Critical Surge & Dual Wield

GreyRanger · August 2015

If I am understanding the mechanic correctly it seems to me that the interaction between dual wield and critical surge is broken. The three primary attacks largely negate the key contribution of critical surge: the heal on critical.

Twin slashes: 83% of the damage is DOT so is disqualified
Flurry (primary DW ST attack): all of it is classified as DOT so is disqualified
Whirlwind: AOE so is never very productive in procing the heal

Would it be possible to fix DW and/or Critical Surge so this combination makes sense. It would be really grand for those who used to play the old sorcerer reaver build before 1.6 broke that build.

Thanks for your consideration.

As an aside question: is there any reason to put critical surge on the bar rather than momentum?

RoyJade · August 2015

I've tried surge yesterday in the CI. Not a lot of pvp, but a lot of pve.
Surge is awesome with critical rush and wrecking blow, I have 45% critical and my WB heal me for 80% of my life against mobs. 80% heal each 2 second, that's good, far better than rally and his high cost now. Critical rush give me a 40% healing and 20% against a player, which is good too (especially against long ranged player who try one or two time to create a gap). Even my medium attack hive me a good heal, and a weaving attack don't steal a WB/critical rush heal, both of the hit give a heal. So IMO, surge seem very good now… with a 2 handed weapon.

Flying blade spamming give you a good heal too, but not a great one and a poor dps aside. surge heal really need to proc on flurry, at least.

Oh, and surge werewolf is just awesome, but that's not the question.

Jar_Ek · August 2015

Wrt Whirlwind, the aoe has a better chance to proc a heal and 300% at low target health makes it okay. Other than that zos need to rethink DoTs wrt surge heal. The simplest method would be for dots not to trigger the cool down.

Dekkameron · August 2015

At least twin slashes/flurry doesnt proc critical surge at all now and waste the cooldown.

Jar_Ek · August 2015

Flurry cannot waste the cool down. It's a channel. Plus with 0.1s cool down even regular DoTs aren't as big an issue I suspect.

Ahzek · August 2015

Flurry not proccing crit surge is straight out dumb and should be fixed asap imo. However we have been saying that since 2.1.0 hit the PTS and have heard nothing about that since.
For twin slashes im not so sure, since the spells DoT component, while being the main source of damage the skill provides, does not tick very high and might snatch heals away from harder hitting crits.
Whirlwind is an AoE as you have said yourself, and as such crit surge proccing of every enemie crit would be fatal, basically rendering the caster immortal short of oneshots or CC combos, when enough targets are at hand. For now you are basically guaranteed a heal with crit surge from it at least, when you manage to hit multiple opponents.
Lastly you havent talked about blade cloak, but its 3 sec interval damage is also a DoT and doesnt procc crit surge, which similary to twin slashes i do not find too much of an issue and which might actually be beneficial.

For PvE you put surge > momentum cause it will now provide weapon damage via expert mage and also because it costs magicka, indirectly increasing your stamina sustain. In PvP you will probably only ever slot crit surge if you already have rally so you can get the best of both worlds.

GreyRanger · August 2015

Ahzek wrote: »

Flurry not proccing crit surge is straight out dumb and should be fixed asap imo. However we have been saying that since 2.1.0 hit the PTS and have heard nothing about that since.
For twin slashes im not so sure, since the spells DoT component, while being the main source of damage the skill provides, does not tick very high and might snatch heals away from harder hitting crits.

I think the key issue is that Critical Surge and DW just don't synergize at all, where Crit Surge and 2 hand do. Just to allow people more play options I wish they would fix this. The Flurry issue is weird that they have not fixed that.

Dyride · August 2015

Flurry doesn't give Crit Surge heals but it also doesn't break Rune Prison. I think I'd you are running DW, you will have to rely more on Vigor for regular heals unless you focus on Flying Blade.

TBois · August 2015

They need to let it prix in dots, get rid of the cool down and limit overheating by number of targets like sap essence

GreyRanger · August 2015

The suggestion was made over and over and over at 1.6 to leave surge as is and just limit the number of AOE targets to say 6 to fix the issue they seemed to be after with the Surge + AOE interaction that used to be so fun. ZOS did not like that idea so we have had the running mess as they try to cope with cool downs, DOT, and ST damage.

Hopefully they will figure something out that works. It would be nice if they too the simple solution that was offered 6 months ago.

Jar_Ek · August 2015

@sixuponthelot I suspect if they could have just limited heals based on number of targets they would have. However crit surge is a buff and not an attack - which means they might not be tracking number of critical surge heals from a single ability, but simply letting everything apply. Thus the cool down would be applied on the critical surge heal. Now given time I am sure they could rework it... but then there are a lot of things that also need work n so is it a priority? for everyone except sorcerers, no