Make Frost Staves Great (again?).

MehVahdJukaar · January 2018

First of all I am not a good writer nor an english native speaker so please forgive any mistakes.

I've never played obilvion nor morrowind but In all my countless hours of playing skyrim my favourite destruction elements have always been ice, due to his unique and very cool visuals and the very useful utility it had of ensnaring enemies and draining stamina making melee enemies much more easy to deal with. That said I feel like ice staves in eso are in a very bad spot right now and need some major rework.

Ever since launch frost staves have been in a bad position: fire staves where used by basically any competent magica dps out ther, up until one of the recent updates which made big changes to lightning. As of right now fire staves are still the best choice for single target dps while lightining saves focus more on the aoe side, helping tremendusly in trash fights, and they will probably remain like this even after the off balance changes of update 17.
So having said that where are frost staves at? From what I've seen in my last month of playing the game, the only appear in some rare pvp builds (mainly for ice clench) and are used by a few niche warden tank builds that zenimax is trying so hard to push, while ice only dds, if they even exist, can pull a considerate less amount of damage compared to ther builds, offer almost no extra group utility (since freezed enemies are easily outperformed by talons and such) and are generally not wanted by any group due to the heavy attack taunt.

As I see it that's not how things sould be at all: ice is a destruction element and as such sould provide good dps and be on pair with the other 2 elements, or at least increment the overall dps of the group (in a similar manner like lightining does) and should not become a tanking only weapon. While I'm ok with having the extra utility from it like being able to block with magicka, I don't see any reason why a tank would choose an ice staff over a sword and board, giving up the 2 pieces bonus and all the abilityes that the shield skill line offer.
In my opinion all "frost staff taking changes" are ver poorly implemented and need some major rework so I think zenimax has three option here:

1: Make the ice staff a tank only weapon, replacing all the destruction skills with tanking ones(when you have the right passive and a ice staff equipped). Even if this might seem like a drastic change it will be undoubtely better that the mess we have right now of a wepon that does damage and tanking at the same time doing both very poorly, and will once and for all establish that "ice is for tanks and not for dds" (<3 zos).

2: Give players the option to remove the tanking aspect from their ice staves maybe by moving the tri focus passive to a morph of some ability that could also double as an aoe taunt, and replacing it with something on pair with the 2 other destruction elements, or maybe scrapping the whole ice tanking idea. Another option on these lines could be to completely remove tanking from ice staves and adding another magicka tanking weapon (maybe a conjured shield?).

3: (most probable) Leaving everything as the mess it is, virtually having a weapon category that is close to useless.

Lastly, to be truly a viable dps option, wardens should recive some kind of buff to ice damage since the current 6% is laughable compared to what dragonkight get for having a flame staff, not to mention the sorc & lightning staff combo...
In a game where diversity whas one of the main focus since launch, i think all 3 destruction elements should be viable, and that just like sorcs, which passive are in favor of lighing staves, can use a flame staff and still have a high dps, so should wardens with their native element.
In other words pease Zenimax make Ice dps viable, as it shoul have been from the very start.

With the recent off balance nerf and the nord based dungeon, this patch would be a wondefull opportunity for an ice mage dps comeback. (I have little hopes though..)
Let me know how what you think and how whould you fix this issue in the comments.
Thanks for reading

MehVahdJukaar · January 2018

Apparently nobody cares about ice staves...

Emperorsplishy · January 2018

I think they should make it so that ice staves should either have buffs to ultimate generation or to armour/spell resist debuffs to make them viable to both tanks and dps

DoctorESO · January 2018

.

Tannus15 · January 2018

I care about ice staffs and you're write up is awesome and I agree with everything.

Ice staffs need to either be split into an entirely new weapon category, or all the "ice" effects looked at.

At the very least the taunt should be moved off the heavy attack and onto destructive touch.

Secondly I would also grant the passive defence from defensive stance to impulse, so that ice staff tanking can be on par with sword and shield from a block cost perspective.

