Why is every Magicka DPS mostly the same?

Sporvan · February 2017

I still think the weakest aspect of ESO is the skill design. If only it was more like a traditional Elder Scrolls game with more flexibility.

daedalusAI · February 2017

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

daedalusAI wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Paincake wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

You are right, I meant a different Mundus Stone and mixed up their names.

But Giles, what's your point? Just because the skills have different animations and names it is different in the end when Liquid Lightning, Eruption, Blazing Spear do exactly the same? It follows the same pattern. That's my point. In the end it is still the same and as I said, if you arrange your bars all classes are nearly identical in their PvE playstyle. What exactly is unique? The color of your damage?

Thats like saying well life sucks, I mean we are born we live and then we die...its all the same......thats kind of how it all works...not sure what kind of a system youre envisioning...

Probably thinking discrete classes with no overlap that comes from having weapon, guild, and armor lines. I know I miss it from EQ2 sometimes. It was cool having 24 discrete classes.

The issue is balance and balance by nature goes against diversity because its very nature is to equalize and in turn make similar. You cant have true diversity because some classes would excell at one thing but be bad at another and while some may welcome this, it doesnt work well, since players want to do everything well. The current system in my opinion for magicka at leaat offers a lot of diversity. Could it offer a lot more? Of course! But balancing that would be a nightmare...id love sets that would buff a certain style of unique gameplay, that way you can create something truly unique, but rhe designers have to balance encounters so you cant cheese anything and that approach complicates this.

How does balance by nature go against diversity? If all skills are tuned to be in a range of +/- 10% performance difference you are getting close to an optimum of balance and thus enable build diversity.

For example I really want to make a magicka dot templar build, but except backlash and sun fire as my class dots the other available dots are a joke in comparison, especially entropy and soul trap. Even the dot from destructive touch is pretty dismal.

A certain class specialization for different types of content can't be avoided if you don't want to make every class feel and play the same and thus being useful in everything.

Indeed: there is diversity if you go my the basic meaning of the word as in "the condition of having or being composed of differing elements". But for me diversity implicitly includes some soft of performance indicator: how can you name something as having diversity when the performance of said elements don't even come close to each other?

You already have an abundance of sets and most of them are just plain useless - and the few really good ones are so good because the rest is just useless and rather serves as window garnish as in "Look how many sets there are in ESO" instead of "Look there is a small selections of set which are all useful in some way".

Isn't there already pretty major cheesing going on with the almost required endgame sets of spell power cure, burning spellweave, infallible mage etc.?

The issue with your reasoning is an assumption that if you tweak damage of skills to beong close to one another balance will happen. The issue is the fact that those skills by nature do different things and their interaction with other skills shapes the end dps result, so while a templar as you said has low hitting DoTs, it has a nain spammable that is an aoe. A sorc instead has a lower damaging single target skill, but high hotting DoTs...there is a built in diversity based on the integration of skills on a character.

As far as set diversity I absolutely agree...this needs to be revamoed...

Balancing is a difficult topic - but if you consider most of the spells are similar at the base level and only themed differently with added flavor you have a base to start balancing around.

What have we:

Executes like mage's fury or impale -> both function similar once a certain threshold is reached for an execute phase
Dots like sun fire or destructive touch -> the base functionality of a dot is always the same: a certain amount of damage over a set time with added flavor
Aoe like wall of elements or cleansing ritual -> aoe spells only really differ in the amount of damage they do, their area e.g. circular or a straight line, added flavor and different resource costs
Single target -> from rapid strikes over crystal shards to solar flare every spell either has a cast time/or not, single target damage, added flavor and different resource costs
Buffs like magelight with its twin in expert hunter or every other minor or major buff
Debuffs like mark target for reducing armor and spell resistance

If you have such a base which enables to you compare the different parts there is no logical reason as to why most dots are just plain useless.

