindling charges and deals instant damage equal to 3% per kindling charge of the damage over time effect.

SandandStars

If you pvp a magsorc, you know that frags are your only source of class burst damage left.

So take 10% off.

1v1 an NB or DK for 10 seconds (if you can).

Compare amounts of damage.

Ponder your staff…

jaws343

SandandStars wrote: »

If you pvp a magsorc, you know that frags are your only source of class burst damage left.

So take 10% off.

1v1 an NB or DK for 10 seconds (if you can).

Compare amounts of damage.

Ponder your staff…

I don't disagree that it is significant hit to frags.

But also, my frags always seem to be perma dodged, so kinda hard to care about losing 10% damage on a skill that never actually hits anyone lol. Playing sorc is pain.

Lalothen

VixxVexx wrote: »

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

This is a REALLY cool idea!

thepandalore

VixxVexx wrote: »

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

I'm 100% behind this idea. I would honestly try to main a brittle build if that were how ice staves worked.

danno8

VixxVexx wrote: »

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

With those examples couldn't you just use Lightning in all scenarios? The splash damage would occur at all distances anyway but you would have the larger range option. Unless you start adding in extra conditions like target caps or limit the "splash" damage of lightning to only a few meters.

ESO_Nightingale

VixxVexx wrote: »

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

Yeah, the fire and frost heavy attacks feel pretty crap

ESO_Nightingale

danno8 wrote: »

VixxVexx wrote: »

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

With those examples couldn't you just use Lightning in all scenarios? The splash damage would occur at all distances anyway but you would have the larger range option. Unless you start adding in extra conditions like target caps or limit the "splash" damage of lightning to only a few meters.

I believe lightning now only hits all targets with the direct hit at the end of the channel meaning that flame and frost would do aoe hits all the time or something to that effect

Faulgor

VixxVexx wrote: »

I agree that it makes more sense for the fire staff to be dot/channel related instead of the lightning. But the heavy attack enjoyers are not going to be very happy about that. And there is a lot of them.

Frost & Inferno staff heavy attacks are slow projectiles and just feel bad to use. Maybe that should be changed first.
Here's my idea (sorry for my paint skills):

So weird, I've suggested Frost Heavy Attacks becoming a PBAOE channel for years, came in here to reiterate, and then I find you've already made a brilliant illustration.
Do you live in my head? If so, would you mind opening the windows once in a while?

The worst thing about the nerf to Lightning Staff is really how they took something unique and fun and turned it average and boring. I'll never accept that as a balance proposition in a game. They have to make other staffs (or for that matter, all weapons) worthwhile by lifting them up, not bringing lightning down.

acastanza_ESO

ZOS - The change to inferno staves is an insulting direct nerf to ranged playstyles after they've been repeatedly nerfed for many patches. The consistent disrespect and lack of care for this and the consistent push towards favorjng melee over anything else HAS TO STOP. Reverse this unnecessary insane nerf immediately. We were repeatedly assured that you were carefully monitoring the balance of tradeoffs of ranged vs melee to ensure that ranged wasn't going to be left behind. The only thing I can believe now after this nerf was that that was a lie

The fact that this further disproportionately affects mag sorcs in PVP - a spec that we've already explained to you in detail how they're struggling, is extremely insulting and frustrating. You have to stop these unnecessary and unwarranted nerfs to specs that in actuality need serious buffs. Stop ignoring our feedback.

Soarora

I really don't want frost staves to be a channel. When I'm ro/jo (roaring opportunist is the problem here) healer in a trial I struggle with making sure I HA 2x in a row when I'm using a lightning staff. I don't have this problem with ice because of its projectile. If you all are wanting to make all three a channel I propose this: another passive that turns them all into channels and make the default for lightning a projectile like ice and inferno or vice versa where they're by default channels but can become projectiles.

Edit: The change to a channel would also mean that it takes longer to proc roaring opportunist, which means less time spent healing, buffing, debuffing, etc.

Edit 2: Upon further thinking... the new channel type suggestions wouldn't really work at all with ha-procc'd sets like roaring opportunist. You need to do a fully charged heavy attack twice in a row in a trial situation. Would the fire cone proc the set based on how many enemies have been fully heavy attacked? Do you need something to be in your AoE with ice? You can't just heavy attack nothing to proc the set, currently you need to land a fully charged heavy attack on an enemy. Would these new channels still be locked on an enemy? I guess that would solve the issue but when it comes to ice there's nothing showing that you're attacking a specific enemy.

ESO_Nightingale

Soarora wrote: »

I really don't want frost staves to be a channel. When I'm ro/jo (roaring opportunist is the problem here) healer in a trial I struggle with making sure I HA 2x in a row when I'm using a lightning staff. I don't have this problem with ice because of its projectile. If you all are wanting to make all three a channel I propose this: another passive that turns them all into channels and make the default for lightning a projectile like ice and inferno or vice versa where they're by default channels but can become projectiles.

Edit: The change to a channel would also mean that it takes longer to proc roaring opportunist, which means less time spent healing, buffing, debuffing, etc.

Edit 2: Upon further thinking... the new channel type suggestions wouldn't really work at all with ha-procc'd sets like roaring opportunist. You need to do a fully charged heavy attack twice in a row in a trial situation. Would the fire cone proc the set based on how many enemies have been fully heavy attacked? Do you need something to be in your AoE with ice? You can't just heavy attack nothing to proc the set, currently you need to land a fully charged heavy attack on an enemy. Would these new channels still be locked on an enemy? I guess that would solve the issue but when it comes to ice there's nothing showing that you're attacking a specific enemy.

it would be nice if heavy attacking in general didn't feel crap, but it just does. in an action combat game long channel casts have to be DISGUSTINGLY strong to feel any good.

kojou

I am definitely not a fan of the new passive for Ancient Knowledge. I did some testing and it is a nerf to flamestaff in PVE. The extra damage to the status effects does not offset the loss of 10% single target damage. Its not a huge nerf, but it is also somewhat situational since It will work better for classes that have advantages with proc'ing burning (burning is the strongest damage of the statuses) and with an AoE flame ability you will have even more chances to proc it. So DK's generally won't mind the change as much as other classes.

I don't see why they can't just make it more "boring" and have the flame staff give crit, shock staff give crit damage, and ice staff give penetration or something like that. This cute situational stuff is generally pretty annoying to try to build around and always requires testing to see how it impacts the build, whereas straight stats are easy to build around and see the impact of (probably easier to balance too).