Nolic1 · January 2018

There is a set called shalks for ultimate gen then there is also akivari dragon guard and for the extra blocking of damage it gets a 3.4k damage shield with bastion having 56 points into it increasing your shield strength. As for it being for DPS do not
use the passives that are for tank use all the others and you can run a DPS Ice mage Warden and they can work but still do not have the dps of other classes with it but can still work but good luck in the end game unless your group does not mind lower end DPS.

Personally I like Ice staff the way it is and it works great with the armor sets I stated above for tanking you can also use one piece monster set if your running low on resistances. As for you not liking how it works you need to leanr how to use it if your not willing to then no reason to change it.

The_Lex · January 2018

DoctorESO wrote: »

Nothing more awesome than a DPS heavy attacking with a frost staff in a random dungeon. Why would we want to change that?

Good lord, that happened to me (I was tanking) just a few hours ago. Makes me twitch when that happens.

The_Lex · January 2018

I agree that ice staves need work but, at this point, there are so many things that ZOS needs to look at, ice staves are probably low on the list. In other words, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Maura_Neysa · January 2018

MehVahdJukaar wrote: »

First of all I am not a good writer nor an english native speaker so please forgive any mistakes.

I've never played obilvion nor morrowind but In all my countless hours of playing skyrim my favourite destruction elements have always been ice, due to his unique and very cool visuals and the very useful utility it had of ensnaring enemies and draining stamina making melee enemies much more easy to deal with. That said I feel like ice staves in eso are in a very bad spot right now and need some major rework.

Ever since launch frost staves have been in a bad position: fire staves where used by basically any competent magica dps out ther, up until one of the recent updates which made big changes to lightning. As of right now fire staves are still the best choice for single target dps while lightining saves focus more on the aoe side, helping tremendusly in trash fights, and they will probably remain like this even after the off balance changes of update 17.
So having said that where are frost staves at? From what I've seen in my last month of playing the game, the only appear in some rare pvp builds (mainly for ice clench) and are used by a few niche warden tank builds that zenimax is trying so hard to push, while ice only dds, if they even exist, can pull a considerate less amount of damage compared to ther builds, offer almost no extra group utility (since freezed enemies are easily outperformed by talons and such) and are generally not wanted by any group due to the heavy attack taunt.

As I see it that's not how things sould be at all: ice is a destruction element and as such sould provide good dps and be on pair with the other 2 elements, or at least increment the overall dps of the group (in a similar manner like lightining does) and should not become a tanking only weapon. While I'm ok with having the extra utility from it like being able to block with magicka, I don't see any reason why a tank would choose an ice staff over a sword and board, giving up the 2 pieces bonus and all the abilityes that the shield skill line offer.
In my opinion all "frost staff taking changes" are ver poorly implemented and need some major rework so I think zenimax has three option here:

1: Make the ice staff a tank only weapon, replacing all the destruction skills with tanking ones(when you have the right passive and a ice staff equipped). Even if this might seem like a drastic change it will be undoubtely better that the mess we have right now of a wepon that does damage and tanking at the same time doing both very poorly, and will once and for all establish that "ice is for tanks and not for dds" (<3 zos).

2: Give players the option to remove the tanking aspect from their ice staves maybe by moving the tri focus passive to a morph of some ability that could also double as an aoe taunt, and replacing it with something on pair with the 2 other destruction elements, or maybe scrapping the whole ice tanking idea. Another option on these lines could be to completely remove tanking from ice staves and adding another magicka tanking weapon (maybe a conjured shield?).

3: (most probable) Leaving everything as the mess it is, virtually having a weapon category that is close to useless.

Lastly, to be truly a viable dps option, wardens should recive some kind of buff to ice damage since the current 6% is laughable compared to what dragonkight get for having a flame staff, not to mention the sorc & lightning staff combo...
In a game where diversity whas one of the main focus since launch, i think all 3 destruction elements should be viable, and that just like sorcs, which passive are in favor of lighing staves, can use a flame staff and still have a high dps, so should wardens with their native element.
In other words pease Zenimax make Ice dps viable, as it shoul have been from the very start.

