Suggested changes to Magicka Detonation to make it actually work as intended

GorraShatan · May 2015

Tagging @ZOS_JessicaFolsom, @ZOS_BrianWheeler and @ZOS_GinaBruno so hopefully someone sees it.

As it stands, Magicka Detonation seems to be more a tool zergs spam on other groups than a means to deter zergs. With a 4 second cast time, it's hard to land enough of these on a zerg to matter, particularly without the protection of your own zerg. I'd like to suggest two changes:

1) Reduce the cast time. 2 second maybe? Something that doesn't make me a sitting duck right in front of an angry zerg.

2) Have the spell instead of just doing AOE damage apply the "troll poison" effect from Upper Craglorn / Sanctum Ophidia to players within a certain radius.

The way that poison effect works is that it does damage to you and everyone within a radius X of you, and it can stack multiple times. So if 5 players in your zerg get it applied to them, they need to spread out to avoid killing the zerg and each other. Thoughts?

Xsorus · May 2015

Heh, could add something similar to Last Gasp from Rift.

Basically it was a fairly hefty dot that you could apply to someone that stacked up to 5 times each time that person was healed.

Basically it constantly went off whenever they were healed..even if it was something small like a 20 point heal..It'd tic for like 500-600

I would say add something like Playing with Fire, but that'd end up just breaking healers in PvP

SturgeHammer · May 2015

Probably not the most popular stance, but I think getting rid of proximity detonation would make it work as intended. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have been hit by the ranged morph (not talking ranged base skill as people are forced to use it while leveling it).

Warraxx · May 2015

Got hit by a 21.2k prox det. perhaps just a tad too strong?

ToRelax · May 2015

Just needs to scale with players hit. Also remove the cast time and lower the base damage.
And the cast time is not 4 seconds, it's 1.8 seconds.

Erondil · May 2015

Warraxx wrote: »

Got hit by a 21.2k prox det. perhaps just a tad too strong?

21.2k means 2200 unbuffed spell dmg+minor berserker+major empowerement+major sorcellery+khajiit/bosmer NB in sneak. crit on a light armor guy ofc. A bit hard to get tho

Hypertionb14_ESO · May 2015

honestly its fine... 3-4 with this ability can wipe a raid without much difficulty...

so leave it alone..

maybe even reduce it when hitting only one target...

GorraShatan · May 2015

Hypertionb14_ESO wrote: »

honestly its fine... 3-4 with this ability can wipe a raid without much difficulty...

so leave it alone..

maybe even reduce it when hitting only one target...

Reducing it when hitting only one target is a great idea actually.

frozywozy · May 2015

GorraShatan wrote: »

Tagging @ZOS_JessicaFolsom, @ZOS_BrianWheeler and @ZOS_GinaBruno so hopefully someone sees it.

As it stands, Magicka Detonation seems to be more a tool zergs spam on other groups than a means to deter zergs. With a 4 second cast time, it's hard to land enough of these on a zerg to matter, particularly without the protection of your own zerg. I'd like to suggest two changes:

1) Reduce the cast time. 2 second maybe? Something that doesn't make me a sitting duck right in front of an angry zerg.

2) Have the spell instead of just doing AOE damage apply the "troll poison" effect from Upper Craglorn / Sanctum Ophidia to players within a certain radius.

The way that poison effect works is that it does damage to you and everyone within a radius X of you, and it can stack multiple times. So if 5 players in your zerg get it applied to them, they need to spread out to avoid killing the zerg and each other. Thoughts?

If you reduce the casting time, you're going to help the groups using it. lol

Draxys · May 2015

frozywozy wrote: »

GorraShatan wrote: »

Tagging @ZOS_JessicaFolsom, @ZOS_BrianWheeler and @ZOS_GinaBruno so hopefully someone sees it.

As it stands, Magicka Detonation seems to be more a tool zergs spam on other groups than a means to deter zergs. With a 4 second cast time, it's hard to land enough of these on a zerg to matter, particularly without the protection of your own zerg. I'd like to suggest two changes:

1) Reduce the cast time. 2 second maybe? Something that doesn't make me a sitting duck right in front of an angry zerg.

2) Have the spell instead of just doing AOE damage apply the "troll poison" effect from Upper Craglorn / Sanctum Ophidia to players within a certain radius.

The way that poison effect works is that it does damage to you and everyone within a radius X of you, and it can stack multiple times. So if 5 players in your zerg get it applied to them, they need to spread out to avoid killing the zerg and each other. Thoughts?

