Equilibrium - How much is it used seriously?

UltimaJoe777 · June 2016

Equilibrium is the one skill in this game I just cannot see the benefit in using. So you run Spell Symmetry and get the 25% discount on the next Magicka skill you use within 5 seconds of using Spell Symmetry... Ok but you still burn your Health doing so. And Balance grants Major Resistance buffs for 4 seconds upon use... Yeah like we don't already have plenty of ways to do that.

Come on Zenimax, why is this skill still here? Give us something we can put to better use instead of tweaking it even if said tweak reduces the Health cost! There is SO much potential in the Mage's Guild for it to be wasted on this risky skill...

psychotic13 · June 2016

Yeah I wish they changed this, could have so many better abilities here and they'd be open to everyone

Ishammael · June 2016

Used to be an amazing skill pre 1.6.

Nerfed into the ground as a skill. BUT it also is not useful in a meta with Champion Points.

Nestor · June 2016

Every time I slotted Equilibrium, I would just end up killing myself.

Armitas · June 2016

The only legitimate use I have heard of lately for this skill is to bloodport off a tower through fall damage. Mage light is the only skill in the guild line that I have heard mentioned for it's own sake in the last year. Entropy is semi mentioned but usually for it's might of the guild proc or health bonus rather than the hot/dot.

It needs to be scraped and replaced, hopefully with some utility.

greylox · June 2016

Yeah mages guild line is seriously underwhelming and could do with a few skills completely reworked or replaced...ones like equilibrium, and I don't think there'd be any sort of uproar.

dodgehopper_ESO · June 2016

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a less cool version of the exchange skill that Sorcs get.

UltimaJoe777 · June 2016

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a less cool version of the exchange skill that Sorcs get.

Unfortunately barring suicide victims it failed miserably.

wayfarerx · June 2016

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a less cool version of the exchange skill that Sorcs get.

Unfortunately barring suicide victims it failed miserably.

This. I have only ever used this skill to commit suicide. There is almost never a scenario where you want to trade health for anything.

Father_X_Zombie · June 2016

I just use it to jump off a keep to blood spawn.

Dermestes · June 2016

Blazing shield build.....use it frequently.

Waffennacht · June 2016

Dermestes wrote: »

Blazing shield build.....use it frequently.

One type of extremely arcane build...

But it's not like they can change things while removing what you use.

What I mean is, sure you found it a niche and prob don't want it changed, but I'm betting they could change it for the better, or a morph.

The mage's guild line is pretty bad, it was on par with fighters guild, but then they buffed fighters. I bet things get changed in the future

Vaoh · June 2016

I planned on doing a quick writeup. This is what happened instead. Lol!

Mages Guild Skill Line Revamp (off the top of my head, this sounds great!):

Overall, we should push for this skill line to actually provide ways to deal Cold Damage.

Meteor - Decrease DoT damage by 10%
• Shooting Star - Same.
• Ice Comet - Increase DoT damage by 20%. Increase DoT duration by 2.5 seconds. (when you get the Mages Guild passives, the overall DoT should last for 15 seconds).

Magelight
• Inner Light - Same.
• Radiant Magelight - Same.

Entropy
• Structured Entropy - Same.
• Degeneration - Increase proc chance to 40%. While Degeneration is active, all abilities with a Magicka cost have a 5% chance to be cast for free.

Fire Rune - Increase Damage by 30%.
• Volcanice Rune - Same.
• Scalding Rune
• New: Frost Rune - Deals Cold Damage instead. Snare all enemies caught in the rune's AoE by by 40% for 4 seconds. Increase DoT damage by 400%. Frost Rune takes 3 seconds to arm.

And now for the difficult skill......
My idea: (totally scrapped the old ability. Now it's a toggle and has very high magicka costs to both activate and deactivate)
Equilibrium - This ability is now a toggle. While toggled, increase Max Magicka by 10% and Max Health by 5%. While slotted, your health recovery is disabled, your stamina recovery is reduced by 30%, and you afflict yourself with Minor Vulnerability, increasing damage taken by 8%.
• Balance - You are no longer afflicted by Minor Vulnerability while this ability is slotted, nor are your health and stamina recoveries reduced. Your Max Health no longer gains a 5% increase. Spell Damage increased by 2%.
• Ancient Curse - Toggling this skill for longer than 30 seconds imbues you with a deadly curse. The values by which this skill increases your Max Magicka and Max Health have been doubled. Your Spell Damage has been increased by 10%. However, the curse strips you of 500 health every 2 seconds and steals 100 more each time it ticks. Any healing you cast on yourself is cut in half. After 80 seconds, the curse becomes even more deadly, sapping 1500 health every second and forcefully negating all healing you cast. Your damage is increased by 10%.