With the recent off balance nerf and the nord based dungeon, this patch would be a wondefull opportunity for an ice mage dps comeback. (I have little hopes though..)
Let me know how what you think and how whould you fix this issue in the comments.
Thanks for reading

If you bufff the DPS of Frost Staff it could easily become OP because of Minor Maim. Its only because of the cement meta that tanks and healers provide all the group utlity that Frost is over looked. Truthfully though Talons doesn't hold a candle to Chilled, remember all that Off-Balance everyone is screaming for? Frost and Chilled ham the some pure rate. My Warden tank out performs in cc with just 3 Frost skills.
I've now been running a mag Warden for about a month with a Frost staff back bar, I've yet to accidently ago. So I think thats just a matter of Git Gud.
As for the strength of the Wardens damage passive, that I could see, or maybe add it to a race passive or say introduce Snow Elf as a race. Maybe similar the Dark Elves from High Elves.

Tannus15 · January 2018

The heavy attack taunt / shield is the most idiotic thing in the world.

If you're heavy attacking, you aren't blocking, which means you're a bad tank.
If you're heavy attacking every 15 seconds to keep taunt then you're a terrible, terrible tank.

Leingod · January 2018

No one wants maim on a DPS weapon

victoriana-blue · January 2018

Tannus15 wrote: »

The heavy attack taunt / shield is the most idiotic thing in the world.

If you're heavy attacking, you aren't blocking, which means you're a bad tank.
If you're heavy attacking every 15 seconds to keep taunt then you're a terrible, terrible tank.

Nah, if all you do is block then you're a mediocre tank.

You won't have resources to inflict maim, fracture, etc; to buff your allies; or to control battlefield positioning. Heavy attacks are important!

Ice staff needs some help, and the changes to block cost and fortress are good steps.

ccfeeling · January 2018

Current Ice staff status is fine , it's tank perspective absoultely...I'm a NB frost staff tank atm...
I wish there is a taunt skill in the staff skill line , but I know its impossible , because inner rage spent too much magicka...lol

lucky_Sage · January 2018

ice staves should increase spell pen

Maura_Neysa · January 2018

Leingod wrote: »

No one wants maim on a DPS weapon

Maim would be frigging amazing on a DPS in Cryodiil, and the rest of Chilled is pretty nice all the time. If DPS would quite expecting the tank to do all the cc (even Off-Balance as of late) then maybe NB, Sorc, and Templar tanks would make a partial come back. But DPS are way the greedy for that to ever happen.

victoriana-blue wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

The heavy attack taunt / shield is the most idiotic thing in the world.

If you're heavy attacking, you aren't blocking, which means you're a bad tank.
If you're heavy attacking every 15 seconds to keep taunt then you're a terrible, terrible tank.

Nah, if all you do is block then you're a mediocre tank. You won't have resources to inflict maim, fracture, etc; to buff your allies; or to control battlefield positioning. Heavy attacks are important!

Ice staff needs some help, and the changes to block cost and fortress are good steps.

@Tannus15 I think a counter to Battle Field Mobility might just be all the more they need to make it level with S+B.

Also I can block cast every skill, mobility and resources are the only time I ever drop block.

ccfeeling wrote: »

Current Ice staff status is fine , it's tank perspective absoultely...I'm a NB frost staff tank atm...
I wish there is a taunt skill in the staff skill line , but I know its impossible , because inner rage spent too much magicka...lol

I would like to see a little love on the DPS side, even if all they did was drop the taunt or separate it. Though after a month now on a mag Warden I've yet to accidently haunt. Maybe just because l main a tank so I'm very aware, but even with Inferno on the other bar I haven't got the two mixed up so long as to go a full heavy.

Sinolai · January 2018

The assulum perfected ice staff (which I got from weekly) is a really confusing weapon. Am I supposed to be a dd who taunt bosses or a tank who tries to do DPS by spamming force pulse?

I would like Zeni to ditch the Ice Staff tanks and create another type of defensive magic tank (eg. Wand & Talisman). Or if we are keeping it give us a button to turn the taunt on/off.

I would suggest making ice staves a DoT boosting weapon by replacing the taunt with "Adds 8% damage to all all DoT damage". Thus fire would be single targed dps, lightning AoE dps and ice DoT.
Another suggesting would be making it add +2 sec to all DoT, Debuff and CC duration, making it more of an utility weapon compared to the 2 damage dealing ones.

