Shadesofkin wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing with people on this thread

That aside there seem to be some issues with regards to balance which are being ignored here.

Staffs are RANGED and thus are inherently less risky to use. It's easier to both avoid damage and to finish a fight with a ranged weapon, and as such I would EXPECT them to have lower DPS.

Also, MOST class skills are magika based, so the staff skill lines are complimented by MOST class skills, while stamina based weapons are pretty much stand alone with only a FEW class skills available at the same power level.

Can this discussion acknowledge that the staff skill lines are intended to supplement the class skills and as such look at them as primary support skill lines?

When using stamina builds you are expected to mostly use the weapon skills for your spammable dps. The only exception I can think of is the nightblade suprise attack, but even there rapid strikes has higher dps.

Once again, I'm not in any way saying that stamina and magi are playing on an even battlefield at the moment, or that there are not balance issues.
All I am saying is that staffs play a very different role than the stamina weapons in how they function with the rest of the class and should not be looked at in isolation, because in isolation staff skills will be inferior to weapon skills BY DESIGN.

The ultimate problem I have with this argument is that the difference between staves and the other 4 skills in the game is nearly 15k dps if you're set up correctly. I'm not convinced that melee needs 15k difference from ranged.

Furthermore, the magicka DK is a melee as well and using anything but a staff would be a massive dps loss for them.

Shadesofkin wrote: »

@Tannus15 possibly, but I think that staves do need a damage increase as *part* of the solution.

Tannus15 wrote: »

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing with people on this thread

That aside there seem to be some issues with regards to balance which are being ignored here.

Staffs are RANGED and thus are inherently less risky to use. It's easier to both avoid damage and to finish a fight with a ranged weapon, and as such I would EXPECT them to have lower DPS.

Also, MOST class skills are magika based, so the staff skill lines are complimented by MOST class skills, while stamina based weapons are pretty much stand alone with only a FEW class skills available at the same power level.

Can this discussion acknowledge that the staff skill lines are intended to supplement the class skills and as such look at them as primary support skill lines?

When using stamina builds you are expected to mostly use the weapon skills for your spammable dps. The only exception I can think of is the nightblade suprise attack, but even there rapid strikes has higher dps.

Once again, I'm not in any way saying that stamina and magi are playing on an even battlefield at the moment, or that there are not balance issues.
All I am saying is that staffs play a very different role than the stamina weapons in how they function with the rest of the class and should not be looked at in isolation, because in isolation staff skills will be inferior to weapon skills BY DESIGN.

Tannus15 wrote: »

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing with people on this thread

That aside there seem to be some issues with regards to balance which are being ignored here.

Staffs are RANGED and thus are inherently less risky to use. It's easier to both avoid damage and to finish a fight with a ranged weapon, and as such I would EXPECT them to have lower DPS.

Also, MOST class skills are magika based, so the staff skill lines are complimented by MOST class skills, while stamina based weapons are pretty much stand alone with only a FEW class skills available at the same power level.

Can this discussion acknowledge that the staff skill lines are intended to supplement the class skills and as such look at them as primary support skill lines?

When using stamina builds you are expected to mostly use the weapon skills for your spammable dps. The only exception I can think of is the nightblade suprise attack, but even there rapid strikes has higher dps.

Once again, I'm not in any way saying that stamina and magi are playing on an even battlefield at the moment, or that there are not balance issues.
All I am saying is that staffs play a very different role than the stamina weapons in how they function with the rest of the class and should not be looked at in isolation, because in isolation staff skills will be inferior to weapon skills BY DESIGN.

ragespell wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing with people on this thread

That aside there seem to be some issues with regards to balance which are being ignored here.

Staffs are RANGED and thus are inherently less risky to use. It's easier to both avoid damage and to finish a fight with a ranged weapon, and as such I would EXPECT them to have lower DPS.

Also, MOST class skills are magika based, so the staff skill lines are complimented by MOST class skills, while stamina based weapons are pretty much stand alone with only a FEW class skills available at the same power level.

Can this discussion acknowledge that the staff skill lines are intended to supplement the class skills and as such look at them as primary support skill lines?

When using stamina builds you are expected to mostly use the weapon skills for your spammable dps. The only exception I can think of is the nightblade suprise attack, but even there rapid strikes has higher dps.

Once again, I'm not in any way saying that stamina and magi are playing on an even battlefield at the moment, or that there are not balance issues.
All I am saying is that staffs play a very different role than the stamina weapons in how they function with the rest of the class and should not be looked at in isolation, because in isolation staff skills will be inferior to weapon skills BY DESIGN.

