Why would you nerf the damage of Solar Barrage?

FakeFox · July 2018

Update: I've now been able to test the changes to Solar Barrage, the damage loss was less then expected. Under better conditions then the current PTS I think the difference should be around 500 DPS. Never the less I think the 40% damage nerf shouldn't exist, as Magplar could use the 2k more DPS. As you can see in the video without the channel the rotation is a lot better to play, it does not result in considerable DPS increase but it for sure makes it a lot more fun to play.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CPQimuSYbFY&feature=youtu.be

Drdeath20 · July 2018

FakeFox wrote: »

Update: I've now been able to test the changes to Solar Barrage, the damage loss was less then expected. Under better conditions then the current PTS I think the difference should be around 500 DPS. Never the less I think the 40% damage nerf shouldn't exist, as Magplar could use the 2k more DPS. As you can see in the video without the channel the rotation is a lot better to play, it does not result in considerable DPS increase but it for sure makes it a lot more fun to play.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CPQimuSYbFY&feature=youtu.be

But that aoe damage is fairly useless in alot of boss fights. Also this is a buff to stamplars too. 3 empowers. My magplar light attack is up around 13k empowered and a crit.

I get what your saying but id trade 40% 5 meter aoe damage for instant cast. I wish we didnt have too but it could be worse.

Drdeath20 · July 2018

Its typical of ZoS to never hand templars a true buff for months

Tyrobag · July 2018

Obviously they can't fix something without breaking it, and they couldn't find a way to accidentally break the skill so they made it useless instead.

FakeFox · July 2018

Drdeath20 wrote: »

FakeFox wrote: »

Update: I've now been able to test the changes to Solar Barrage, the damage loss was less then expected. Under better conditions then the current PTS I think the difference should be around 500 DPS. Never the less I think the 40% damage nerf shouldn't exist, as Magplar could use the 2k more DPS. As you can see in the video without the channel the rotation is a lot better to play, it does not result in considerable DPS increase but it for sure makes it a lot more fun to play.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CPQimuSYbFY&feature=youtu.be

But that aoe damage is fairly useless in alot of boss fights. Also this is a buff to stamplars too. 3 empowers. My magplar light attack is up around 13k empowered and a crit.

I get what your saying but id trade 40% 5 meter aoe damage for instant cast. I wish we didnt have too but it could be worse.

Interesting point. I usually don't use that skill when I can't go melee. Or I switch to another class entirely.

casparian · July 2018

ZOS has the right idea, I think: remove the cast time but nerf the damage a bit. It looks to me like they just got the numbers wrong. If it were nerfed by a smaller amount -- say, 25% -- we would be in good shape. After all, this is a melee skill and so should deal high damage, in order to justify moving a magplar into a melee slot.

hedna123b14_ESO · July 2018

Some facts for those of you that are just guessing.
1. With constant orbs AND worm I parse lower when I use barrage than when I dont, because I increase the amount of times I hit spell sym astronomically. because this skill is a HUGE sustain drain.
2. The 40% empower that all of you keep extolling is factored in at the beginning of the buff equation (additive with things), so the actual buff to light attacks is nowhere near 40%.
3. To make barrage even remotely useful you would have to have it keep the current damage per tick, but have it tick every second. Between the empower and the increase in damage. It would make it a skill worth using.
4. As far as magplar damage currently it is on par with magsorcs but definitely not on par with magblades. If solar barrage was buffed as I proposed and beam base damage was buffed it would be able to compete with nightblades. As far as I know im the only magplar dps pc NA with a vcr+3 clear...I'd really like that to change...

dodgehopper_ESO · July 2018

Answer: It is a Templar skill.