Maura_Neysa · January 2018

,

umagon · January 2018

The_Patriarch wrote: »

DoctorESO wrote: »

Nothing more awesome than a DPS heavy attacking with a frost staff in a random dungeon. Why would we want to change that?

Good lord, that happened to me (I was tanking) just a few hours ago. Makes me twitch when that happens.

One hand and shield at least makes the taunting mechanic optional and not built in. I have ran into that issue with players doing dps with the frost staff, and it’s frustrating from a tanking perspective. The boss gets loose then the person who taunted it starts running the boss around mean while its throwing 1-2 shot aoe and single hits. Then everyone else starts dying. It’s another one of those examples where Wrobel’s creativity is interesting but the execution is poor.

casparian · January 2018

Ice staff is hard to balance. The core problem is this: it will never feel balanced until it is as useful as sword-and-shield, but it would be unbalanced to make it as useful as sword-and-shield, as it requires fewer item slots.

Right now, the design seems to be: make ice staves half as useful and sword-and-shield, since they require half the weapon slots. But that's not satisfying to anyone, because equipping an ice staff now just feels using like a second-rate shield.

It might be thought that the fact that ice staff blocking costs magicka instead of stamina is enough to give ice stages a useful niche. But this isn't true. As a PVE tank, I do not have any magicka to spare, and I certainly can't afford to build my magicka pool high enough to be able to block with it (especially as there are no Sturdy ice staves). In fact, I and many other players find it best to have zero points in Tri Focus when using an ice staff.

Ice staves' ability to apply Minor Maim isn't much of a point in their favor anyway, considering how inferior unreliable a means of applying that status WoE and Frost Clench are compared to skills like Choking Talons.

The solution is to make ice staff different from sword-and-shield but still useful to tanks, with fewer straight mitigation bonuses but more group utility bonuses. Sword-and-shield ought to be better for survivability. But ice staves ought to be better for something.

Maura_Neysa · January 2018

umagon wrote: »

The_Patriarch wrote: »

DoctorESO wrote: »

Nothing more awesome than a DPS heavy attacking with a frost staff in a random dungeon. Why would we want to change that?

Good lord, that happened to me (I was tanking) just a few hours ago. Makes me twitch when that happens.

One hand and shield at least makes the taunting mechanic optional and not built in. I have ran into that issue with players doing dps with the frost staff, and it’s frustrating from a tanking perspective. The boss gets loose then the person who taunted it starts running the boss around mean while its throwing 1-2 shot aoe and single hits. Then everyone else starts dying. It’s another one of those examples where Wrobel’s creativity is interesting but the execution is poor.

No different than the nS0 I ran with S+B DPS after helping show him the ropes, going through his bar set up and removing Pierce Armor, the Serpent turns and cleaves 10 of the 12. Turns out he had it double barred. Heavy on your Frost staff is no different from that or from an Off-Tank pulling the boss in trials, pay attention... get good.

Minno · January 2018

Leingod wrote: »

No one wants maim on a DPS weapon

I do, in PvP. Especially if I'm using wall of elements to proc chilling immobilze as well on my magplar.

Keep ice staff as is.

umagon · January 2018

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

umagon wrote: »

The_Patriarch wrote: »

DoctorESO wrote: »

Nothing more awesome than a DPS heavy attacking with a frost staff in a random dungeon. Why would we want to change that?

Good lord, that happened to me (I was tanking) just a few hours ago. Makes me twitch when that happens.

One hand and shield at least makes the taunting mechanic optional and not built in. I have ran into that issue with players doing dps with the frost staff, and it’s frustrating from a tanking perspective. The boss gets loose then the person who taunted it starts running the boss around mean while its throwing 1-2 shot aoe and single hits. Then everyone else starts dying. It’s another one of those examples where Wrobel’s creativity is interesting but the execution is poor.

No different than the nS0 I ran with S+B DPS after helping show him the ropes, going through his bar set up and removing Pierce Armor, the Serpent turns and cleaves 10 of the 12. Turns out he had it double barred. Heavy on your Frost staff is no different from that or from an Off-Tank pulling the boss in trials, pay attention... get good.