A few tooltips from my 205cp templar with trainee set and a few bloodthorn items:

Entropy currently does 5,3k over 12 seconds healing for 3,9k over the full duration with the only useful aspect being major sorcery
Destructive Clench 2,9k instant and 4,6k over 8 seconds+the added benefit of your destruction staff element
Soul Trap 4,8k over 10 seconds and filling a soul gem
Sun fire with 3,8k instant and 6k over 6.5seconds while offering major prophecy and minor sorcery due to illuminate passive -> it's not even close how far superior my templar dot is compared to other available ones

Comparing those few useless dots from above with other templar tools:

Solar flare 10k for 1.1 sec cast with built-in empower
Puncturing sweep with 4 hits for 872 damage each, additional 140% damage vs. the nearest enemy, heals me and each of the 4 hits can potentially be a critical strike

By mindlessly spamming either sun fire, solar flare or puncturing sweep I'm way more efficient than using the other dots above and having to wait 10+ seconds for little damage.

I'd stay my assumption is still reasonable. If the damage of those few dots are tweaked to be on a similar level of my sun fire an actual useful dot build might be possible - but as it stands now there is no real reason to use dots as your primary damage.

SublimeSparo · February 2017

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

IzakiBrotherSs wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

IzakiBrotherSs wrote: »

Dark Flare? For real? People actually use that skill instead of Puncturing Sweeps? Seems like a DPS loss to me.

Btw OP, it seems to me you haven't played these classes. Sure the bar set up and gear might be similar, but the feel of each class is very different. If you're good on sorc, that doesn't make you good on DK. Its not nearly as simple as that.

Stamina classes though? Hell yeah, its the exact same thing, stamina NBs being kinda the exception cause they have an execute.

Um, yea, outside of a good templar that needs to go ranged for one fight (vMoL Forgotten) there are some who dark flare it up as their main spam. Never understood since obvious loss of DPS and loss of great survival increase. But yea.

Force Pulse would do more DPS though, would it not? Considering it doesn't have a cast time.

Probably not. On paper Dark Flare performs better than FP but the good melee builds outperform both by a large margin.

You can straight switch puncturing sweeps for dark flare when asked to go ranged, so you still apply woe, trap if possible to step in and drop, shard, reflective light, pl then spam a couple dark flare from dw bar. Does a *** ton of damage in a trial lol

SmalltalkJava · February 2017

one way to resolve this is to have all damage skills do damage within 5% of each other. all single targets skills within 5 % and then all aoe's within 5%. The variation would be based off of the skill's side effects so pure dd would do 5% more and big secondary effects would do 5% less.

Once eso established a good baseline they could then tweak each skill individually over a few months span as they tracked what skills people used. Then adjust just a particular skill by 1 to 3 percent. This keeps everything with in a manageable and balance-able baseline.

SanSan · February 2017

Cuz balance is poop. This is why the skills right now need to be revamped. Proc everything is stupid.

Alpheu5 · February 2017

You're all DPSing wrong. I can pull 104k single target unbuffed by shouting profanities at the bosses.

Seraphayel · February 2017

SanSan wrote: »

Cuz balance is poop. This is why the skills right now need to be revamped. Proc everything is stupid.

I am really hoping for Morrowind on this aspect. I think ZOS will (or already has and that's why they invited the streamers) revamp many class skill lines with the upcoming expansion. I think they're going to use Morrowind as another “relaunch“ for Cyrodiil and PvP so they need to revamp skills and classes. Right now I am pretty sure ZOS already did this for testing purposes.

Seraphayel · February 2018

One year later and this issue still exists.

I really hope with adding a new mechanic in Chapter II (hopefully Spellcrafting) build diversity will exist in this game. Right now it's very boring. I mean, just look at some YouTuber's. Alcast is putting out builds every update and they're in 99% always the same with the same skills, sets, weapons etc. Why?

LordSemaj · February 2018

Seraphayel wrote: »

One year later and this issue still exists.

I really hope with adding a new mechanic in Chapter II (hopefully Spellcrafting) build diversity will exist in this game. Right now it's very boring. I mean, just look at some YouTuber's. Alcast is putting out builds every update and they're in 99% always the same with the same skills, sets, weapons etc. Why?

Much of it stems from the players themselves. The Warden class has been added a jack of all trades that is absolutely terrible in PVE... if you consider min-maxing one particular role to be optimal.

Yet it's a tanky dps support who heals. It can easily bring usefulness to the team. Sure, it heals less than a purist, and deals less damage than a purist, but two of them can do both to a greater extent than a dps and a healer can. It provides off support that makes the run potentially go smoother or provides buffs that other specs now don't have to run.