Joy_Division · July 2018

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Some facts for those of you that are just guessing.
1. With constant orbs AND worm I parse lower when I use barrage than when I dont, because I increase the amount of times I hit spell sym astronomically. because this skill is a HUGE sustain drain.
2. The 40% empower that all of you keep extolling is factored in at the beginning of the buff equation (additive with things), so the actual buff to light attacks is nowhere near 40%.
3. To make barrage even remotely useful you would have to have it keep the current damage per tick, but have it tick every second. Between the empower and the increase in damage. It would make it a skill worth using.
4. As far as magplar damage currently it is on par with magsorcs but definitely not on par with magblades. If solar barrage was buffed as I proposed and beam base damage was buffed it would be able to compete with nightblades. As far as I know im the only magplar dps pc NA with a vcr+3 clear...I'd really like that to change...

Pretty much.

I took my Live templar and used the same setup on my PTS templar. Target dummy parses were roughly the same. It's not a buff. You can go on and on all day about the 4 empowers, but you get that on Live with a truckload of AoE damage. I get the cast-time is an inconvenience, bt it's just that, an inconvenience. So for the price of convenience, you're getting a weaker skill, which is only made up for by the increase in damage to Radiant Oppression buff and the extra GCD. Not a buff. Just a different means of getting roughly the same DPS.

This, of course, is only in single-target scenarios. In any fight with an AoE or cleave competent, your DPS will take a noticeable drop. People have becomes slaves to target dummy parses.

Lucky28 · July 2018

it's a strong skill but it's easy to dodge/interrupt. it's a skill that can seriously *** you if you use it at the wrong time because of it's cast time. think they should just leave it as is.

Drdeath20 · July 2018

That aoe damage makes my dummy parses look better. For most of the boses its a moot point.

Tannus15 · July 2018

Thorstienn wrote: »

All I know is it ruins my Soulshine build. But hey, the game is pure LA these days.

Umm...

Radiant Destruction: Increased the maximum bonus execute damage dealt by this ability and its morph to 400% from 330%.

Runefang · July 2018

Joy_Division wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Some facts for those of you that are just guessing.
1. With constant orbs AND worm I parse lower when I use barrage than when I dont, because I increase the amount of times I hit spell sym astronomically. because this skill is a HUGE sustain drain.
2. The 40% empower that all of you keep extolling is factored in at the beginning of the buff equation (additive with things), so the actual buff to light attacks is nowhere near 40%.
3. To make barrage even remotely useful you would have to have it keep the current damage per tick, but have it tick every second. Between the empower and the increase in damage. It would make it a skill worth using.
4. As far as magplar damage currently it is on par with magsorcs but definitely not on par with magblades. If solar barrage was buffed as I proposed and beam base damage was buffed it would be able to compete with nightblades. As far as I know im the only magplar dps pc NA with a vcr+3 clear...I'd really like that to change...

Pretty much.

I took my Live templar and used the same setup on my PTS templar. Target dummy parses were roughly the same. It's not a buff. You can go on and on all day about the 4 empowers, but you get that on Live with a truckload of AoE damage. I get the cast-time is an inconvenience, bt it's just that, an inconvenience. So for the price of convenience, you're getting a weaker skill, which is only made up for by the increase in damage to Radiant Oppression buff and the extra GCD. Not a buff. Just a different means of getting roughly the same DPS.

This, of course, is only in single-target scenarios. In any fight with an AoE or cleave competent, your DPS will take a noticeable drop. People have becomes slaves to target dummy parses.

Well to be fair magplar dps, yourself included, are asking for cast time skills to go away because they don't go well with all the one shot mechanics. Of course the dps nerf is too high but its not too far off where it needs to be for this skill.

Also dummy parses are life because zos hasn't seen fit to make high AoE dps a requirement for any fight.

Tannus15 · July 2018

Runefang wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Some facts for those of you that are just guessing.
1. With constant orbs AND worm I parse lower when I use barrage than when I dont, because I increase the amount of times I hit spell sym astronomically. because this skill is a HUGE sustain drain.
2. The 40% empower that all of you keep extolling is factored in at the beginning of the buff equation (additive with things), so the actual buff to light attacks is nowhere near 40%.
3. To make barrage even remotely useful you would have to have it keep the current damage per tick, but have it tick every second. Between the empower and the increase in damage. It would make it a skill worth using.
4. As far as magplar damage currently it is on par with magsorcs but definitely not on par with magblades. If solar barrage was buffed as I proposed and beam base damage was buffed it would be able to compete with nightblades. As far as I know im the only magplar dps pc NA with a vcr+3 clear...I'd really like that to change...