ALSO replace a current ability or add.....

That ability which some NPCs use where they place a 5m AoE DoT on the floor. It looks like a splatter of ice, and slows you while dealing high damage over time.

Frost Ring - Spawn a ring of biting frost around you to deal X Cold Damage immediately and X Cold Damage every second to enemies within its radius. Also snares by 40%.
(Duration: 10 sec, Radius: 5 meters, Cost: Equal to Purge or Ring of Protection as Magicka aka a high cost).
• Frozen Torment - Immobilizes enemies for 3 seconds. Enemies who were immobilized are no longer snared while within your ring. Instead, they are snared for 20% when outside your ring for the rest of its duration.
• Blizzard - Your ring now lasts for 20 seconds, and the radius has been increased to 10 meters. It no longer deals the initial Cold damage tick, and the Cold Damage over time is decreased by 20%. Instead, your ring now increases its damage by 15% every 5 seconds, and can be reactivated after 21 seconds for double the cost but now with a 20 meter radius.

bigereard · June 2016

Dermestes wrote: »

Blazing shield build.....use it frequently.

same here,
it's good when you have 60k+ health & 8k+ health regen (or/and scourge harvester, but i think it will be nerfed soon).
spell symmetry is even better.
what makes this spell rarely used is they almost never appear in popular build guide

I think the one that need improvement is balance morph.

And revamping the ability means renaming the skill completely since this spell is originated from skyrim

GreenSoup2HoT · June 2016

I used to use this ability for Empower before Mage Light was changed to an active back when it was a toggle. It was a great way to empower and grant magicka + reduce cost while setting up for a gank.

Here's what i want to see done to this ability:

-Allow the ability to be cast-able in stealth.

Why?

I would rather an alternative to mage light for stealth empower. Mage light is good but can get you caught in a bad situation if someone is revealed and they notice. Since i'm usually a duel dagger ganker, this happen's to me a lot. With this ability cast-able in stealth, i would not need Mage Light and it would give my stamina nightblade a nice access to magicka to cloak more often

Aemon_Isklexi · June 2016

@Doncellius There are a few cold spells that NPCs use that we don't have.

The ice barricade to block ranged attacks.

Several missile type spells that immobilize.

Smasherx74 · June 2016

I used to use Equilibrium on my Tank/Healer a long time ago. I think the new morph is a nerf, I'd much rather have that increase health regen. But It's whatever, equilibrium isn't really usable in a good build.

Paraflex · June 2016

I use this skill in group pvp for healing only. It's great and saves me from needing to use a potion and I can heal for ever. This skill does need more appeal because right now its under utilized and dangerous to use in pvp as I have increased my deaths significantly due to using this skill.

Dracane · June 2016

As a mage, I rather sacrifise health than stamina, plus no casttime. Stamina management is way too hard to sacrifise stamina

Loosing health is not that dangerous.

Equilibrium is clearly the better choice when you pvp in groups, because there are heals everywhere and you can spam this without loosing health.

Dark Exchange is almost stamina Sorc exlusive. They have the stam to use the stam morph, and they can just use the Magicka dump if they want the other morph. Dark Exchange is almost a no-go for Magicka Sorcerers.

Tyrion87 · June 2016

I'm not a suicide :-)

To be honest, I've never spent a skill point into this skill and it surprises me that there are actually people who make use of it. Instead of this one I would see a good spammable DPS magicka-based ability cause there is no such skill within Mages Guild skill line. There is only one DPS skill - Meteor, but it's an ultimate so it doesn't count.

ToRelax · June 2016

It's just not very useful with CP and no softcaps. Pre 1.6 pretty much every PvE DPS build used it frequently.

incite · June 2016

Nice movie tho

abelsgmx · August 2018

Sorcs have a very good magicka recovery skill without loose health, this is one useless skill

RedRook · August 2018

Vaoh wrote: »

I planned on doing a quick writeup. This is what happened instead. Lol!

Mages Guild Skill Line Revamp (off the top of my head, this sounds great!):

Overall, we should push for this skill line to actually provide ways to deal Cold Damage.

