Heavy Attacks and Uppercut / Snipe

Wing · August 2015

so I was thinking about how ZOS is constantly trying to get us to use fully charged heavy attacks, and after some deliberation on the subject I posed this idea to a few people that all thought it was actually kind of clever.

what if heavy attacks replicated the idea (damage / time) of skills like Uppercut and Snipe for all weapon types, and skills like Uppercut and Snipe were replaced with more interesting and varied skills like all the others?

what this means is that heavy attacks of all kinds would in fact be the best straight DPS (like spamming snipe / uppercut) but not provide any secondary effects or utility. while all skills would provide much more varied abilities and utility as most of them do now.

Groggpuffar · August 2015

I don't understand what you're trying to say. Do you mean that heavy attacks is only uppercut or what?

Jeckll · August 2015

But heavy attacks already grant additional benefit. It returns resources so it HAS TO deal less damage. Btw Uppercut and Snipe as as far away from best dps as I`m away from dating Jennifer Lawrence.

I think their approach to give la / ha additional benefits is correct. It works for dk for example. They already use fully changed heavy attacks in their rota.

Wing · August 2015

pretty much pretend uppercut was the 2-hander heavy attack, and snipe was the bow heavy attack, then imagine similar for all weapons (minus the stamina / magicka cost) as far as animation time = damage goes.

that would make heavy attacks viable as they would be the best straight DPS (especially not costing stamina / magicka) but not providing the utility / versatility of skills.

this would likely lead combat away from massive amounts of regen and simply spamming skills, to using the base combat mechanics more (light / heavy attacks) with skills used for there versatility and utility.

leepalmer95 · August 2015

Well depends, some skill lines take while to do a heavy attack so it takes 2 seconds or such so unless heavy attack did double the dmg of a wrecking blow or snipe (which have 1 second charges times) then they wouldn't do that dmg, also the fact that heavy attacks are so easy to see and dodge and i'm not sure ive even seen people viably use them in pvp.

Wing · August 2015

Jeckll wrote: »

But heavy attacks already grant additional benefit. It returns resources so it HAS TO deal less damage. Btw Uppercut and Snipe as as far away from best dps as I`m away from dating Jennifer Lawrence.

I think their approach to give la / ha additional benefits is correct. It works for dk for example. They already use fully changed heavy attacks in their rota.

if heavy attacks did decent damage they would not have to tack on secondary mechanics like resource return (that has NEVER made sense) to get us to use them, as we would be saving resources by simply using heavy attacks instead of skills like uppercut and snipe. (that cost resources comparably)

Wing · August 2015

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Well depends, some skill lines take while to do a heavy attack so it takes 2 seconds or such so unless heavy attack did double the dmg of a wrecking blow or snipe (which have 1 second charges times) then they wouldn't do that dmg, also the fact that heavy attacks are so easy to see and dodge and i'm not sure ive even seen people viably use them in pvp.

obviously I think tweaking would need to take place, but that's why I suggested the time to damage ratio of skills like uppercut and snipe. both of those have secondary effects that would not be applied to heavy attacks so I assume the damage to time ratio would actually be better.

and I agree right now the heavy attack animation is just tooooo long.

Jeckll · August 2015

Wing wrote: »

Jeckll wrote: »

But heavy attacks already grant additional benefit. It returns resources so it HAS TO deal less damage. Btw Uppercut and Snipe as as far away from best dps as I`m away from dating Jennifer Lawrence.

I think their approach to give la / ha additional benefits is correct. It works for dk for example. They already use fully changed heavy attacks in their rota.

if heavy attacks did decent damage they would not have to tack on secondary mechanics like resource return (that has NEVER made sense) to get us to use them, as we would be saving resources by simply using heavy attacks instead of skills like uppercut and snipe. (that cost resources comparably)

I think what you didnt think of, yet is the fact that if heavy attacks do as much damage as a skill and the skill only has an additional effect like reduce armor for example, you would use the skill once every x seconds until the skill benefit has to be refreshed. That means there will never be resource management required ever again. So skills would have to cost waaaay more. It's a insane balancing effort and when you finally did it, you will realise you have to do something with light attacks as well. Because you can weave la with skills, not with heavy attacks... So basically, you have to buff heavy attacks again :P