Btw, blockade with frost staff already chills enemies, and chill applies minor maim to reduce enemy damage by 15%. Concussed from lightning staves already increases enemy damage taken by 8%.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

If you're only wanting this for PvP, why does the taunt even matter? Frost staves already have good crowd control. You said it yourself that they'll never be competitive in pve as a dps option. Right now they're fine in PvP and good as a pve tank option. Your changes aren't even necessary.

In PvP the taunt can actually be helpful when used with tremorscale and knight slayer, or the PvP tanking set (name evades me atm).

There's nothing wrong with frost staves as is.

I rarely PVP myself so I don't know exactly what goes on in there. However, for the most part, I understand people usually use inferno staves. I simply want ice staves to be somewhat competitive in both PVE and PVP situations. With competitive being the main point. I want it to be something that you may decide on using instead of always choosing inferno/lightning staff. For PVE, it is difficult for ice staff to become competitive for DPS but could become useful for healers.

In my opinion, ice staff tanking tend to be very poor/inefficient and simply ineffective when it comes to more difficult content. There are just simply not enough passives/support for it, leaving it in this limbo state where the damage is poor and tanking is poor also.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Btw, blockade with frost staff already chills enemies, and chill applies minor maim to reduce enemy damage by 15%. Concussed from lightning staves already increases enemy damage taken by 8%.

I'm quite aware that blockade already does that. I'm simply suggesting ways to make ice staff more viable in PVE as a supportive option.

Samadhi wrote: »

Came here looking for an image of a dead horse being beaten with an ice staff.

Kind of disappointed

May be NSFW

Furcula wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

If you're only wanting this for PvP, why does the taunt even matter? Frost staves already have good crowd control. You said it yourself that they'll never be competitive in pve as a dps option. Right now they're fine in PvP and good as a pve tank option. Your changes aren't even necessary.

In PvP the taunt can actually be helpful when used with tremorscale and knight slayer, or the PvP tanking set (name evades me atm).

There's nothing wrong with frost staves as is.

I rarely PVP myself so I don't know exactly what goes on in there. However, for the most part, I understand people usually use inferno staves. I simply want ice staves to be somewhat competitive in both PVE and PVP situations. With competitive being the main point. I want it to be something that you may decide on using instead of always choosing inferno/lightning staff. For PVE, it is difficult for ice staff to become competitive for DPS but could become useful for healers.

In my opinion, ice staff tanking tend to be very poor/inefficient and simply ineffective when it comes to more difficult content. There are just simply not enough passives/support for it, leaving it in this limbo state where the damage is poor and tanking is poor also.

Maximising dps doesn't matter nearly as much in PvP. Fire staves and lightning staves don't have such a huge advantage there, and you don't have to worry about frosts taunt. Frost staff also gives you a damage shield on heavy attacks and debuffs enemies.

As far as making it a "healer" weapon, it would only ever be used on back bar the same as healers do now with lightning staves. Its still in a far better place as a supplementary tanking weapon than it would ever be as a dps or healing tool.

Current system is lackluster and used by a tiny minority of players. Change it back or do something about it. It's the least popular weapon by a huge margin.

Furcula wrote: »

I know this has probably been brought up many times previously and nothing is likely to change in the soon future but I think it would be nice to see ice staves getting modified at some point.

Destruction staves, by name, should all be focused on doing damage. Get rid of the ice staff tanking completely because although it offers an option, it is never going to be as good as sword and board without overloading the destructo skill tree/passives and it just stays in this limbo of mediocrity and rarely ever get used.

Inferno staves are focused on single target damage and burning effects.
Lightning staves are focused on AOE damage. (IMO, range for destro ult should be bigger than fire and ice morphs after the range nerf takes place)

Ice staves should be focused on crowd controlling/supportive and can be an useful addition in PVP situations. (Let's be honest, ice staves will most likely not be competitive in PVE unless chilled enemies take more damage like concussion/offbalance but better)

Similar to what we have now, ice damage will slow and immobilize the enemies. And their crowd control effects should be significantly more prominent in comparison to inferno staves (eg. clench). Longer duration or even a slight stamina drain will be helpful to cement ice staves' crowd control identity. In addition, like I mentioned before, ice blockade applying a chill effect that increases damage can be an interesting mechanic to add, making it more viable in PVE settings. This can be an supportive damage source separate from lighting staff concussion to be added for healers to be using backbar ice staff especially with the reduced offbalance up time coming up.

I know I'm just beating a dead horse but I'm interested in what everyone else thinks.

TLDR: Get rid of the taunt on ice staff, get rid of the shield, focus on the crowd control abilities and make it meaningful.

Frost Staves already apply Minor Maim (-15% damage done) so it already has an amazing secondary effect. And with 3 Frost skills on my Warden Tank I can easily maintain 90% on Deep Freeze (the immobilize) absolutely supassing DK for crowd control. l back bar a Frost Staff and it is absolutely a better way to go then x2 S&B. At the cost of losing out on a Shields worth of resistances, 15% damage reduction of projectiles and Battle Field Mobility (only on 1 bar) I gain Elemental Blockade which gives me 100% uptime on crusher enchantment. (or a ranged interrupt)

Personally, I find the taunt useless, but even more so, l don't want block to cost magic, so I don't take the Tri Focus passive. The changes to make Frost Staff tanking viable, and have absolutely increased there use. It would be a bad idea to take that away.