Can we stop saying that? There are so many gap closer in this game, that a ranged class can never fight at range.
Besides, in every game, less mitigation means more damage.

And in PVE, if what you are saying were true, you would see a balance dps wise. But were are the risks you are talking about, when stamina users can pull double dps than a magicka user?!?

IMHO, it's really bad design.

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

ragespell wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing with people on this thread

That aside there seem to be some issues with regards to balance which are being ignored here.

Staffs are RANGED and thus are inherently less risky to use. It's easier to both avoid damage and to finish a fight with a ranged weapon, and as such I would EXPECT them to have lower DPS.

Also, MOST class skills are magika based, so the staff skill lines are complimented by MOST class skills, while stamina based weapons are pretty much stand alone with only a FEW class skills available at the same power level.

Can this discussion acknowledge that the staff skill lines are intended to supplement the class skills and as such look at them as primary support skill lines?

When using stamina builds you are expected to mostly use the weapon skills for your spammable dps. The only exception I can think of is the nightblade suprise attack, but even there rapid strikes has higher dps.

Once again, I'm not in any way saying that stamina and magi are playing on an even battlefield at the moment, or that there are not balance issues.
All I am saying is that staffs play a very different role than the stamina weapons in how they function with the rest of the class and should not be looked at in isolation, because in isolation staff skills will be inferior to weapon skills BY DESIGN.

Can we stop saying that? There are so many gap closer in this game, that a ranged class can never fight at range.
Besides, in every game, less mitigation means more damage.

And in PVE, if what you are saying were true, you would see a balance dps wise. But were are the risks you are talking about, when stamina users can pull double dps than a magicka user?!?

IMHO, it's really bad design.

Actually it matters for pve. For easy content where you don't take significant damage not so much, but just look at the videos BI / Hodor posted or ask any guild that is seriously attempting vMoL HM. All of them are mostly taking mag dds since a living magblade will pull higher dps than a dead stamdk.

Joy_Division wrote: »

For most of ESO's history, the running joke was that the combat team did not play the game, or at least never PvP. We don't say that anymore. Now we say that the devs only play stam DPS. That's a problem that this patch did nothing to dispel and only reinforced this perception.

I was not expecting this patch to fix the stam-magicka divide; however, I was expecting to see at least a hint that the combat team was aware staff users and magicka in general was in a poor place and thus this patch is a colossal disappointment.

A lot of people are complaining about how underwhelming the Destruction Staff ultimate is, and rightly so. It's a telegraphed DoT that does less damage, no CC effect, or ultimate restoration than Meteor which has a 20% cheaper cost (to say nothing of the Mage Guild passives it provides). It's the absolute last thing a destruction staff user wants because she already has the best ground DoT effect in the game with elemental wall. Also every single class already has a better, cheaper, more versatile AoE DoT in class ultimate, all of which provide valuable functions (damage mitigation, heal debuffs, gravity crush, silence, etc.) that are even better than the DoT damage. The destruction staff ultimate is 100% superfluous. It is crystal clear to me that whoever designed this ultimate has not had the frustration of trying to play ESO competitively with a destruction staff.

Now, ZoS has spent so much time and resources and artwork and stuff on this lackluster and redundant ultimate there is no way that it will redesign the ultimate it to give it a function that might actually be useful and desired by a destruction staff user (**ehem, burst damage**). But I suppose it doesn't matter, because even with a good ultimate, the destruction staff would still be a poor weapon that lowered spell damage, limited armor set choices, and provided mostly lackluster skills. However it would have be nice to see an appealing ultimate that would have at least made me think: "Hey, at least ZoS is aware of that fact that magicka staves are in a bad place."

But no. Instead ZoS has gone completely the other way and removed the lightning heavy attack splash damage. Don't tell me this is a "bugfix." Ever since the IC patch, the passive has said that the heavy attack damages nearby enemies. Even if it was a "bug," it was a necessary bug and the only thing that made lightning staves ever worth using is ESO. Saying it's a "bugfix" is saying that you are in favor of having a weapon with nothing but disadvantages that should always be deconstructed by anyone who cares about character effectiveness.

With so much discussion on the poor design of the destruction ultimate, not very many people have noticed how terrible the restoration staff ultimate is. 125 ultimate to heal 1 person for a lot for 5 seconds? Think about that, you want me to blow an ultimate just to heal one person. What a colossal waste of resources. I heal, I'll never use this. It's overkill, completely unnecessary, and is totally outdone by the already poor healing ultimates in the game. The templar ultimate is the same cost and heals 6 people for 4 seconds and provides them with a flat damage reduction. Heck, even the overnerfed barrier is better in that it puts a comparable shield on 6 players (and either a HoT or ultimate restoration). The resto ultimate needs a complete overhaul. It is poorly thought out in its only use is the buff morph that a solo PvPer might want. Why am I as a healer stuck with a 1vX ultimate?