If you reduce the casting time, you're going to help the groups using it. lol

Yea. Tbh I doubt there's anything you can do to it that won't make it just further help the groups that use it in coordination, which are some of the same groups that people want it to be effective against.

ToRelax · May 2015

Draxys wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

GorraShatan wrote: »

Tagging @ZOS_JessicaFolsom, @ZOS_BrianWheeler and @ZOS_GinaBruno so hopefully someone sees it.

As it stands, Magicka Detonation seems to be more a tool zergs spam on other groups than a means to deter zergs. With a 4 second cast time, it's hard to land enough of these on a zerg to matter, particularly without the protection of your own zerg. I'd like to suggest two changes:

1) Reduce the cast time. 2 second maybe? Something that doesn't make me a sitting duck right in front of an angry zerg.

2) Have the spell instead of just doing AOE damage apply the "troll poison" effect from Upper Craglorn / Sanctum Ophidia to players within a certain radius.

The way that poison effect works is that it does damage to you and everyone within a radius X of you, and it can stack multiple times. So if 5 players in your zerg get it applied to them, they need to spread out to avoid killing the zerg and each other. Thoughts?

If you reduce the casting time, you're going to help the groups using it. lol

Yea. Tbh I doubt there's anything you can do to it that won't make it just further help the groups that use it in coordination, which are some of the same groups that people want it to be effective against.

Of course - if you have a skill that does great damage against many targets, a larger group can use it even more effectively when attacking stacked up large groups, than a small group could.
But if the base damage was reduced and the damage scaled with players hit in some way, then the large groups using it right now could not use it effectively against small groups, but vice versa.
I think that's pretty much exactly what a lot of people want?

Garion · May 2015

ToRelax wrote: »

Draxys wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

GorraShatan wrote: »

Tagging @ZOS_JessicaFolsom, @ZOS_BrianWheeler and @ZOS_GinaBruno so hopefully someone sees it.

As it stands, Magicka Detonation seems to be more a tool zergs spam on other groups than a means to deter zergs. With a 4 second cast time, it's hard to land enough of these on a zerg to matter, particularly without the protection of your own zerg. I'd like to suggest two changes:

1) Reduce the cast time. 2 second maybe? Something that doesn't make me a sitting duck right in front of an angry zerg.

2) Have the spell instead of just doing AOE damage apply the "troll poison" effect from Upper Craglorn / Sanctum Ophidia to players within a certain radius.

The way that poison effect works is that it does damage to you and everyone within a radius X of you, and it can stack multiple times. So if 5 players in your zerg get it applied to them, they need to spread out to avoid killing the zerg and each other. Thoughts?

If you reduce the casting time, you're going to help the groups using it. lol

Yea. Tbh I doubt there's anything you can do to it that won't make it just further help the groups that use it in coordination, which are some of the same groups that people want it to be effective against.

Of course - if you have a skill that does great damage against many targets, a larger group can use it even more effectively when attacking stacked up large groups, than a small group could.
But if the base damage was reduced and the damage scaled with players hit in some way, then the large groups using it right now could not use it effectively against small groups, but vice versa.
I think that's pretty much exactly what a lot of people want?

This is exactly what needs to happen. You can't implement a zerg buster that is just as - if not more - useful to the zerg than it is the smaller groups attempting to counter them.

Of course the obvious issue is that it adds yet another calculation to the already completely broken server performance. Not ideal, but if it was a viable counter to the zerging behaviour then perhaps it would cause enough people to spread out for it to balance out.

GorraShatan · May 2015

If you reduce the casting time, you're going to help the groups using it. lol[/quote]

Right. Hence why the two changes are both mentioned together.

cozmon3c_ESO · May 2015

The more people in the circle the more damage, simple. Tone down how much the initial hit is to stop it being more useful as a single target dps spell then it was intended.

1 enemy hit - 3000
2 - 6000
3- 9000
10 -30,000

Joy_Division · May 2015

As someone who has tried the range version against "pain trains," the cast time is problematic for more reasons beyond the obvious (namely it makes the user defenseless). The most frustrating part of using this spell is that too often, I'd estimate at least one-third of the time, the person I targeted moves out of range and the skill fails. You want to be at range when casting this spell because you cannot defend yourself and pain trains are mobile. Leave aside Nirn, barriers, damage shields, etc., it still does not do enough DPS because of its cast time - even if you even manage to get this off in the first place.

Other RPG games have spells that scale off the number of targets in a enclosed area (so does this game...the Chain Lightning ability the Mage from Aetherian Archive uses), that would go a long way from turning this spell from its current best uses (prox bomb vs unsuspecting target, counter to DK reflective scales) to it's intended function.