Vet Sanctum Ophidia, was tank testing myself
https://youtu.be/So3A13kSefQ

Chaos2088 wrote: »

I get the logic of why Ice staff tanking was brought in, so you could tank with magicka instead of stam...

But I do think reworking the Ice staff for that was a bad call, get Ice staffs viable for dps...get something else for magicka tanking...

I have an icemage with a warden...and well I notice the difference in dps. Haven't taken him into vet dungeons for this reason.

I too have a Mag Warden DPS. I parse at 22k with a Frost staff back bar or Lighting and 75 points in the Ritual. I tank so my animation canceling still needs work, but the ease of weaving with Frost is making up for Lighting extra damage.


Really if the just drop the taunt I think it would be fine. I already use it anyway in most content. Maybe adding a race similar to Dark Elves who get Frost damage boost? Snow Elves? (though lore wise that doesnt fit)

Ice staves as tanking weapon isn't working.
The skills, passives, and specialty staves (dsa/vma) are meant for dps. The heavy attack taunt is clunky.

It would be more effective to make something new like an alteration staff (Ironflesh, Telekinesis, Mass Paralysis)

Infernos focus on single target, lightning on aoe. Ice could focus on Critical damage.

Chilled status effect could give a new debuff that reduced critical resistance.
Ice wall could give a debuff increasing critical damage taken.
Passives could also focus on critical chance and damage.

These debuffs would make it attractive to run at least one in optimized endgame trials.

In pvp, this could counter impen stacking and the snares would be attractive.

This could also mean more usage of MagWarden, Shadow mundus, Winterborn, Iceheart, and other features.

I'm all for an update to the schizophrenic ice staff, just don't remove its damage potential as I'm having great fun with my ice warden, well knowing that he will never be relevant in any endgame content.

I support ice staves having a focus area of control as which is its current role, but to make it relevant in PvE, we need to change the way that content is dealt with in ESO towards a need for actually using crowd control in dungeons etc. Right now damage is king, and everything is being burned through, boss mechanics are ignored, trash mobs are ignored/nuked to oblivion without them ever posing a risk to the group if they're not dealt with correctly.

How this should be changed to allow for CC in PvE? We have to move towards what we had in World of Warcraft dungeons, (as an example) where if you didn't employ CC to great effect on trash mobs and boss fights you'd most likely wipe as every enemy was a threat on scale of an ESO boss (trash mobs would 1-3 shot a healer np).

Funny thing? ESO was intended to work that way, it was designed that way from the beginning, but then along came a bug known as animation cancelling. ZOS tried to fix this, as it allowed players to output about 1000% more damage than the game was designed for, but ZOS couldn't fix it, they gave up and decided to deem animation cancelling (weaving) an intended "feature". Thus breaking the tradional dungeon methodology that would have seen CC as an important factor in PvE.

A few years later, power creep (champion points / new op gear sets) have taken care of the rest, nothing outside trials/PvP probably pose a threat to even the squishiest healer/DPS.

That said, I love my "ice mage" and hope that if they do update the ice staff that it will be in a direction of damage orientation and not more tanking.

KanedaSyndrome wrote: »

I'm all for an update to the schizophrenic ice staff, just don't remove its damage potential as I'm having great fun with my ice warden, well knowing that he will never be relevant in any endgame content.

I support ice staves having a focus area of control as which is its current role, but to make it relevant in PvE, we need to change the way that content is dealt with in ESO towards a need for actually using crowd control in dungeons etc. Right now damage is king, and everything is being burned through, boss mechanics are ignored, trash mobs are ignored/nuked to oblivion without them ever posing a risk to the group if they're not dealt with correctly.

How this should be changed to allow for CC in PvE? We have to move towards what we had in World of Warcraft dungeons, (as an example) where if you didn't employ CC to great effect on trash mobs and boss fights you'd most likely wipe as every enemy was a threat on scale of an ESO boss (trash mobs would 1-3 shot a healer np).

Funny thing? ESO was intended to work that way, it was designed that way from the beginning, but then along came a bug known as animation cancelling. ZOS tried to fix this, as it allowed players to output about 1000% more damage than the game was designed for, but ZOS couldn't fix it, they gave up and decided to deem animation cancelling (weaving) an intended "feature". Thus breaking the tradional dungeon methodology that would have seen CC as an important factor in PvE.

A few years later, power creep (champion points / new op gear sets) have taken care of the rest, nothing outside trials/PvP probably pose a threat to even the squishiest healer/DPS.

That said, I love my "ice mage" and hope that if they do update the ice staff that it will be in a direction of damage orientation and not more tanking.