Heck, I still love to death any DPS that self-heals over the ones who thinks healers should do 100% of the healing like a purist mindset would imply.

These identical builds are from the community deciding that these are the optimal skills and every other build is awful. It's still possible to run other variations as long as you're willing to adjust the team composition and not expect each role to be isolated to one task. Tanks mitigate, and for some fights you may want that purist, but in others having a tank who can heal people is pretty nice. He doesn't mitigate everything but if he's lending healing support then the healers can focus more on healing him instead of the DPS.

Jura23 · February 2018

Seraphayel wrote: »

Ultimate: Meteor / Elemental Rage

at least in PvP I see A LOT less meteor than I did two years ago. Which is logical, because it's expensive and hits like a wet noodle. Just wonder why did také ppl so long to figure that out.

idk · February 2018

Seraphayel wrote: »

One year later and this issue still exists.

I really hope with adding a new mechanic in Chapter II (hopefully Spellcrafting) build diversity will exist in this game. Right now it's very boring. I mean, just look at some YouTuber's. Alcast is putting out builds every update and they're in 99% always the same with the same skills, sets, weapons etc. Why?

OP seems to have not played MMOs much, especially ESO since most of the time only one or two skills are shared by the different classes and in other games whatever class you play there is one specific build you will use or you are weak sauce.

I find threads like this humorous since they usually avoid the obvious in an attempt distract attention so they think they are making a point.

temjiu · February 2018

take a game with lots of options.

Add in a competitive environment, where min maxing is essential.

Layer that in with a Dev team that only has so much resources.

Your result is homogenization of classes...to a degree. I play plenty of MMO's and have yet to see one with a competitive environment that didn't' eventually homogenize at least some aspects of gameplay.

You can certainly go outside of those guides if you wish. make a spellcaster with daggers, or perhaps a healer with a sword and shield? could be fun. But at the same time you'll reach a threshold where it can't perform any better, and you'll have to make a choice. Do I continue with my RP and enjoyment, or do I get into the proverbial "Ballgame" to win?

Guide are usually based around min maxing. Honestly, if you just want to play something different, a guide is probably not needed as much as your own imagination. Do what you like, try different things.

That being said, I would love to see them work more skills into the competitive zone, in both class skill lines and weapon skill lines. I also wouldn't mind some new skill lines come up. Spears, as an example, would be a fun new skill line. Mix of ranged and melee skills? Perhaps an offensive shield setup? give us a hefty shield smash skill, or a shockwave kind of thing with the shield. lots of fun ideas out there.

But the reality is there will always be a focus at competitive levels to have the best setup, so even with more variety, we would probably still end up with a small group of skills standing out, and the guides would follow suit.

PrayingSeraph · February 2018

Disagree with OP but I like their name

klowdy1 · February 2018

Stam is the same way. My stamplar uses two templar abilities.

Iselin · February 2018

1. "Literally" doesn't mean what you think it means...literally.
2. Some people only notice obvious, gross differences. Others notice the subtleties.

If everything is the same to you, my sympathies for your boring life.

Drdeath20 · February 2018

Seraphayel wrote: »

You are right, I meant a different Mundus Stone and mixed up their names.

But Giles, what's your point? Just because the skills have different animations and names it is different in the end when Liquid Lightning, Eruption, Blazing Spear do exactly the same? It follows the same pattern. That's my point. In the end it is still the same and as I said, if you arrange your bars all classes are nearly identical in their PvE playstyle. What exactly is unique? The color of your damage?

Yeah those skills all deal damage overtime, hence they do they exact same thing lol. Well we are damage dealers lol.

Seraphayel · February 2018

idk wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

One year later and this issue still exists.

I really hope with adding a new mechanic in Chapter II (hopefully Spellcrafting) build diversity will exist in this game. Right now it's very boring. I mean, just look at some YouTuber's. Alcast is putting out builds every update and they're in 99% always the same with the same skills, sets, weapons etc. Why?

OP seems to have not played MMOs much, especially ESO since most of the time only one or two skills are shared by the different classes and in other games whatever class you play there is one specific build you will use or you are weak sauce.

I find threads like this humorous since they usually avoid the obvious in an attempt distract attention so they think they are making a point.

