Class Refresh Dmg Types

SneaK

Just a weird idea….

What if, each class allowed you to imbue your weapon skills with a specific dmg type…..

ie. DK gets access to fire damage 2h skills, Sorc gets access to lightning 2H skills, Necro gets to have access to Disease Staffs, etc.

Won’t ever happen, but just a thought.

GloatingSwine

The problem here is that there isn't really any item support for typed damage that isn't fire.

There are sets that deal typed damage, but there are no sets that enhance typed damage like Encratis' Behemoth does for fire.

And they'd need at least one 5pc, mythic, or monster set for every damage type.

And they'd need to be either competitive with or better than sets or items that just do generically more damage or crit damage. Which means that focusing on a single damage type is mechanically identical to not doing so because the things that make you do more damage, upon which builds are made, don't care which type of damage you did.

Emeratis

I'm not opposed to an elemental conversion system in game. Tbh it was disappointing it wasn't added to scribing and seems to be highly requested there. My issue with tying it to class is what happens with the classes that have more than one damage type (warden) or share a damage type (nightblade, templar)?

As it currently is:

• dragonknight has fire/poison
• nightblade has disease/magic/physical
• sorcerer has lightning/magic
• templar has fire/magic
• warden has frost/poison/bleed/physical
• necromancer has yes (ok a joke but they seriously have fire/frost/lightning/disease/bleed/physical throughout their kit)
• arcanist has mostly physical and magical damage with some frost as it's main elemental showing

Either way, just a quick glean/summary shows why just one element and tying it to a class would not be a good idea. Just taking frost alone, arcanist doesn't really have any other elemental leans but most people identify warden as the frost class so what would you do there? As I pointed out in another thread on class rework and balance overhaul discussion, nightblade damage generally sticks to generic physical or magical damage and I don't mind that/kinda like that but it makes things difficult if you want to slap a main element onto a class. Also, see another thread about worrying about warden's nature/ice theme will lead to an overfocus on the frost element and not disease/poison that is currently taking place.

While we do technically have an element for every class in game, forcing one of them onto some of the classes would be a very shoehorned attempt and I personally would not like it. I also think we have too much currently bound up in classes that I do not want to see more. I've said in other threads I have never been the largest fan of the eso class system so the emphasis of limiting things to class in recent years has been a major turnoff for me. Even ignoring the subclassing elephant in the room, we have several weapon lines and nonclass skill lines such as psijic that are straight up treading water in current game balance and I think the overemphasis on class and trying everything around it lately has been contributing to that problem.

So, yes I would like to see an elemental conversion system, but it should be tied to scribing or a new system and not classes.

YandereGirlfriend

Emeratis wrote: »

I'm not opposed to an elemental conversion system in game. Tbh it was disappointing it wasn't added to scribing and seems to be highly requested there. My issue with tying it to class is what happens with the classes that have more than one damage type (warden) or share a damage type (nightblade, templar)?

As it currently is:

• dragonknight has fire/poison
• nightblade has disease/magic/physical
• sorcerer has lightning/magic
• templar has fire/magic
• warden has frost/poison/bleed/physical
• necromancer has yes (ok a joke but they seriously have fire/frost/lightning/disease/bleed/physical throughout their kit)
• arcanist has mostly physical and magical damage with some frost as it's main elemental showing

Either way, just a quick glean/summary shows why just one element and tying it to a class would not be a good idea. Just taking frost alone, arcanist doesn't really have any other elemental leans but most people identify warden as the frost class so what would you do there? As I pointed out in another thread on class rework and balance overhaul discussion, nightblade damage generally sticks to generic physical or magical damage and I don't mind that/kinda like that but it makes things difficult if you want to slap a main element onto a class. Also, see another thread about worrying about warden's nature/ice theme will lead to an overfocus on the frost element and not disease/poison that is currently taking place.