Pretty much.

I took my Live templar and used the same setup on my PTS templar. Target dummy parses were roughly the same. It's not a buff. You can go on and on all day about the 4 empowers, but you get that on Live with a truckload of AoE damage. I get the cast-time is an inconvenience, bt it's just that, an inconvenience. So for the price of convenience, you're getting a weaker skill, which is only made up for by the increase in damage to Radiant Oppression buff and the extra GCD. Not a buff. Just a different means of getting roughly the same DPS.

This, of course, is only in single-target scenarios. In any fight with an AoE or cleave competent, your DPS will take a noticeable drop. People have becomes slaves to target dummy parses.

Well to be fair magplar dps, yourself included, are asking for cast time skills to go away because they don't go well with all the one shot mechanics. Of course the dps nerf is too high but its not too far off where it needs to be for this skill.

Also dummy parses are life because zos hasn't seen fit to make high AoE dps a requirement for any fight.

So much this.
CC doesn't matter.
AOE barely matters.
Only single target and movement matters.

Stibbons · July 2018

Dps loss compared to live. Just another Templar skill that i won´t use if this goes to live.

Tempouille · July 2018

Magplar need a serious buff to take a melee spot. This is the main issue. who cares about a skill you will not use because of range ?

FakeFox · July 2018

Tannus15 wrote: »

Runefang wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Some facts for those of you that are just guessing.
1. With constant orbs AND worm I parse lower when I use barrage than when I dont, because I increase the amount of times I hit spell sym astronomically. because this skill is a HUGE sustain drain.
2. The 40% empower that all of you keep extolling is factored in at the beginning of the buff equation (additive with things), so the actual buff to light attacks is nowhere near 40%.
3. To make barrage even remotely useful you would have to have it keep the current damage per tick, but have it tick every second. Between the empower and the increase in damage. It would make it a skill worth using.
4. As far as magplar damage currently it is on par with magsorcs but definitely not on par with magblades. If solar barrage was buffed as I proposed and beam base damage was buffed it would be able to compete with nightblades. As far as I know im the only magplar dps pc NA with a vcr+3 clear...I'd really like that to change...

Pretty much.

I took my Live templar and used the same setup on my PTS templar. Target dummy parses were roughly the same. It's not a buff. You can go on and on all day about the 4 empowers, but you get that on Live with a truckload of AoE damage. I get the cast-time is an inconvenience, bt it's just that, an inconvenience. So for the price of convenience, you're getting a weaker skill, which is only made up for by the increase in damage to Radiant Oppression buff and the extra GCD. Not a buff. Just a different means of getting roughly the same DPS.

This, of course, is only in single-target scenarios. In any fight with an AoE or cleave competent, your DPS will take a noticeable drop. People have becomes slaves to target dummy parses.

Well to be fair magplar dps, yourself included, are asking for cast time skills to go away because they don't go well with all the one shot mechanics. Of course the dps nerf is too high but its not too far off where it needs to be for this skill.

Also dummy parses are life because zos hasn't seen fit to make high AoE dps a requirement for any fight.

So much this.
CC doesn't matter.
AOE barely matters.
Only single target and movement matters.

While I agree that single target is most important for effectively killing bosses, AOE/cleave never the less is important in my opinion. Apart from the new "mini trials" trash fights take up a huge portion of most PvE content and optimizing them is one of the most important ways to improve clearspeed. Solid cleave DPS also often increases single target DPS as you don't need to focus adds.