That's not true. There's a huge difference in class design when it comes to ESO or other MMORPGs (WoW, Lotro, Black Desert or whatever).

Only one or two skills are shared? It's the opposite, only one or two (class specific) skills are different. There might be 3-4 class specific skills but in general they're still all the same type of (and it doesn't really matter if your grounded AoE is called Twisting Path or Liquid Lightning or Eruption, in the end they do exactly the same and are exactly the same type of skill with different visuals).

Build diversity in this game does not exist. Neither for Magicka nor for Stamina DPS and that's just sad. This game offers so much options but rewards so little. That's why I hope we'll get Spellcrafting and something changes.

Just compare all the different "end game builds" (like I did) - they're exactly the same as last year in February. One year later and NOTHING changed. Nothing. Not even the equipment (except some very specific exceptions).

They all use:

Destro Ult,
Blockade,
Inner Light,
Harness Magicka
and then it comes to the class specific skills:

Finisher (Impale, Mage's Wrath),
grounded AoE (Eruption, Twisting Path, Liquid Lightning),
Filler (3/5 use Force Pulse, the other Strife and Lash),
then another DoT (Searing Embers, Crippling Grasp, Swarm, Haunting Curse - okay, this is a bit different but falls under the same category).

And then there are "unique" skills (which are the minority in all of these builds). And guess what, when it comes to "rotation", they're nearly the same. How can anyone deny that?

Jura23 · February 2018

Just like a lot of ppl live their lives the same way, many ppl play the game the same way as others. It's human natura to mimic other ppl. Individuals looking for their own way are exception.

Jura23 · February 2018

temjiu wrote: »

Add in a competitive environment, where min maxing is essential.

What competitive environment do you mean? The leaderboards? I think 95% (if not more) players hardly ever look at them.

TheDoomsdayMonster · February 2018

@Seraphayel

I personally think this game offers alot of reward for creative character building...

The reason (in my honest opinion of course) why you see so much of the same is that people take the easy way out and ask others for build advice or simply adopt someone elses successful build to use as their own...

But 'out of the norm' builds do exist, people use them, and they can perform very well...

The build in my sig is a perfect example of this...

altemriel · February 2018

because "best builds"

Vahrokh · February 2018

To OP

Imagine ESO had been was a proper, single player game.

You'd obviously give a ton of easy melee DPS to a dual wielding nightblade.
You'd obviously give a ton of easy healing to an heal specced Argonian. Just because of race.
Templars would be truly awesome at "holy damage" and excellent healers
Sorcerers would be unbeatable at huge magic + AoE damage. Because that's what a "mage" (albeit ESO sorcs are not 100% mages of course) does.

Now, imagine to just transpose this single player ESO to a MMO.

Since early open beta, you'd see people grinding their teeth because their stamina DK cannot heal like the best heal specced templar.

You'd see nightblades crying HARD because they cannot compete with sorcerers on magic damage.
You'd see sorcerers crying even harder because they cannot be a "battlemage" nor main tank every trial.

Many of the "would" above, actually happened.

ESO (and most MMO companies) nerf classes on a "who cries louder" basis.

Therefore, over time, every class becomes just a name, it loses uniqueness and flavor. All become the same trite grey material. Faceless, tasteless, flat.

This process happens to many MMOs, not just ESO, and it's purely due to players being spoiled childs, unable to make a choice and face the good and bad consequences of that choice.

This "I want it all now and only the best" attitude is also getting prevalent in real life... but now I am digressing.

Saturn · February 2018

#diversity

Emmagoldman · February 2018

The game has been out for a long time leaving plenty of time for people to test gear and discover which set performs with what rotations

Im 100% ok with 10% dps difference. If one class clearly pulls ahead, dont you think that something may be off? Do you feel the player base would be happy?

But a vet trial or pvp isnt about whats your parse, its also about group buffs as well.

Lysette · February 2018

Seraphayel wrote: »

Can someone tell me why nearly all Magicka builds are 50-60% the same even with different classes? I was looking for builds and build ideas in the last weeks and one thing really baffled me: 9/10 builds are literally the same. Those builds follow the same pattern, same skills, same weapon choices, same set choices - not even the class matters anymore. I know this is called "meta" but isn't this a huge problem in ESO?

