Changing Destruction Staffs into Destruction Weapons; Restoration Staff into Restoration Weapons

TheBonesXXX · October 2016

I want to pitch an idea to ESO about opening up Magicka playstyles by switching Staffs into Weapons and increasing their use and functionality. Currently we have three staffs that due range damage, but Magicka play is lacking a niche and many different ways. Along with some other tweaks to improve the tool kit of magicka users.

The Pitch; add one more element and allow for magicka versatility in eso

Fire Staff - > Fire Discus (Ranged DPS)

Ice Staff -> Ice Gauntlets (Tank)

Lightning Staff -> Lightning Spade (2 Hand)(monk spade)

Daedric Scythes (Dual Wield)

Destructive Touch would work as follows

Discus > Same as staff

Gauntlets > Ice Wall like we currently see in game, works like a mobile LOS.

Lightning Spade > Gap Closer with same effect

Daedric Scythes > Major Misdirection (old Blinding Flash/Light ability)

Wall of Elements, instead of this being a ground effect, change to an actual wall effect that moves forward (I think of the old Asherons Call wall spells)

Fire Discus > Keep increase length of wall, reduce width

Ice Gauntlets > Keep, reduce range

Lightning Spade > Keep, reduce range

Daedric Scythes > Use the undead hand wall spell pushes players back, cannot walk through the bones only side step but does not lose control of character, soft CC like snare

Force Shock change to a Power Attack of given element, apply Effect and then use to consume effect healing player for X damage done.

So it is a working heal.

Fire Discus would be ranged > but the heal would be a HOT

Ice Gauntlets/Spades would be burst heal

Daedric Scythes would require constant pressure for a Leech Effect %damage done for %damage return, instead of one button heal, apply and continue pressure for healing receive, no big heal at the end. (Force Siphon)

Weakness to Elements - Keep the Same, could use a slight buff
Impulse for Ice, Fire, and Lightning, minor mangle or effect below

Fire Discus > Instead of an AoE from the caster, throws a Firebird forward 28 yards. (impulse effects apply)

Ice Gauntlets > Turns the casters skin into ice slowing all within 8 meters for three seconds.

Lightning Spade > Lightning hits the ground, KBing everyone around the player.

Daedric Scythes > applies Minor Misdirection making players miss by % amount.

The idea here is to enhance the Elemental Roles as they are making magicka have some versatility and role choices aside from ranged, I also wanted to enhance magicka melee fights by introducing these ideas.

Fire is for ranged DPS obviously, not much needs changed.
Ice is for tanking through snares, mobile damage sponges like the Ice Wall effect, increased magicka shield sustain with new sets released, and damage mitigation through active abilities aside from dodge roll and block.
Lightning is Monk Inspired, allowing the weaving and Ranged to Melee and Melee to Ranged so there is a constant flow and a way to fight back as well as ranged.
Daedric Scythes is ninja inspired, sustain through force and evasion, I really miss the Blinding Flashes/Light ability and it would be nice to see a Major and Minor Misdirection to compliment that.

Passives:

Tri Focus:
Fire Discus gets 8% bonus to fire and makes up to three fire Damage over Time effects nonpurgeable, increased all fire damage spells by range 5 yards if under a range of 17 yards.
Ice Gauntlets: Increase current damage shields by 25%, its a decay effect.
Lightning Spade: Increase to 175% damage done.
Daedric Scythes: Small % of health returned.

Penetrating Magic: Keep the Same - Sycthes need to get a damage boost like DW but not as strong, no extra applied effect. Like concussive, burning, or shocking - just flat increase to damage.
Ancient Knowledge: Keep the Same

Damage coefficient would remain the same on the new weapons as the current destruction staff, minus the scythes for a % increased flat bonus to magicka damage.
I also wanted them to compliment classes that are missing elements in Magicka,

Dragon Knight is DoT based, so I wanted the heal effect that I replaced force shock with for DKs to be able to consume all dots and get a huge HoT.

Templars have always gotten the shaft when it comes to mobility and snares, so I wanted to design the ice around the mageplar to give it utility in its weak in,, complement its other abilities like its own bubbles and return it to the original magicka shield so their shield is sustainable.

Sorcerers do not have a built in gap closer, only a gap opener, so I wanted to complement them with having an AoE KB, melee capability and the ability to move in and out of range and melee.

Magicka Nightblades are forced to used dual wield from the dual wield tree, they have always been a sustain through force class, so at the expense of the magicka boost from DW, I wanted to encourage more sustain through force and a complement to their evasion skills already.