While we do technically have an element for every class in game, forcing one of them onto some of the classes would be a very shoehorned attempt and I personally would not like it. I also think we have too much currently bound up in classes that I do not want to see more. I've said in other threads I have never been the largest fan of the eso class system so the emphasis of limiting things to class in recent years has been a major turnoff for me. Even ignoring the subclassing elephant in the room, we have several weapon lines and nonclass skill lines such as psijic that are straight up treading water in current game balance and I think the overemphasis on class and trying everything around it lately has been contributing to that problem.

So, yes I would like to see an elemental conversion system, but it should be tied to scribing or a new system and not classes.

IMO, distilling damage types into one or two per class is significantly more thematically satisfying than including a grab-bag of often one-off abilities that, basically through historical accident, do not support the vibes or mechanics of the rest of the class.

For example, there is no particular either vibes or mechanical reason why Surprise Attack should be the lone island of Physical Damage in the entire Nightblade class kit. That could and should just as easily, and far less arbitrarily from a theming perspective, be Poison or Bleed (Disease is for Necromancers; it simply makes too much sense).

A single element per class, along the lines of the new Dragonknight, would be, in my opinion, the most satisfying approach, but that cannot realistically be achieved for all classes due to the unfortunate thematic chaos found in many of them. But we should nonetheless endeavor to pare them down in situations where a great many exist and we should seek to reduce elemental crossover between classes to the absolute minimum. If we already have, for example, a purely Flame Damage class, and we do, then we do not need Flame Damage also represented elsewhere, otherwise elements can and will slip through the cracks and go essentially without viable representation in the game.

At present, Flame, Magic, and Physical are drastically over-represented while Disease, Shock, and Poison are among the worst represented (Disease has, in fact, literally zero representation outside of a small number of specific class abilities). So we should be looking to cull over-represented types from secondary class sources while canonizing others as the sanctuaries of the comparatively rare types.

We also need to move beyond the anachronistic thinking that each class needs one Magical and Martial type. The DK revamp proves that that logic is officially extinct if it does not also support core class theming objectives. In the era of hybridization, that distinction has long since ceased to matter.

SneaK

GloatingSwine wrote: »

The problem here is that there isn't really any item support for typed damage that isn't fire.

There are sets that deal typed damage, but there are no sets that enhance typed damage like Encratis' Behemoth does for fire.

And they'd need at least one 5pc, mythic, or monster set for every damage type.

And they'd need to be either competitive with or better than sets or items that just do generically more damage or crit damage. Which means that focusing on a single damage type is mechanically identical to not doing so because the things that make you do more damage, upon which builds are made, don't care which type of damage you did.

Feel like there are plenty of 5PC sets that cover the different types, for instance, whatever class gets bleed dmg in the refresh has blooddrinker which is like +20%, that’s better than any set out there as far as I know. It’ll probably get tweaked or nerfed but that’s just an example.

Emeratis

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Emeratis wrote: »

I'm not opposed to an elemental conversion system in game. Tbh it was disappointing it wasn't added to scribing and seems to be highly requested there. My issue with tying it to class is what happens with the classes that have more than one damage type (warden) or share a damage type (nightblade, templar)?

As it currently is:

• dragonknight has fire/poison
• nightblade has disease/magic/physical
• sorcerer has lightning/magic
• templar has fire/magic
• warden has frost/poison/bleed/physical
• necromancer has yes (ok a joke but they seriously have fire/frost/lightning/disease/bleed/physical throughout their kit)
• arcanist has mostly physical and magical damage with some frost as it's main elemental showing

Either way, just a quick glean/summary shows why just one element and tying it to a class would not be a good idea. Just taking frost alone, arcanist doesn't really have any other elemental leans but most people identify warden as the frost class so what would you do there? As I pointed out in another thread on class rework and balance overhaul discussion, nightblade damage generally sticks to generic physical or magical damage and I don't mind that/kinda like that but it makes things difficult if you want to slap a main element onto a class. Also, see another thread about worrying about warden's nature/ice theme will lead to an overfocus on the frost element and not disease/poison that is currently taking place.