Most Magicka builds follow this scheme:

Mundus Stone: The Thief

Weapons: Fire Staff + Lightning / Restoration Staff

Sets: Ilambris, Grothdarr, Valkyn Skoria, Burning Spellweave,

Skills:

One spammable skill: Force Pulse or class spammable (Funnel Health, Dark Flare, Lava Lash)
Two AoE ground target skills: Wall of Elements + class AoE (Eruption, Twisting Path, Liquid Lightning, Blazing Spear)
Flex slot (mostly DoTs or proc abilities): Merciless Resolve, Crystal Fragments, Reflective Light, Burning Embers
Finisher: Impale, Mage's Wrath, Radiant Destruction
Crit / Magicka boost: Inner Light and / or class skills (Inferno, Bound Aegis)
Ultimate: Meteor / Elemental Rage

+ healing abilities / shields on the off bar (Healing Ward, Combat Prayer, Dampen Magic, Hardened Ward etc.)

_____________________________

Isn't this super boring? In the end every class has the exact same playstyle for Magicka DPS (in PvE). There is literally no difference. Throw your DoTs and keep spamming your fillers, throw an ultimate, rinse and repeat. It doesn't matter if you're a Sorcerer, Templar, Dragon Knight or Nightblade. You're doing the same rotation with mostly the same skills on all of them. If you arrange your skills right you could play all four classes with eyes closed due to their similarities when it comes to endgame PvE builds.

I know players tend to have the "best" builds for "best" damage but why is it so limited in ESO? This game was advertised as "play how you want" (yes, we know that was never a thing really) but since 12 (?) months or so Magicka DPS has become flat and boring because you literally have 4-5 "must have" skills or items, maybe more.

Why isn't Zenimax adressing this problem and trying to fix this? I mean, do all of you want to play the same as every other Magicka DPS out there? I don't know how it is for Stamina, maybe the same, maybe worse, but as a Magicka DPS I feel limited by the game because it forces me to use skills or items I don't really want to use.

This might be a rant thread for many players out there but I just wanted to discuss this issue. I want your opinion and I really would like to enforce a discussion about this topic (feel free to open up a Stamina thread as well if you think it's necessary). There are soooooooo many skills in game but players only use 20-30% because the rest of them is bad, very bad, terribad etc. - ZOS tries to "fix" these problems, take Scalding Rune as an example. They buffed the DoT damage by 30% in Homestead but... 30% of nothing is still nothing. So why are they ignoring so many skills while they totally overpower others (e.g. Puncturing Sweep - super cheap, AoE, amazing damage plus additional healing - this skill combines all of what's wrong with the balancing in this game).

So... what do you think?

Do you like how it is? Do you think ZOS needs to revaluate many skills? Do you feel a bit bored by the limitations?

I guess that is why they call their combat model a "rotation" - it simply follows the same rules for all classes and the classes are created so, that pretty much every class has the same abilities with a different name and a quite similar performance. This is what balancing gets you - in the end all are the same, because they want the game to be balanced.

Lysette · February 2018

There is this misconception or mis-expectation that a balanced game would be good - it might be for pvp, but certainly not for roleplay - roleplay lives from being different than the next one, not to be as similar as possible to him/her.

ADarklore · February 2018

This is exactly why ZOS continues to meddle with skills in order to try to create an artificial 'diversity' instead of just letting players play how they want. The only way they will TRULY create diversity is by giving each skill a Magicka and Stamina morph and each weapon dual morphs as well... this would allow a huge amount of diversity into the game.

But thought I'd also add... mundus stone options have changed a bit with new sets added and mundus changes, I know I run Apprentice now.

O_LYKOS · February 2018

Because people test every aspect of the game to conclude the most effective and viable dps.
If you played stamina you'll notice the same there too.
Most builds will use weapon of choice skills which pretty much copy and paste across most characters. Accompanied with class skills.

coop500 · February 2018

Play a werewolf, that's something new.... Well, wait until Monday, because right now ZOS decided to break werewolves

Doctordarkspawn · February 2018

Every DPS setup usually follows the same general makeup because that's the formula on how DPS works.

Whiiiich is generally boring and rotation dependant.

I hate DPS in this game. At least in others, there was more nuance then a mindless rotation. Even ones known for their mind numbing rotation.