Restoration Staff to just Restoration: Add a Stamina Variant in the form of a Totem

Grand Healing (Magicka): Morphs: Illustrious Healing, Stamina. Healing Springs, Magicka.
Regeneration (Magicka): Morphs: Rapid Regen, Stamina. Mutagen, Magicka.
Combat Prayer (Magicka): Morphs: Blessing of Restoration, Magicka. Combat Prayer, Stamina.
Steadfast Ward: Move to Mages Guild and replace the Rune Trap. That thing is effin useless.
Replace with Offensive:
Dream Eater: Removes up to three enemy buffs (Magicka)
Nightmare: turns into AoE, Magicka.
Omen: removes an additional buff, Stamina.
Force Siphon: (Changed into Daedric Sycthes abilities)
Replaced with Warchant: Shares all buffs between allies
-> Warchant Morph > Hymn of Battle, in addition, all allies gain minor increase to magicka pool.
> Song of Battle, in addition, all allies gain minor increase to stamina pool.
Passives: Keep all the same but add Stamina variant for Totem users.

Magic lacks the tool kit stamina does, but I wanted to make stamina an applicable healer an add a Totem user type option by changing Restoration Staff to just Restoration. Because I hijacked half of the Restoration tree and am moving it around.

----

Mages Guild (2.0)

Ult Keep the same

Magelight: make that crit % work as a buff with the toggle so both bars get it
Entropy: Keep
Put Healing Ward here:
Change to Mages Ward
Lessen the Damage shield on Healing Ward, but make it burst heal on damage, press once shield, press twice healing but be extremely picky of the size of the heal, but NOT as strong as it is currently.
Steadfast Ward, increase the size of the Ward, increase the number players benefitting from ward.

Equilibrium, I do not know anyone whos ever used this spell in the history of this game.

---

Overall my goal is to increase Magicka ability on the field so it isn't so bloody pigeonholed but still retains its magicka feel, instead of buffing and nerfing, I wanted to increase magicka potential by giving it an overall more useful tool kit than it had before so the classes that are weaker can shine better.

I am anti-nerfbat and pro solutions, I did this so magicka can have a utility expansion and have a toolkit that is like stamina, because I moved around and made Healing Ward situationally powerful and finagled a few things, I gave Restoration a small overhall.

Additionally I eliminated the need to create more classes because I increased the possibilities and playstyles of Magicka and Stamina with the Destruction and Restoration changes I am pitching here.

I stuck to the old fashion mantra for magicka while tightening up some of the problems certain playstyles have
hit and split with the Lightning Spade
Snares and Mobile and Active defenses for Ice Gauntlet
Just straight nuke and dot for Fire Discus
and applied pressure/increased mitigation for Scythe

This pitch is so the stamina meta that we currently have does NOT get nerfed, so PvE players are not screwed and PvP players are not screwed.

Cheers

Bones/n1xx10nx

lolo_01b16_ESO · October 2016

I like your general idea of adding more differences between the different elements. Some parts might be a bit unbalanced (e.g. if warchant works with buffs like major berserk), but that's just details. Especially adding some of the skills that some npcs already have (like the ice wall) and restoring skills like blinding flashes sound great.
But I fear that ZoS won't deal with any of your suggestions in the near future.

And just as a side note:

TheBonesXXX wrote: »

Equilibrium, I do not know anyone whos ever used this spell in the history of this game.

Back in the days when ressource management actually required some effort, spell symmetry was part of many dps rotations. I remember healing trial runs where almost everyone had that skill on his bar.

Vorcil · October 2016

Very creative; I feel there was a big opportunity in the last 8 years during development for ZOS to get creative; unfortunately we all have to understand that due to time, complexity, lack of experience and cost of implementing such creativity stops them from making the game into something amazing. They had big ideas for spell crafting, the closest they came was an itemized enchanting version which still doesn't give much variation in utility;

Most enchantments are damage that are buffed from certain passives / set bonuses and grouped under some namespace.

Same with effects; the base effects are the same, NB agony vs chill for example, just stop movement; ccs etc etc etc;

Not too much there.