While we do technically have an element for every class in game, forcing one of them onto some of the classes would be a very shoehorned attempt and I personally would not like it. I also think we have too much currently bound up in classes that I do not want to see more. I've said in other threads I have never been the largest fan of the eso class system so the emphasis of limiting things to class in recent years has been a major turnoff for me. Even ignoring the subclassing elephant in the room, we have several weapon lines and nonclass skill lines such as psijic that are straight up treading water in current game balance and I think the overemphasis on class and trying everything around it lately has been contributing to that problem.

So, yes I would like to see an elemental conversion system, but it should be tied to scribing or a new system and not classes.

IMO, distilling damage types into one or two per class is significantly more thematically satisfying than including a grab-bag of often one-off abilities that, basically through historical accident, do not support the vibes or mechanics of the rest of the class.

For example, there is no particular either vibes or mechanical reason why Surprise Attack should be the lone island of Physical Damage in the entire Nightblade class kit. That could and should just as easily, and far less arbitrarily from a theming perspective, be Poison or Bleed (Disease is for Necromancers; it simply makes too much sense).

A single element per class, along the lines of the new Dragonknight, would be, in my opinion, the most satisfying approach, but that cannot realistically be achieved for all classes due to the unfortunate thematic chaos found in many of them. But we should nonetheless endeavor to pare them down in situations where a great many exist and we should seek to reduce elemental crossover between classes to the absolute minimum. If we already have, for example, a purely Flame Damage class, and we do, then we do not need Flame Damage also represented elsewhere, otherwise elements can and will slip through the cracks and go essentially without viable representation in the game.

At present, Flame, Magic, and Physical are drastically over-represented while Disease, Shock, and Poison are among the worst represented (Disease has, in fact, literally zero representation outside of a small number of specific class abilities). So we should be looking to cull over-represented types from secondary class sources while canonizing others as the sanctuaries of the comparatively rare types.

We also need to move beyond the anachronistic thinking that each class needs one Magical and Martial type. The DK revamp proves that that logic is officially extinct if it does not also support core class theming objectives. In the era of hybridization, that distinction has long since ceased to matter.

While I do agree that current classes have way too much overlap, I don't really like the idea of tying elements to classes entirely for various reasons. Many of us, myself included, have wanted a proper elementalist. Subclassing brought us closer than we've ever been before to that, but it's not perfect. Elements in eso are already weird where we have geomancy in both dragonknight and sorc (earth and crystals respectively) but most geomancy skills just get flavored as physical for elemental purposes. Wind magic is very represented in lore and also in sets such as relequen or aegis caller but again, no official elemental nod in the system. We have light and shadow magic in game but both are just similarly to geomancy being slotted into generic physical damage, it's slotted into generic magic damage.

Dragonknight has always primarily been a fire based class and that is part of why it feels fine with the changes made to it for a lot of people. I do not think that solution works for all classes, however. Gonna go back to necromancer because it's the easiest to talk about with this, changing it from it's multiple elements to just disease destroys the class history of it's natural use of sets such as elemental catalyst or other multi-element sets. On that note, if we're going to chain classes to one or two elements, what happens to multi-element sets, that while not currently trendy in game, have existed in the past and will probably be explored in the future?

I agree with you that several damage types are very over-represented while others are underrepresented. I do worry about culling skills for the sake of "elemental diversity" and nothing else, however. That doesn't really make classes feel better, it just checks a box. As I mentioned, most people consider warden the frost class, but arcanist also has a pretty strong frost presence in it's skills despite it being more subtle and not as up front with that thematic.

I think for magic vs martial, you're thinking too mechanically about it when it's usually brought up post-hybridization on preference and rp flavor. The draw of this being a TES game means people are going to see what they see in a class and find different draws with it's thematic. Dk is easy to cite since the fire thematic is so prevalent in it's thematic and geomancy and draconic things and other thematics are either easy to reinforce the main fire theme or don't have as much fleshed out to play with compared to other classes. Arcanist is similarly rigid in theme where they are largely tied to Apocrypha based magic. Almost every other class has a lot more diversity of theme and draw for players though. I don't think it's archaicness that drives people to want more themes to explore in a class so much as those players prefer roleplaying elements and stronger character customization.