In short, this patch has given staff users nothing that would make them excited about trying something new. By way of comparison, you better believe my magicka templar is very much looking forward to using the sword and shield stamina based ultimate. This is what the Elder Scrolls has degenerated to: *** poor magicka options that have magic oriented players equipping swords and (wooden as opposed to magic) shields to compete.

*******

We got into this situation because ZoS thought that making it so that using two swords provided way more spell [!] damage than staves was a good idea and let patch after patch after patch go by without ever bothering to revisit the poorly thought out nerfs that both staffs have received since the game's launch. Also, the combat team unnecessarily provided "stamina" patches after the TG release. This was a complete misreading. TG wasn't a "magic" patch. It was a patch that made one skill busted (proximity det) and offered a poorly thought out set bonus in Vicious Death. Is it any wonder after prox det has been nerfed and the amount of burst damage, healing, damage avoidance, and stam set damage procs that 2H builds are everywhere in PvP? When I run a trial raid, ALL my DPS are melee (and the vast majority of them stam). I don't even bother using elemental drain in raids anymore.

It's unfortunate that ZoS has sunk so many resources into these poorly thought out and superfluous magicka ultimates that it won't do anything to make them anything more than watered-down replacements for ultimates we already can get elsewhere. Sure, maybe Zos will "listen" and lower the cost of the destro ultimate, but do we really need or want a ground based DoT that does not silence or provide damage mitigation? I know I don't. This is precisely that problem when Zos develops everything in its secret laboratory and leaves us out of the development process: we get stuff we don't need and didn't ask for that cannot be changed.

Zos, you need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to staves and I'm not just talking about the ultimate. With every patch you release and the accompany power creep that comes with it, the disparity is spell-weapon damage becomes exacerbated and made it such that unless you are using a Maelstrom staff, you are totally undermining the amount of damage you can do. The destruction skill line is poor:

Destrcutive touch This is too expensive, the upfront damage and the DoT are not competitive. Even with a Master's weapon, this ability still isn't efficient. There are a fair amount of Zerg surfers in PvP who love to hide in large groups and cast flame reach, but 9 times out of 10 they are just wasting their mana (I'm usually already CC'd by something else and the damage is easy to heal through).

Wall of elements This is purely a PvE skill. A very good one that is required for remotely decent DPS and necessitates people having a Maelstrom weapon, but PvE nevertheless since the wall is so skinny and the secondary effects are so minor.

Crushing Shock A low damage spammable. It's just a boring filler skill that does nothing but damage that is easy to outheal in PvP. This is probably the most boring and generic skill in the game that has zero purpose to it since ZoS nerfed the burning, concussed, and chilled procs. The most boring and generic skill of the game is the spammable for magicka users. *Not* fun.

Elemental Drain It's good, but tanks give the debuff and many times isn't even providing back resources given the amount of stam DPS and tempalrs sweeps + NB funnel aren't elemental. This debuff should do something unique so it's always useful.

Impulse. Never should have been nerfed in the first place. It is a terrible skill that only does damage and is totally outperformed by each class's own PBAOE, which have larger range and additional functions besides damage. It is thus redundant and bad, which means it should be totally redesigned

The only reason I use a Destruction staff is because of the Elemental Wall skill in PvE and the lightning heavy attack, which is one of the very very few out-of-the-box, non cookie-cutter, legitimately interesting uses for a non best-in-slot item in this game. Shame on ZoS for removing it. Everything it is does can be attained by a better options that exists elsewhere. As that elsewhere will also mean more spell damage and armor set bonuses, using a destruction means you're basically settling for the last person at the bar. Take a look around in Cyrodiil sometime. The few diehard magicka DKs remaining won't go near this thing with a 12 foot pole.

Another thing to cosndier about destruction staffs is that there are only 4 skills that actually attack and do damage. Stam users have 4 weapon lines to diversify their builds and do something else besides crushing shock, crushing shock, crushing shock... There really ought to be either another magic DPS weapon or some thought to making the lightning, frost, and fire staves actually different.

The restoration staff is also a poor weapon. I see people in Cyrodiil trying to heal with this, but whenever they get focused they die. Think about it, we all know DKs have been begging ZoS for over a year to rework Dragon's Blood because it is so outdated and inefficient, yet they still run around cyrodiil with sword and shield rather than relying on a resto staff to heal. It just doesn't provide much and using one means players are throwing away spell damage, an armor set bonus set, and the defense benefits (and extra stats) that come with using sword and shield.