I do like your ideas though; there have been countless threads like this, where great ideas don't get implemented. When ZOS does get allocated resources for some overhaul, they usually pile on more rubbish to distract us; things like weapon ultimates and broken proc sets. Would've preferred a class overhaul tbh

TheBonesXXX · October 2016

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

I like your general idea of adding more differences between the different elements. Some parts might be a bit unbalanced (e.g. if warchant works with buffs like major berserk), but that's just details. Especially adding some of the skills that some npcs already have (like the ice wall) and restoring skills like blinding flashes sound great.
But I fear that ZoS won't deal with any of your suggestions in the near future.

And just as a side note:

TheBonesXXX wrote: »

Equilibrium, I do not know anyone whos ever used this spell in the history of this game.

Back in the days when ressource management actually required some effort, spell symmetry was part of many dps rotations. I remember healing trial runs where almost everyone had that skill on his bar.

Thanks for the support! I only offered these ideas to give the classes some expansion though the weapons to add depth, variety, and complexity to the game. I wanted to build the classes up without adding new classes, but redo Destruction and Resto to add new classes that are missing.

Warden, Shaman, Necromancer/Death Knight/Dark Paladin, Monk, Ranger, Bard and I think my examples are pretty close to that.

TheBonesXXX · October 2016

Vorcil wrote: »

Very creative; I feel there was a big opportunity in the last 8 years during development for ZOS to get creative; unfortunately we all have to understand that due to time, complexity, lack of experience and cost of implementing such creativity stops them from making the game into something amazing. They had big ideas for spell crafting, the closest they came was an itemized enchanting version which still doesn't give much variation in utility;

Most enchantments are damage that are buffed from certain passives / set bonuses and grouped under some namespace.

Same with effects; the base effects are the same, NB agony vs chill for example, just stop movement; ccs etc etc etc;

Not too much there.

I do like your ideas though; there have been countless threads like this, where great ideas don't get implemented. When ZOS does get allocated resources for some overhaul, they usually pile on more rubbish to distract us; things like weapon ultimates and broken proc sets. Would've preferred a class overhaul tbh

Well this one, I took all of the old complaints and tried to condense them into class variety so we can get Bards, Rangers, Monks, DeathKnights/Dark Paladins etc etc, I hope I came close to adding more class variety without classes.

I think if they consider this overhaul I pitched they might make some really damn good money because people are begging for stuff like I posted.

Hopefully I can get the attention of Deltia, Sypher, Richard, Feng, Kena, Alcast, Ebonheart Templar, Lefty, and all of the other major players (sorry if I missed you, I'm high) to comment on this.

I feel like theres a lot of money to be made for ZOS business wise in my pitch/proposition.

Oakmontowls_ESO · October 2016

No to the stamina based heals and to moving healing ward to mages guild. It is an extremely powerful heal and shield which would impact pvp tremendously if they can use it without having to equip a resto staff. And your proposed change with pressing once or twice for two different skills really wouldn't work since it currently gets spammed in clutch situations. Your change to wall of elements would Severely nerf magika dps, your change to force pulse would leave magika sorcerer with no spamable attack. In short there are some things that need to be changed with magika but your changes don't work.

TheBonesXXX · October 2016

Oakmontowls_ESO wrote: »

No to the stamina based heals and to moving healing ward to mages guild. It is an extremely powerful heal and shield which would impact pvp tremendously if they can use it without having to equip a resto staff. And your proposed change with pressing once or twice for two different skills really wouldn't work since it currently gets spammed in clutch situations. Your change to wall of elements would Severely nerf magika dps, your change to force pulse would leave magika sorcerer with no spamable attack. In short there are some things that need to be changed with magika but your changes don't work.

If you could elaborate on your opposition a little more.

Currently Stam has access to better array of heals in Vigor and Momentum, very powerful burst heals. Healing Ward, is not a superior heal when you consider Vigor, Momentum, Shuffle, and a few other skills put together.

Resto Staff pigeonholes magicka players to always have it on their off bar, moving it to mages guild gives us the same diversity as Stamina does, that's the reason why I moved it there, improves build diversity. Stamina has an edge and I am not trying to nerf them.

As far as ward working with a player trigger, the pressing it once for the ward and twice for the heal prevents the spamming of the ability and opens up magicka to a variety of play - meaning you ward and heal with more caution, more risk, more reward, upped skill ceiling.

Wall of Elements can be finagled with to be either a ground effect or an actual wall, its bloody useless outside of PvE and certain situations in pvp.

and as far as force pulse, replace Equilibrium with old force pulse.

Done and done.

Astanphaeus · October 2016

I like that you are trying to be creative, I just hate everything you came up with. As a Dunmer mDK, your fire changes would all be huge negatives to me. And stam should not be healers.