I think agree more than we don't but I also think some of your statements ignore there is a large portion of the playerbase where roleplay and choices matter. We've largely been in a meta that's stale for several years and offers limited choices. I don't want to see that made worse by pushing one element per class or something like that, hence my concerns with the suggested system and some of what you mentioned. Also as I stated in my original post, I feel elements and their power are more than just there to flavor classes.

I'd just rather see the elemental system in game as a whole get an update/overhaul in general. Maybe then elements without an official type get something (light, earth, shadow, etc) and we get poison and disease away from having a lot of weird overlap and generic tags of physical and magic damage get less frequent but more impactful but that's probably a little off topic.

Edit to add since I don't think it landed: my poison in my first post was meant to be a joke on dks losing poison next patch and less literal/complaining about it

SneaK

Emeratis wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Emeratis wrote: »

I'm not opposed to an elemental conversion system in game. Tbh it was disappointing it wasn't added to scribing and seems to be highly requested there. My issue with tying it to class is what happens with the classes that have more than one damage type (warden) or share a damage type (nightblade, templar)?

As it currently is:

• dragonknight has fire/poison
• nightblade has disease/magic/physical
• sorcerer has lightning/magic
• templar has fire/magic
• warden has frost/poison/bleed/physical
• necromancer has yes (ok a joke but they seriously have fire/frost/lightning/disease/bleed/physical throughout their kit)
• arcanist has mostly physical and magical damage with some frost as it's main elemental showing

Either way, just a quick glean/summary shows why just one element and tying it to a class would not be a good idea. Just taking frost alone, arcanist doesn't really have any other elemental leans but most people identify warden as the frost class so what would you do there? As I pointed out in another thread on class rework and balance overhaul discussion, nightblade damage generally sticks to generic physical or magical damage and I don't mind that/kinda like that but it makes things difficult if you want to slap a main element onto a class. Also, see another thread about worrying about warden's nature/ice theme will lead to an overfocus on the frost element and not disease/poison that is currently taking place.

While we do technically have an element for every class in game, forcing one of them onto some of the classes would be a very shoehorned attempt and I personally would not like it. I also think we have too much currently bound up in classes that I do not want to see more. I've said in other threads I have never been the largest fan of the eso class system so the emphasis of limiting things to class in recent years has been a major turnoff for me. Even ignoring the subclassing elephant in the room, we have several weapon lines and nonclass skill lines such as psijic that are straight up treading water in current game balance and I think the overemphasis on class and trying everything around it lately has been contributing to that problem.

So, yes I would like to see an elemental conversion system, but it should be tied to scribing or a new system and not classes.

IMO, distilling damage types into one or two per class is significantly more thematically satisfying than including a grab-bag of often one-off abilities that, basically through historical accident, do not support the vibes or mechanics of the rest of the class.

For example, there is no particular either vibes or mechanical reason why Surprise Attack should be the lone island of Physical Damage in the entire Nightblade class kit. That could and should just as easily, and far less arbitrarily from a theming perspective, be Poison or Bleed (Disease is for Necromancers; it simply makes too much sense).

A single element per class, along the lines of the new Dragonknight, would be, in my opinion, the most satisfying approach, but that cannot realistically be achieved for all classes due to the unfortunate thematic chaos found in many of them. But we should nonetheless endeavor to pare them down in situations where a great many exist and we should seek to reduce elemental crossover between classes to the absolute minimum. If we already have, for example, a purely Flame Damage class, and we do, then we do not need Flame Damage also represented elsewhere, otherwise elements can and will slip through the cracks and go essentially without viable representation in the game.