Joy_Division · July 2018

Runefang wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Some facts for those of you that are just guessing.
1. With constant orbs AND worm I parse lower when I use barrage than when I dont, because I increase the amount of times I hit spell sym astronomically. because this skill is a HUGE sustain drain.
2. The 40% empower that all of you keep extolling is factored in at the beginning of the buff equation (additive with things), so the actual buff to light attacks is nowhere near 40%.
3. To make barrage even remotely useful you would have to have it keep the current damage per tick, but have it tick every second. Between the empower and the increase in damage. It would make it a skill worth using.
4. As far as magplar damage currently it is on par with magsorcs but definitely not on par with magblades. If solar barrage was buffed as I proposed and beam base damage was buffed it would be able to compete with nightblades. As far as I know im the only magplar dps pc NA with a vcr+3 clear...I'd really like that to change...

Pretty much.

I took my Live templar and used the same setup on my PTS templar. Target dummy parses were roughly the same. It's not a buff. You can go on and on all day about the 4 empowers, but you get that on Live with a truckload of AoE damage. I get the cast-time is an inconvenience, bt it's just that, an inconvenience. So for the price of convenience, you're getting a weaker skill, which is only made up for by the increase in damage to Radiant Oppression buff and the extra GCD. Not a buff. Just a different means of getting roughly the same DPS.

This, of course, is only in single-target scenarios. In any fight with an AoE or cleave competent, your DPS will take a noticeable drop. People have becomes slaves to target dummy parses.

Well to be fair magplar dps, yourself included, are asking for cast time skills to go away because they don't go well with all the one shot mechanics. Of course the dps nerf is too high but its not too far off where it needs to be for this skill.

Also dummy parses are life because zos hasn't seen fit to make high AoE dps a requirement for any fight.

There are quite a few boss+add(s) fights and the zergs in Cyrodiil make AoE a requirement.

Dracane · July 2018

danno8 wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

They way I see it, they wanted to give templar a better ranged spammable spell.
It is instant cast now and similar to other ranged spammables, with the difference that it also automatically empoweres your next light attack weave by alot. Giving it it's own special thing.

This shows just how little known Solar Barrage is, that people just assume what is being talked about is Dark Flare.

My quick test shows that Barrage is about the equivalent of Blazing Spear now on DPS tests, without any synergy, but having the benefit of being PBAoE.

Oh yea, I was convinced that it was dark flare we are talking about

I don't know why.
Because I thought, that solar barrage has always been an instant cast and that only dark flare has a castime, which led me to believe OP was just writing the wrong morph name.

If we are speaking about that melee aoe, then I also have no clue, why they would reduce its damage.

Raraaku · July 2018

daedemrwb17_ESO wrote: »

It got nerfed because each time it pulses it provides 40% bonus damage to light attacks which hit extremely hard now. The fact that every 2s you can get an empower buff while also doing DPS in an aoe is quite strong. Did you want that skill to do its full damage while also empowering?

While Empower is nice, I don't think it warrants a 40% damage reduction just because you gain 1 stack of empower every 2 seconds. In comparison, DK's Flames of Oblivion is a cheaper, longer range, and higher DPS skill than Solar Barrage as well as being an instant cast. Flames of Oblivion might tick at a slower rate, but it's passive buff more than makes up for it and the extra tick damage is just frosting on the cake, which is now doing 40% more damage compared to Barrage. So I'm not sure why giving Solar Barrage a 40% damage reduction is justified just for making it an instant cast which it probably should have been in the first place and for granting an intermittent 40% LA increase every 2 seconds.

I would understand if instead of granting Empower, Barrage granted Minor Berserk, but as is ZoS is not really changing anything about the skill. It's now instant cast, but it does significantly less damage and occasionally grants Empower... That still makes it not worth slotting in my opinion.

Edit: I know that it's kind of a tight rope to balance Solar Barrage, especially when taking into account Biting Jabs and Balanced Warrior passive, but still....

