Another major expansion and ice staves are still trash. Why? Trying to slap on a half-baked tanking mechanic to a DPS skill line weapon is BAD. The answer is to have a skill line for magic users DEDICATED to tanking, with passives to augment and support it. Alteration is one of the two schools of magic that ESO has not bothered to delve into and there's an opportunity to fix two problems at the same time. Alteration magic is defensive in nature, providing protection, altering defenses, and providing utility effects.
An Alteration Staff skill line can fix this issue:
- Heavy attacks would restore magicka and blocking with Alteration staves consumes magicka. A passive will unlock the ability to use HA's to taunt, allowing players to CHOOSE if they want to only use Alteration magic for utility. Alteration attack animation is similar to the lightning/resto staff.
- With Alteration staves taking over the role of magical tanking, Ice staves can be re-focused on damage, providing Minor Breach instead of Minor Maim, simulating the effect of making an enemies' defenses brittle and their reaction time slowed with snare/root effects on Elemental Blockade.
- Ice staves being a useful damage outlet that provides a degree of CC and debuff gives Wardens a weapon that allows them to synergize with their existing, amazing buffs.
Alteration Staff Skills:
- Transmute Flesh: Caster alters their flesh into a hardened metal, gaining Minor Ward and Minor Resolve for 20 seconds.
- Morph 1: Enemies striking the caster are afflicted with Minor Maim for 15 seconds. (Tanking focused)
- Morph 2: Reduced cost and caster also gains Minor Expedition for 15 seconds. (Utility focused)
- Burden: Caster fires a blast of energy in a targeted 8m radius area, snaring all enemies in the area by 30% and inflicting them with Major Breach for 15 seconds.
- Morph 1: Targets in the area are also afflicted with Major Fracture. (Tanking focused)
- Morph 2: Also deals X damage each second in the target area and increases the snare to 40%. (PvP focused)
- Molt: Caster magically sheds off malignant effects, purging up to 2 negative effects.
- Morph 1: Caster also purges 1 negative effect from a nearby ally.
- Morph 2: Reduced cost.
- Vex: Deals X magic damage to a target enemy, afflicting them with Minor Breach and taunting them for 15 seconds.(Ranged taunt with short cast time.)
- Morph 1: Target is also afflicted with Minor Fracture for 15 seconds.
- Morph 2: Target is also afflicted with Major Maim for 10 seconds.
- Illuminate: Caster summons a Magelight that occasionally blinds nearby enemies and provides Minor Protection for 25 seconds.
- Morph 1: Magelight now will attack nearby enemies with small blasts of light dealing X magic damage. (Yes, it's counted as a pet as well!)
- Morph 2: No longer provides Minor Protection and instead attaches to a target enemy, inflicting them with Minor Vulnerability for 15 seconds.
Ultimate (250) - Mass Transmogrify: Caster unleashes a large blast of energy, dealing X magic damage and afflicts enemies in a 12m radius with Major Mangle, lowering their maximum health by 15% for 10 seconds.
- Morph 1: Increases the damage dealt and the duration to 12 seconds.
- Morph 2: Duration is reduced to 8 seconds, but affected enemies are also snared by 30% and effect cannot be purged.
Passives:
- Reduces the cost of blocking by 20%/36% while an Alteration staff is equipped. Fully charged heavy attacks taunt enemies struck for 10/15 seconds.
- Blocking an enemy's melee attack with an Alteration staff afflicts that enemy with Minor Magickasteal for 5/10 seconds.
- Decrease the duration of negative effects on you by 10%/20% while an Alteration staff is equipped.
- Blocked incoming enemy projectiles have a 5%/10% chance of being reflected back to the attacker.
- Attacking an enemy while affected by a negative effect has a 5%/10% chance to transfer the negative effect to the target.
Well, that's it. Let me know what you all think. I honestly think this a much better solution when the alternative is gimping an entire elemental damage type and giving poor magicka wardens the shaft. Obviously these changes can't be implemented now in Summerset, but a future DLC could feature these changes. Magical tanking is a neat thing - it was just poorly implemented with frost staves. Tanking NEEDS a skill line dedicated to it - magical tanking should be no different.
EDIT: Made a change to Vex so that its taunt is no longer AoE based. I still feel that heavy attacks should provide the taunt so that they have a unique utility that separates the Alteration staff from Sword and Shield. Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Edited by Vercingetorix on July 11, 2019 7:29PM “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”