At present, Flame, Magic, and Physical are drastically over-represented while Disease, Shock, and Poison are among the worst represented (Disease has, in fact, literally zero representation outside of a small number of specific class abilities). So we should be looking to cull over-represented types from secondary class sources while canonizing others as the sanctuaries of the comparatively rare types.

We also need to move beyond the anachronistic thinking that each class needs one Magical and Martial type. The DK revamp proves that that logic is officially extinct if it does not also support core class theming objectives. In the era of hybridization, that distinction has long since ceased to matter.

While I do agree that current classes have way too much overlap, I don't really like the idea of tying elements to classes entirely for various reasons. Many of us, myself included, have wanted a proper elementalist. Subclassing brought us closer than we've ever been before to that, but it's not perfect. Elements in eso are already weird where we have geomancy in both dragonknight and sorc (earth and crystals respectively) but most geomancy skills just get flavored as physical for elemental purposes. Wind magic is very represented in lore and also in sets such as relequen or aegis caller but again, no official elemental nod in the system. We have light and shadow magic in game but both are just similarly to geomancy being slotted into generic physical damage, it's slotted into generic magic damage.

Dragonknight has always primarily been a fire based class and that is part of why it feels fine with the changes made to it for a lot of people. I do not think that solution works for all classes, however. Gonna go back to necromancer because it's the easiest to talk about with this, changing it from it's multiple elements to just disease destroys the class history of it's natural use of sets such as elemental catalyst or other multi-element sets. On that note, if we're going to chain classes to one or two elements, what happens to multi-element sets, that while not currently trendy in game, have existed in the past and will probably be explored in the future?

I agree with you that several damage types are very over-represented while others are underrepresented. I do worry about culling skills for the sake of "elemental diversity" and nothing else, however. That doesn't really make classes feel better, it just checks a box. As I mentioned, most people consider warden the frost class, but arcanist also has a pretty strong frost presence in it's skills despite it being more subtle and not as up front with that thematic.

I think for magic vs martial, you're thinking too mechanically about it when it's usually brought up post-hybridization on preference and rp flavor. The draw of this being a TES game means people are going to see what they see in a class and find different draws with it's thematic. Dk is easy to cite since the fire thematic is so prevalent in it's thematic and geomancy and draconic things and other thematics are either easy to reinforce the main fire theme or don't have as much fleshed out to play with compared to other classes. Arcanist is similarly rigid in theme where they are largely tied to Apocrypha based magic. Almost every other class has a lot more diversity of theme and draw for players though. I don't think it's archaicness that drives people to want more themes to explore in a class so much as those players prefer roleplaying elements and stronger character customization.

I think agree more than we don't but I also think some of your statements ignore there is a large portion of the playerbase where roleplay and choices matter. We've largely been in a meta that's stale for several years and offers limited choices. I don't want to see that made worse by pushing one element per class or something like that, hence my concerns with the suggested system and some of what you mentioned. Also as I stated in my original post, I feel elements and their power are more than just there to flavor classes.

I'd just rather see the elemental system in game as a whole get an update/overhaul in general. Maybe then elements without an official type get something (light, earth, shadow, etc) and we get poison and disease away from having a lot of weird overlap and generic tags of physical and magic damage get less frequent but more impactful but that's probably a little off topic.

Edit to add since I don't think it landed: my poison in my first post was meant to be a joke on dks losing poison next patch and less literal/complaining about it

Are they not moving to a base DMG type per class in the refresh though? Or is that just a big unverified assumption people have made since they did that with DK?

In a world where they do/did go that route, would you not be able to just subclass to create an “elementalist”? ie. Sorc/DK/Warden and you wind up with Lightning/Fire/Frost.

I personally think Scribing would have been the way to accomplish the original post, but was just having weird thoughts I guess assuming each class was getting a DMG type. Which IMO if this happens, it further limits specific classes to specific sets and weapon lines. Thematically, a DK running a 2H and an Ice Staff makes zero sense. Same with a Necro and any staff if they get dealt Disease dmg type.