Animation cancelling is good for 100% boost to DPS? That has to be one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever heard...its been proved to be good for about 2000 DPS...so if that's a 100% improvement for you...well, I just don't know what to say.

Back on topic though, a lot of people who don't like the heavy attack taunt are using it wrong. Its a free ranged taunt that restores resources. It works just fine for most ranged mobs that need taunting...you simply charge it as you are running toward a mob, targeting ranged mobs, followed immediately by caltrops or other AoE to aggro the rest of the mob, while in the middle of the fight, after you taunt(or immobilize) the melee mobs you should again be charging a heavy to grab aggro of stray ranged mobs(or using chains to pull them in, which one you choose depending on how your magicka pool looks at that instant). There are only a few situations where its just not fast enough and you need to use inner fire instead. An excellent example is in Direfrost Keep in that hall with the 3 trolls so far apart. I will pierce armor the first one, swap bars to ice staff, light attack to aggro #2, followed by an immediate charge and release to taunt #3, quickly stacking all three for the DPS to burn down. The heavy attack taunt skill is no more difficult to work around than the Warden's delayed-DPS abilities.

Chaos2088 wrote: »

I get the logic of why Ice staff tanking was brought in, so you could tank with magicka instead of stam...

But I do think reworking the Ice staff for that was a bad call, get Ice staffs viable for dps...get something else for magicka tanking...

I have an icemage with a warden...and well I notice the difference in dps. Haven't taken him into vet dungeons for this reason.

Yeah, I've got to agree with all of this. The idea of a magicka focused tank is a really good one. Or at least, interesting. The staff tanking mechanics just don't work as intended, though. It'd probably be more forgivable if the taunt was on an active ability, but, even then, this approach is still wonky. If the goal was to make ice tanking a thing for the Warden, that class probably should have gotten a magicka only taunt in the Ice tree, rather than grafting it directly onto the Frost Staff.

I personally use an Ice staff on both bars as a Tank, I would hate to lose this option for my tank as I really dont like using a sword and board. I have tried the build on several Vet Dungeons and I think it works fine on anything up to a normal trial, I expect things could be tricky at vet Trial standard and the extra defense from a shield is ideal for leaderboards but it makes no sense taking this option away as people have said DPS has no reason or need for the ice staff it was rarely used for damage before the changes.

People keep acting like ice dps should never be a thing in this game. Bringing up the intro of the Warden is terrible rationale as they have frost dps focused skills in addition to tanking. Perhaps through the right morphs it could be both (tank morphs vs dps morphs), with frost dps focused on critical damage which would make it unique from fire/lightning. Ice damage is already baked into the game, it just needs a boost.

Beyond the obvious fact that an ice staff is a DESTRUCTION staff...

WARDEN - Winter's Embrace
Winter's Revenge: Skewer enemies with icy shards, dealing Frost Damage in the area every second over 12 seconds and reducing Movement Speed by 28% for 3 seconds. Summons at targeted area instead of around you. Damage scales on Max Magicka and Spell Damage. [obvious cold dps skill that is likely only ever used in a cold dps build]

Arctic Blast: Envelop yourself in winter winds, healing for 10% of Max Health instantly and an additional 2% Health every 2 seconds over 10 seconds. Enemies in the area will take Frost Damage every 2 seconds over 10 seconds. [class self heal plus dps, similar to NBs swallow soul which is more powerful though]

Crystallized Slab: Spin a shield of ice around you to absorb projectiles. Each absorb restores Magicka. Shield breaks after 3 projectiles. On each successful absorption, a projectile is sent back to the enemy for Frost Damage. [this particular morph is not used by tanks and could be reworked to focus more on the dps portion of the morph]

Northern Storm (ultimate): Twist a violent storm around you, causing nearby enemies to take Frost Damage every 1 second for 8 seconds and have their Movement Speed reduced by 70%. Nearby allies gain Major Protection, reducing incoming Damage by 30%. While slotted your Max Magicka is increased by 8%.

Passive: Increase your Magic and Frost Damage by 6%

Mages Guild
Ice Comet (ultimate): Call a comet down from the constellations to blast an enemy, dealing [x] Cold Damage to all enemies in the area, knocking them back, and reducing their Movement Speed by 50% for 8 seconds. After impact, enemies in the target area take [y] Cold Damage every second for 10 seconds. Deal increased damage that is now Cold and snares.[This is a perfect fit ultimate for a frost dps build and would be used instead of the destro ulti, at least as it stands now]


SETS which promote cold damage
Winterborn: (5 items) When you deal damage with a Cold Damage ability, you have an 8% chance to summon an ice pillar that deals 7967 Cold Damage to all enemies in a 3 meter radius. The ice pillar persists for 2 seconds and reduces the Movment Speed of all enemies within the radius by 60%.

Ysgramor's Birthright: (5 items) Adds 400 Spell Damage to your Cold Damage abilities.

Iceheart: (2 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you have a 20% chance to gain a damage shield that absorbs 8600 damage for 6 seconds. While the damage shield holds, you deal 770 Cold Damage to all enemies within 5 meters of you every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.