Yes, players should be paying attention things but issue with frost staff's taunt mechanic is that it is a passive. Players can unslot a skill but can’t remove points from a passive without going to re-allocate. With pierce armor players can remove all chance of taunting by not having it on the hotbar. The same can’t be done with frost staff without a re-allocation. And players can’t re-allocate on the fly. Even those who know about it slip up in their rotation then the next thing you know they are dead. And sometimes players can’t switch to a different weapon when you ask them to because they don’t have one.

Arobain · January 2018

ice staves are perfect the way they are, my ice staff using ice tank is currently my best character

ValkynSketha · January 2018

I wish they would make the passive change based on what armour on you, like the passive will increase single and fire for fire staff, aoe and shock for shock staff, single and frost for frost staff while wearing 5xlight armour, the passive change to taunting + increase fire/shock/frost damage dealt to target for x time when heavy attacking depending on which staff equipped when wearing 5xheavy armour.

Joy_Division · January 2018

As long as the Ice Staff skills and 90% of its passives are DPS oriented, sword and shield will be far and beyond better at tanking; especially since sword and shied counts as two armor piece bonuses and tanks need all those they can get.

If ZoS really wants to make an Ice Staff a control or tank weapon, then it needs to have it's own skill-line and passives that tailor to that game-play.

Metafae · January 2018

Ice staves should provide more crit while destro skill slotted.
Chilled status effect should make targets more prone to crit damage.
Fully charged heavy attacks should grant caster minor force for a few seconds.

No tank staff. Tank staff bad.

Kessra · January 2018

The taunt of the frost-staff HA is the only non-skillbased taunt in this game that also restores resources (due to the heavy attack) compared to the other versions that drain resources (the only part-exception to this rule are DK chains. One of the morphs will restore the magica cost if the target mob can't be pulled, though the 4 sec taunt remains; not sure if the portal areas of Wardens also count as taunt). To me, frost-staff taunt feels out-of-place. No benefits from other destro-staff abilities and the heavy-attack is really slow compared to puncture/ransack/pierced armor i.e. and therefore is probably only viable for the initial pull or if you have enough time to prepare the heavy attack. Probably one of the destructive touch morphs would make up for a better taunt version. This way the taunt remains a skill-based one which gives players the choice if they want to taunt or not. If a player equiped with a frost-staff has no magica and thus performs a HA to get some magica back in return, s/he will taun the mob, regardless if she ever wanted to taunt the mob (assuming s/he has skilled the first passive). Inexperienced players are often not aware that a frost-staff HA is a taunt (if the passive is skilled) and are thus surprised when they get aggro of the mob.

It also, as some already stated, prevents tanks from running their usual 5+5+2 gear setup and the set-bonus on i.e. maelstrom, sanctuary and master frost-staffs do not provide any benefit for tanking in general. The damage dealth with these staffs as a tank is also more or less neglectable.

In PvP the chilled crowed-control applied via wall of elements might be intersting though usually the setup here is more like one bar defensive oriented while the other bar is dps oriented. As a shield provides more armor and resistances it is probably preferable in comparison to a frost staff. In regards to dps, the frost staff is by a margin behind the other two destro-staffs and thus probably not used on the offensive bar either. Sure, there might be certain setups that funnel a frost-staff into their builds, but if they'd choose an other weapon they would probably perform better.

In my opinion @ZOS_Wrobel should rethink his idea of frost-staff tanking. As already mentioned before, one of the destructive touch abilities should morph to a taunt instead of having to perform a really-slow paced heavy attack. In addition to that, one of the benefits a frost staffs could provide is that the attack, cast and movement speed of enemies hit by an heavy attack gets slowed down by like 15-20% (cleansable) for 6 seconds with a cooldown of 10-15 seconds maybe, which also should work on bosses. This could make a frost staff an interesting choice both in PvE and PvP.

This change would probably lead to at least one player equiping a frost staff and keeping chilled on the boss but also may be used by tanks that could use the frost staff for tanking as the destructive touch skill can be used as taunt.