Grand Healing PvE raid requirement since raid bosses mean spamming this spell.

Regeneration I only use this to get armor set procs. It is *very* annoying trying to maintain this on a trial raid. The morph choices should have been quantity Vs. quality. People who say this is as good as vigor are not considering the huge benefit that you can get the Vigor HoT while using any weapon you want (aside from the fact that vigor will actually heal the caster and hits more allies). Vigor is an excellent and versatile skill used by just about every stamina player. Restoration is a marginal skill that restricts magicka players to using a poor weapon and is not used by most magicka players. It's not even a comparison.

Blessing of Restoration I think it's a problem when what my raid wants from this "heal" is a short and small damage buff. I would much prefer this to be my HoT rather than regeneration.

Healing Ward It's good ... far far better than Dragon's Blood. That DKs don't use it should be all there needs to be said just how poor a weapon restoration staffs are.

Siphon spirit The most inefficient skill in the game. A tiny HoT that requires a player to hit a specific target that has a cooldown from a skill that requires a cast time? Wow, that is terrible. Would the game and PvP be just a bit more interesting and diverse, if, I dunno, a skill like this could actually sustain a magic oriented player? Nope. Apparently ESO is meant to be played by 2H + bow builds that have excellent HoTs freely available to them without restrictions and usable by weapons capable of terrifying burst damage. This skill is a utter joke and proof to me that when the combat team punches their timecard and goes home, they log onto their stam builds with their viper/widowmaker/velindreth sets and their ...ehem ... two handed swords that heal for more than the magicka suckers out there trying use resto staff.

One of the huge reasons stam is so dominant in PvP because they can freely choose their attack weapon (2H), not gimped their weapon power or armor sets, and still put out ridiculously high healing because their heals are not tied to a crummy weapon!. Magic users have to use this bad weapon, which undercuts their defenses and stats, just to use heals that aren't even as good as what stam has access to for free. It's absolutely crazy that it has been like this for nearly two years. Do something! Can you please log into Cyodiil, run around siphon spiriting these stam 2H builds and see exactly have far that gets you?

This patch in a nutshell:



Set created by someone who loves stam DPS.



Set created by someone who doesn't heal.

• Frist one does no DMG, is expensive and just in the fire version a "nice" CC. The other two versions are useless
• Second is after the buff acording to make MSA weapons desireable the nicest one of all. Wont argue with it. But the desgin is at the border to boring
• Third one is used because Sorcs have no spammable (and are so forcst to use them)
• Fourth is negated by THE spot in the game...
• Fifth is a Skill you are emitting around you with a low DPS. Why isn't it emitted around the target?... Would be effective I guess, istn't wanted for the destruction skillline...

• more DMG for fire, aoe for lightning(just a little after the next patch), 1k SHIELD(!!!) for ice
• Fire gets the chance to proc burning, which emittes more DMG

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

IzakiBrotheSs wrote: »

I'm sorry i just can't agree with you. You say that stamina DPS is always higher than mage, but thats a lie. When you look at Hodor and Beyond Infinity, most of their DPS is magicka. You see sorcs like YoloWizard and Streak One pull 48k DPS. Mashinate is a crazy nightblade too. I have a templar friend who's Radiant D consistently hits for 70-80k a tick. There are just examples. Also stamina DPS without vMSA weapons is not as good as magicka DPS, aside from Stamplars. The DPS in a correctly built raid group is more or less the same for mage and stam toons.

I agree with Joy, but what you say is just not true. You're making things sound waaay worse then they actually are.

I have seen some of those high mag dps's which are ranged sorc and melee dk. The melee dk's, I don't see the point of aside from the screwy aoe interrupt and multi-chain dependent 2nd boss of vMoL. Quite a few of these builds were also benefiting from shock splash and will suffer. If you want to do a melee why not just stam, it is higher dps and has the same close up liability. I feel the same way about the big Jesus beam templars except that they have longer channels than stam players and so actually seem to eat mechanics even more than stam players while doing considerably less damage. Very sub-optimal in my opinion. As for the mag sorc, this is probably the bright spot for mag dps. I have seen a few very impressive parses from some ranged sorcs. These are the only "good" ranged dps parses I have seen but on more careful inspection they are rather dependent on having adds with the boss for the splash shock damage that I see is going away. I have also seen them leaning heavily on those adds for some bonus execute damage. i.e. the sorc tends to cherry pick what target he is hitting by staying on boss until execute, slamming add for that while keeping dots on boss, and then returning in a way that is a little cherry picking as your getting some bonus damage on targets others prepped while making sure your dot's all get nice full duration. We will see how these builds fare with no splash. I should also mention these mag sorc builds tend to be very hard to maximize as they are very two bar dependent, have really crazy off timed dot's, have a proc that must be honored in shards, and are heavily dependent on precise boss and add positioning for shock splash, wall of elements, and liquid lightning. I see stam builds with not so much skill making good deeps every day. I see few mag sorcs that even keep up with my mag nb which, I play well for a mag nb with no vMA staff, but with which I am not remotely competitive with even middle of the road stam dps's with vMA weapons. As for nb's, the best I have seen in practice are at least 15k behind any comparably skilled stam player. I might also add that a lot of high dps mag players seem to have disappeared lately and I have heard rumblings about cheat engine account bans. I think there may have been some mag players trying to keep up with the stam folks by juicing.