Drdeath20 · July 2018

Joy_Division wrote: »

Runefang wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Some facts for those of you that are just guessing.
1. With constant orbs AND worm I parse lower when I use barrage than when I dont, because I increase the amount of times I hit spell sym astronomically. because this skill is a HUGE sustain drain.
2. The 40% empower that all of you keep extolling is factored in at the beginning of the buff equation (additive with things), so the actual buff to light attacks is nowhere near 40%.
3. To make barrage even remotely useful you would have to have it keep the current damage per tick, but have it tick every second. Between the empower and the increase in damage. It would make it a skill worth using.
4. As far as magplar damage currently it is on par with magsorcs but definitely not on par with magblades. If solar barrage was buffed as I proposed and beam base damage was buffed it would be able to compete with nightblades. As far as I know im the only magplar dps pc NA with a vcr+3 clear...I'd really like that to change...

Pretty much.

I took my Live templar and used the same setup on my PTS templar. Target dummy parses were roughly the same. It's not a buff. You can go on and on all day about the 4 empowers, but you get that on Live with a truckload of AoE damage. I get the cast-time is an inconvenience, bt it's just that, an inconvenience. So for the price of convenience, you're getting a weaker skill, which is only made up for by the increase in damage to Radiant Oppression buff and the extra GCD. Not a buff. Just a different means of getting roughly the same DPS.

This, of course, is only in single-target scenarios. In any fight with an AoE or cleave competent, your DPS will take a noticeable drop. People have becomes slaves to target dummy parses.

Well to be fair magplar dps, yourself included, are asking for cast time skills to go away because they don't go well with all the one shot mechanics. Of course the dps nerf is too high but its not too far off where it needs to be for this skill.

Also dummy parses are life because zos hasn't seen fit to make high AoE dps a requirement for any fight.

There are quite a few boss+add(s) fights and the zergs in Cyrodiil make AoE a requirement.

Maybe not a requirement but having a group with strong AoE damage helps in DLC dungeons like Falkreath hold, cradle of shadows and fang lair.

Drdeath20 · July 2018

Raraaku wrote: »

daedemrwb17_ESO wrote: »

It got nerfed because each time it pulses it provides 40% bonus damage to light attacks which hit extremely hard now. The fact that every 2s you can get an empower buff while also doing DPS in an aoe is quite strong. Did you want that skill to do its full damage while also empowering?

While Empower is nice, I don't think it warrants a 40% damage reduction just because you gain 1 stack of empower every 2 seconds. In comparison, DK's Flames of Oblivion is a cheaper, longer range, and higher DPS skill than Solar Barrage as well as being an instant cast. Flames of Oblivion might tick at a slower rate, but it's passive buff more than makes up for it and the extra tick damage is just frosting on the cake, which is now doing 40% more damage compared to Barrage. So I'm not sure why giving Solar Barrage a 40% damage reduction is justified just for making it an instant cast which it probably should have been in the first place and for granting an intermittent 40% LA increase every 2 seconds.

I would understand if instead of granting Empower, Barrage granted Minor Berserk, but as is ZoS is not really changing anything about the skill. It's now instant cast, but it does significantly less damage and occasionally grants Empower... That still makes it not worth slotting in my opinion.

Edit: I know that it's kind of a tight rope to balance Solar Barrage, especially when taking into account Biting Jabs and Balanced Warrior passive, but still....

Its just typical.

Dredlord · July 2018

daedemrwb17_ESO wrote: »

It got nerfed because each time it pulses it provides 40% bonus damage to light attacks which hit extremely hard now. The fact that every 2s you can get an empower buff while also doing DPS in an aoe is quite strong. Did you want that skill to do its full damage while also empowering?

Do you even play a templar? The damage was not great already, it already had empower. The old empower was better for templar on top of that.

The skill should never have had a cast time added. The skill will probably still be a dps loss...

Thorstienn · July 2018

Tannus15 wrote: »

Thorstienn wrote: »

All I know is it ruins my Soulshine build. But hey, the game is pure LA these days.

Umm...

Radiant Destruction: Increased the maximum bonus execute damage dealt by this ability and its morph to 400% from 330%.

Will admit I am yet to test. But I can't imagine a scaling increase to my execute(marginal), would out way a damage increase to a part of my rotation for 75% of a fight, not to mention AoE.