Nestor · January 2018

I never understood why Ice Staves were not more keyed to the type of enemy. Like, using an Ice Staff against a Fire Atronach would do more damage than against say an Ice Atronach. But that is probably down to having the same skills in PvP as in PvE so we don't get to do neat things.

I have tried to use an Ice Staff in the past and your right OP, Flame Staves are better against single target, and the crowd control from Ice is iffy at best. And, this new Taunt from Heavy Attacks? Who decided this would be good? All it has done is stop ice staffs from being used in group content. It should have been a Morph of a skill so that those few who wanted to be an Ice Tank could do so.

LiquidPony · January 2018

Tannus15 wrote: »

I care about ice staffs and you're write up is awesome and I agree with everything.

Ice staffs need to either be split into an entirely new weapon category, or all the "ice" effects looked at.

At the very least the taunt should be moved off the heavy attack and onto destructive touch.

Secondly I would also grant the passive defence from defensive stance to impulse, so that ice staff tanking can be on par with sword and shield from a block cost perspective.

I like the Destructive Touch idea but what if we took it a step further ... add an elemental effect to Elemental Drain so that applying Elemental Drain with a frost staff taunts the enemy. Then you've got a great Puncture alternative.

LiquidPony · January 2018

Nolic1 wrote: »

There is a set called shalks for ultimate gen then there is also akivari dragon guard and for the extra blocking of damage it gets a 3.4k damage shield with bastion having 56 points into it increasing your shield strength. As for it being for DPS do not
use the passives that are for tank use all the others and you can run a DPS Ice mage Warden and they can work but still do not have the dps of other classes with it but can still work but good luck in the end game unless your group does not mind lower end DPS.

Personally I like Ice staff the way it is and it works great with the armor sets I stated above for tanking you can also use one piece monster set if your running low on resistances. As for you not liking how it works you need to leanr how to use it if your not willing to then no reason to change it.

So the ice staff is a second-class option for tanking, and a second-class option for DPS ... but you don't think it should be changed because you use it in your off-meta builds?

Does not seem logical.

Minno · January 2018

LiquidPony wrote: »

Nolic1 wrote: »

There is a set called shalks for ultimate gen then there is also akivari dragon guard and for the extra blocking of damage it gets a 3.4k damage shield with bastion having 56 points into it increasing your shield strength. As for it being for DPS do not
use the passives that are for tank use all the others and you can run a DPS Ice mage Warden and they can work but still do not have the dps of other classes with it but can still work but good luck in the end game unless your group does not mind lower end DPS.

Personally I like Ice staff the way it is and it works great with the armor sets I stated above for tanking you can also use one piece monster set if your running low on resistances. As for you not liking how it works you need to leanr how to use it if your not willing to then no reason to change it.

So the ice staff is a second-class option for tanking, and a second-class option for DPS ... but you don't think it should be changed because you use it in your off-meta builds?

Does not seem logical.

I don't see it as a pure DPS option. I see it as applying debuffs, while helping to contribute to damage while trying to control the battle field.

In the case of PvP, I see it applying minor maim to single targets while giving your build a ranged immobilze that ignores cc immunity. Aoe area of denial through WoE and the ultimate help control areas, and impulse giving out minor mangle helps add additional debuffs.

The things I could see changed:
- second morph of impulse to be granted a unique sorry according to each destro staff equipped. Fire becomes a single target that adds a small fire dot to everyone around it (similar to mage guild rune), lighting becomes AOE damage (similar to how the morph functions now), frost staff can be the AOE immobilze that many classes need in their kits (similar to how wardens function).
- second morph of ele drain to match each elemental staff. Idk what that effect could be but would be cool to see that drain extend the effects of other abilities you use on that target. So for frost, heavy/light attacks could have another chance to grant immobilze in that target, fire could have another dot (searing so not too confuse the burning status effect) or add extra fire DMG to the target from your spells , lighting drain could add AOE chain lighting to all enemies with that drain morph that are close to each other. Obviously would need either penetration and/or minor mag return removed for balance.
- crushing shock could grant extra effects if you hit a cc immunity player while they are casting a channel/cast time. But probably not.
- reach is fine as is. Same for wall of elements.