IzakiBrotheSs wrote: »

You have absolutely no idea how stamina DPS operates then. You use DW vMSA weaps or you're wasting your time doing stamina DPS (Templars are different). in between all your DoTs (poison injection, rending slashes, rearming etc.) you have to weave in Flurry + Light Attack. And you must keep in mind that every DoT must be refreshed as soon as it goes out. Oh and the ground AoEs must be refreshed too. The rotation ain't easy, especially without buff trackers (#console). Rearming Trap is also a b*tch to empower correctly, as it doesn't consume the Maelstrom enchantment and you have to use 1 Flurry to empower 2 skills. Its hard to get used to and not f*ck up.
I agree that there isn't much balance between magicka and stamina, but do not claim that stamina is easy mode. Try vMSA on a stam build. Even if you've got Flawless on a mage toon, you'll die a quite few times on your stam toon.

That is the best description of the stam mag divergence I have seen. It is not that stam is easier, it is certainly harder to maximize than say a mag nb or mag templar, though honestly you can still pretty easily beat either of those with a mangled rotation provided you have the vMA weapons. Stam rotations are complex enough, and the empowerment from the vMA staff tricky enough that it took 6 months for really dominant ones to start emerge and convince many top mag users to abandon ship. Now stam has been buffed twice since then mind you with a third buff apparently eminent but it did take a while for stam to be mastered.

As for vMA gear. Alcast demonstrated, vMA dual wield weapons are worth 12k dps. I'm going to go out on a limb and estimate you get 3k from the bow (am I wrong here?) You get 3k tops from a vMA staff. That is 1/5th the benefit and you mag jewelry 5 peice sets are no where near Vicious Ophdian so you loose a bit to stam on that count . My experience is that similarly equipped and skilled non-vMA stam deeps often beat mag deeps by a good bit on melee friendly fights but are beaten, sometimes substantially by them on melee unfriendly fights. The biggest problem for magica is that somebody clearly moved the decimal point on those vMA dual wield weapons. You can't convince me you meant + 3k weapon damage when +300 would be just so close to the amount of benefit you get from so many other vMA weapons.

When it comes to vMSA, this particular content was is, because of the final fight, the most narrowly designed set of mechanics in this game. It is totally intolerant of channels (because of the meteors up top), begs for a ranged interrupt and ranged dps because of the teleportation of the boss followed by immediate interupt, the ranged healer add, and the summoners who must be killed while fetching gold ghosts, and basically requires that heals be HOT's or shields rather than breaths because the ambient damage per second is very high and punctuated with bursts large enough you can't really use your health as a buffer. It also benefits you massively both up top and on bottom to have major expedition all the time. It was like this fight was designed for mag nb's and mag sorcs everybody else be damned. The amazing thing about this now is that stam dps is so incredibly high that, I am told, by a guy who has done it on stam and mag of everything, it is actually easier on stam than mag with stam sorc being the true easy mode. It is really saying something that in a fight with this much movement, healing, and extreme intolerance of channels it is now easier to do it with stam. That is some pretty unbalanced stuff.

alephthiago wrote: »

"Staffs are RANGED and thus are inherently less risky to use. It's easier to both avoid damage and to finish a fight with a ranged weapon, and as such I would EXPECT them to have lower DPS."
You are still using light armor (which doesnt benefit damage AT ALL unlike medium armor) and for anyone to gap close to you (dealing high damage too i must say) is very easy and happens 100% of the time in medium/smal/solo encounters.

This argument its such bs that bow has higher base damage, one self heal skill and one high damage burst while having all other utilities like VERY reliable AOE.

We should either cause increased damage in melee range or have some type of melee magicka weapon introduced with skills that hit as hard as two handed for example (btw we would still be in light armor).

Magicka Dks and Magblades would love that.