What about adding more depth to weapons?

Sparky617 · August 2014

I've been playing casually since the early beta weekends and have tried out almost every weapon combination between my Sorcerer and Nightblade. I'm not sure if adding depth to weapons will tip the scales in a direction away from magic staff, but I think it sure would add some nice complexities to the game in general. I've listed my top three ideas. What do you all think?

1) Introduce weapon speed. Daggers should be faster than maces, with swords and axes in the middle. Two handed swords, mauls, battle axes, (and hopefully Pole arms someday) should have different speeds. It would make traits like Charged or Powered more meaningful than saving soul gems

2) Quivers for bow, scabbards for 2 handed melee weapons, and charms for magic staff should be added to the game. These would be equipped in the off hand slot while these weapons are equipped, allowing us to have the same combination of set bonuses that a dual wield, or sword and board player has. I personaly run a 5 piece Night's Silence with a 4piece Twilight's Embrace as a dual wielder.

3) Add a third resource pool. Dodging, blocking, and sprinting should NOT use the same resource pool as our our weapon abilities. I think this is one of the biggest contributors as to why magic based characters are more powerful. They can focus entirely on one resource pool and still have all the dodge and block they want, where the Stamina weapon users have to balance that out.. block one too many times and oops, you can't toss out a Steel Tornado

Nestor · August 2014

Weapons already have speeds. At least 2 Handed are slower than One Handed weapons. The other differences are in the "after you hit them effects".

I do think 2 handers do get gimped by not having that extra piece for a crafted set or an enhanted stat bonus, but they can also deal out more damage, so it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other there.

Sprinting should have a different pool than the others, something like Endurance. Anything in combat should all come out of one pool. So, Blocking, Dodging and Weapon Hits need to come from one pool. In return, give is a some more damage from straight up melee hits. The Stamina Pool will keep it in balance.

Armitas · August 2014

I think you are on to something with weapons needing more depth. Half of the problem with weapons is that you must build both stamina and magicka because it is difficult to be well rounded from weapon skills alone requiring you to mix weapon skills with class skills.

Your class has 3 trees, or 15 skills, to build a well rounded Magicka build from. However each weapon line only has 5 skills, leaving you reliant upon both stamina and magicka. A magicka build can cap a single pool and improve their dps for their staff skills and their class abilities simultaneously, but a stamina dpser has two pools to worry about. Perhaps if each stamina based weapon line went deeper, such as adding 2 more weapon skills, it might reduce the dependency on having to dip into magicka based class skills.

Sparky617 · August 2014

There is always the option of just making ALL weapons based off stamina, forcing the staff wielders to play the same balancing act that blade and bow users are playing.

eventide03b14a_ESO · August 2014

Sparky617 wrote: »

I've been playing casually since the early beta weekends and have tried out almost every weapon combination between my Sorcerer and Nightblade. I'm not sure if adding depth to weapons will tip the scales in a direction away from magic staff, but I think it sure would add some nice complexities to the game in general. I've listed my top three ideas. What do you all think?

1) Introduce weapon speed. Daggers should be faster than maces, with swords and axes in the middle. Two handed swords, mauls, battle axes, (and hopefully Pole arms someday) should have different speeds. It would make traits like Charged or Powered more meaningful than saving soul gems

Two handed weapons already move slower but I agree that daggers should move quicker than swords and do less damage. Right now swords and daggers do the same damage. There actually should be different damage types too and different armor should be able to handle that differently. Like piercing and slashing damage for instance.

2) Quivers for bow, scabbards for 2 handed melee weapons, and charms for magic staff should be added to the game. These would be equipped in the off hand slot while these weapons are equipped, allowing us to have the same combination of set bonuses that a dual wield, or sword and board player has. I personal run a 5 piece Night's Silence with a 4piece Twilight's Embrace as a dual wielder.

This is an interesting idea.

3) Add a third resource pool. Dodging, blocking, and sprinting should NOT use the same resource pool as our our weapon abilities. I think this is one of the biggest contributors as to why magic based characters are more powerful. They can focus entirely on one resource pool and still have all the dodge and block they want, where the Stamina weapon users have to balance that out.. block one too many times and oops, you can't toss out a Steel Tornado

That sort of contradicts the way TES games have always been played. It would be nice if there was more stamina conserving passives. I find that I don't really have a problem on my Nightblade with stamina as a primary pool for damage and defense anymore. He is equipped with medium armor.

khele23eb17_ESO · August 2014

Sparky617 wrote: »

I've been playing casually since the early beta weekends and have tried out almost every weapon combination between my Sorcerer and Nightblade. I'm not sure if adding depth to weapons will tip the scales in a direction away from magic staff, but I think it sure would add some nice complexities to the game in general. I've listed my top three ideas. What do you all think?

1) Introduce weapon speed. Daggers should be faster than maces, with swords and axes in the middle. Two handed swords, mauls, battle axes, (and hopefully Pole arms someday) should have different speeds. It would make traits like Charged or Powered more meaningful than saving soul gems

Not sure its a good idea due to animation cancelling and sneak attacks. Youd end up with people using the slowest, hardest hitting weapons exclusively.

2) Quivers for bow, scabbards for 2 handed melee weapons, and charms for magic staff should be added to the game. These would be equipped in the off hand slot while these weapons are equipped, allowing us to have the same combination of set bonuses that a dual wield, or sword and board player has. I personaly run a 5 piece Night's Silence with a 4piece Twilight's Embrace as a dual wielder.

Sounds good.

3) Add a third resource pool. Dodging, blocking, and sprinting should NOT use the same resource pool as our our weapon abilities. I think this is one of the biggest contributors as to why magic based characters are more powerful. They can focus entirely on one resource pool and still have all the dodge and block they want, where the Stamina weapon users have to balance that out.. block one too many times and oops, you can't toss out a Steel Tornado

Sparky617 · August 2014

Love the dead horse!!! lol +1 for you sir

Sparky617 · August 2014

@Eventide03b14a_ESO - I understand, but it I'd think that a two handed sword would be a bit faster and more agile than two handed Maul.

@khele23eb17_eso - Animation cancelling works currently but I don't think that it should be a factor when considering variable weapon speeds. If anything animation canceling should be eliminated, or the animations should be changed to a single animation that can't be clipped and fits within the time frame of a global cool down.

eventide03b14a_ESO · August 2014

Sparky617 wrote: »

@Eventide03b14a_ESO - I understand, but it I'd thin that a two handed sword would be a bit faster and more agile than two handed Maul.

@khele23eb17_eso - Animation cancelling works currently but I don't think that it should be a factor when considering variable weapon speeds. If anything animation canceling should be eliminated, or the animations should changed to a single animation that can't be clipped until the global cool down has expired.

I completely agree. And the maul should be able to damage through plate armor and do blunt damage but plate armor should have more protection from slashing damage.

khele23eb17_ESO · August 2014

Sparky617 wrote: »

@khele23eb17_eso - Animation cancelling works currently but I don't think that it should be a factor when considering variable weapon speeds. If anything animation canceling should be eliminated, or the animations should be changed to a single animation that can't be clipped and fits within the time frame of a global cool down.

Even if they removed animation cancelling (not likely) youd still end up with people always using the heaviest possible weapon for sneak attacks. Makes perfect sense... if you want to sneak up on someone drag a huge warhammer behind you :P