Meteor - Decrease DoT damage by 10%
• Shooting Star - Same.
• Ice Comet - Increase DoT damage by 20%. Increase DoT duration by 2.5 seconds. (when you get the Mages Guild passives, the overall DoT should last for 15 seconds).

Magelight
• Inner Light - Same.
• Radiant Magelight - Same.

Entropy
• Structured Entropy - Same.
• Degeneration - Increase proc chance to 40%. While Degeneration is active, all abilities with a Magicka cost have a 5% chance to be cast for free.

Fire Rune - Increase Damage by 30%.
• Volcanice Rune - Same.
• Scalding Rune
• New: Frost Rune - Deals Cold Damage instead. Snare all enemies caught in the rune's AoE by by 40% for 4 seconds. Increase DoT damage by 400%. Frost Rune takes 3 seconds to arm.

And now for the difficult skill......
My idea: (totally scrapped the old ability. Now it's a toggle and has very high magicka costs to both activate and deactivate)
Equilibrium - This ability is now a toggle. While toggled, increase Max Magicka by 10% and Max Health by 5%. While slotted, your health recovery is disabled, your stamina recovery is reduced by 30%, and you afflict yourself with Minor Vulnerability, increasing damage taken by 8%.
• Balance - You are no longer afflicted by Minor Vulnerability while this ability is slotted, nor are your health and stamina recoveries reduced. Your Max Health no longer gains a 5% increase. Spell Damage increased by 2%.
• Ancient Curse - Toggling this skill for longer than 30 seconds imbues you with a deadly curse. The values by which this skill increases your Max Magicka and Max Health have been doubled. Your Spell Damage has been increased by 10%. However, the curse strips you of 500 health every 2 seconds and steals 100 more each time it ticks. Any healing you cast on yourself is cut in half. After 80 seconds, the curse becomes even more deadly, sapping 1500 health every second and forcefully negating all healing you cast. Your damage is increased by 10%.

ALSO replace a current ability or add.....

That ability which some NPCs use where they place a 5m AoE DoT on the floor. It looks like a splatter of ice, and slows you while dealing high damage over time.

Frost Ring - Spawn a ring of biting frost around you to deal X Cold Damage immediately and X Cold Damage every second to enemies within its radius. Also snares by 40%.
(Duration: 10 sec, Radius: 5 meters, Cost: Equal to Purge or Ring of Protection as Magicka aka a high cost).
• Frozen Torment - Immobilizes enemies for 3 seconds. Enemies who were immobilized are no longer snared while within your ring. Instead, they are snared for 20% when outside your ring for the rest of its duration.
• Blizzard - Your ring now lasts for 20 seconds, and the radius has been increased to 10 meters. It no longer deals the initial Cold damage tick, and the Cold Damage over time is decreased by 20%. Instead, your ring now increases its damage by 15% every 5 seconds, and can be reactivated after 21 seconds for double the cost but now with a 20 meter radius.

Dear ZOS,

Seriously, give @Vaoh a way to play an awesome ice mage. Please. I think he has a couple of ideas for you, if you're drawing a blank.

Sincerely, Rook

Nifty2g · August 2018

Tanks use it all the time

hedna123b14_ESO · August 2018

Speaking strictly for PvE, Spell sym is a staple for magdks and magplars. Possibly less so for magplars because of the changes to run focus, but that remains to be seen. If you are an aware player you know when damage is coming out and thus only spell sym when the incoming damage is low. Last patch a well placed Spell sym single cast returned more magicka than a full duration of channeled focus.

BooPerScOOper · August 2018

Nifty2g wrote: »

Tanks use it all the time

Was going to say exactly that.

TheUndeadAmulet · August 2018

It's useful for magicka management on tanks.

Krayl · August 2018

should be noted the original post is years old. Not sure why someone found it relevant to bump but mmkay.

Saint314Louis1985 · August 2018

I don’t play tank but pretty sure most tanks say it’s op.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · August 2018

BooPerScOOper wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

Tanks use it all the time

Was going to say exactly that.

this thread is from 2016, necro, when the major resist buffs did not last from balance for 23 seconds the do now, they lasted for 4. yes 4 whole seconds, you can see why no one used this skill then. plus this is when there was way better resource management in the game, ie before the morrowind patch, so tanks did not need to use it.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Equilibrium - How much is it used seriously?

Equilibrium - How much is it used seriously? 113 votes