Class Specific Weapon Skill Morphs

Dracan_Fontom · July 2018

So I have been playing this game on and off since the initial launch on the Playstation four. While this game has a lot of high points; it does, however, have plenty of low points. For me, one of these low points is how similar every class can be in PvE due to the reliance of weapon skills to be above average in their respective roles. For example, most stamina dps have to have poison arrow, volley, rending slashes, blade cloak, and at times ballista, and healers usually run a lot of the same abilities as well, such as regen, healing springs, and combat prayer.

My suggestion is to give every weapon skill a morph that is completely class specific. These morphs could even get a magic or stam morph to increase build diversity, and the idea that "people can play as they want." ZoS could even make it a similar system to how could reset skill lines in TES:5 Skyrim, and make it feel like you are mastering your weapons to be an extension of your class! With this reset system, ZoS could even put in new passives that could help both magic or stamina builds.

As an example, Poison Arrow could morph into the main damage types of the other classes and be a fire/shadow/lighting/Ice/holy arrow for magic based builds or morph into their respective stamina based damage type for stamina builds. Each skill/morph could even get a unique effect that goes with the class's image.

_Ahala_ · July 2018

This is actually really interesting

EvilCroc · July 2018

I'll be happy even with class specific weapon skill visuals. Morphs are beyond my dreams.

ForsakenSin · July 2018

im not sure if i got this right but ..

are you saying if im full magica i can use a bow and shoot ,ice ,lighting , fire arrows and it would use my magica instead of stamina ?

if that is the case then HELL YHEA
Then also have two handed swords and axe to use skills that would use up magica instead of stamina !

DanteYoda · July 2018

It makes sense op but for some reason Zos doesn't understand.

Dracan_Fontom · July 2018

ForsakenSin wrote: »

im not sure if i got this right but ..

are you saying if im full magica i can use a bow and shoot ,ice ,lighting , fire arrows and it would use my magica instead of stamina ?

if that is the case then HELL YHEA
Then also have two handed swords and axe to use skills that would use up magica instead of stamina !

Yea! My idea is to make it so that all weapons can be viable for as much content and as many builds as possible. So if want to be a bow wielding magsorc, then go fire your lightning infused arrows!

Elwendryll · July 2018

I want to express my deep agreement.

TheShadowScout · July 2018

I am not really sure about this idea.
I mean, it sounds a lot of effort to rewrite the skill morph system to bring class "class-flavor" into the weapon skills which are supposed to be "allround"...

Worse I find the notion that muscle powered weapons should "somehow" morph into magica weapons. If you want to shoot bolts of lightning, you should grab a lightning staff, not a muscle powered bow! Latter will always only shoot arrows, tho those could of course be enchanted with a lightning rune...

Dracan_Fontom wrote: »

Yea! My idea is to make it so that all weapons can be viable for as much content and as many builds as possible. So if want to be a bow wielding magsorc, then go fire your lightning infused arrows!

...so you want -everyone- to be able to use the same weapons, and don't see how that would be a step -against- build diversity?

We had similar discussions here recently as I recall...
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/424722/melee-magicka-weapons/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/425373/why-cant-all-class-skills-have-a-stamina-variant
...and I liked neither of those ideas for very much the same reasons.

Stamina builds are -supposed- to use "warrior arts" - meaning weapons powered by their muscles and physical prowess - bulging muscles and sharp edged steel, agility and well trained martial arts skills are their domain.

Magica builds are supposed to use -magic-, because those are the brainy nerdy people fo the fantasy setting, and they have no place swinging swords and drawing bows, but instead use their mental powers to creafe balls of fire and bolts of lightning...

And I dislike how some people always think it would be a good idea to "make then the same" in allowing each of them to grab the others gear/skills and run with it for their build!
(A better argument for bow-wielding sorcerors would be for ways to make hybrid characters great again, or at least competetive to the current META by re-introducing softcaps, but that would be a different discussion)

Personally I would much prefer more weapon skill lines and choices for weapons, so people have more diverse options for building their characters, instead of opening the same old options to more builds.
I would prefer not doing morph options per class, but adding more weapons to skill lines, and then giving special effects depending on weapon type (like the sword-damage / axe-bleed / mace-penetration / dagger-critical thing for melee fighters; or the staff flavor for mages, which could use more flavors too, and more options besides staves too...); there could be "marksmanship" with bows doing poison damage, with crossbows doing disease damage and with flails doing flame damage, and perhaps even with a spear-throwing atlatl doing lightning damage...

DuskMarine · July 2018

ForsakenSin wrote: »

im not sure if i got this right but ..

are you saying if im full magica i can use a bow and shoot ,ice ,lighting , fire arrows and it would use my magica instead of stamina ?

if that is the case then HELL YHEA
Then also have two handed swords and axe to use skills that would use up magica instead of stamina !

i think what their saying is it takes the damage type of the class choices you make. youd still have to use the respected weapon type for your setup but it would at that point take the type of damage your actually stronger with.

Silver_Strider · July 2018

TheShadowScout wrote: »

I am not really sure about this idea.
I mean, it sounds a lot of effort to rewrite the skill morph system to bring class "class-flavor" into the weapon skills which are supposed to be "allround"...

Worse I find the notion that muscle powered weapons should "somehow" morph into magica weapons. If you want to shoot bolts of lightning, you should grab a lightning staff, not a muscle powered bow! Latter will always only shoot arrows, tho those could of course be enchanted with a lightning rune...

Dracan_Fontom wrote: »

Yea! My idea is to make it so that all weapons can be viable for as much content and as many builds as possible. So if want to be a bow wielding magsorc, then go fire your lightning infused arrows!

...so you want -everyone- to be able to use the same weapons, and don't see how that would be a step -against- build diversity?

We had similar discussions here recently as I recall...
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/424722/melee-magicka-weapons/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/425373/why-cant-all-class-skills-have-a-stamina-variant
...and I liked neither of those ideas for very much the same reasons.

Stamina builds are -supposed- to use "warrior arts" - meaning weapons powered by their muscles and physical prowess - bulging muscles and sharp edged steel, agility and well trained martial arts skills are their domain.

Magica builds are supposed to use -magic-, because those are the brainy nerdy people fo the fantasy setting, and they have no place swinging swords and drawing bows, but instead use their mental powers to creafe balls of fire and bolts of lightning...

And I dislike how some people always think it would be a good idea to "make then the same" in allowing each of them to grab the others gear/skills and run with it for their build!
(A better argument for bow-wielding sorcerors would be for ways to make hybrid characters great again, or at least competetive to the current META by re-introducing softcaps, but that would be a different discussion)

Personally I would much prefer more weapon skill lines and choices for weapons, so people have more diverse options for building their characters, instead of opening the same old options to more builds.
I would prefer not doing morph options per class, but adding more weapons to skill lines, and then giving special effects depending on weapon type (like the sword-damage / axe-bleed / mace-penetration / dagger-critical thing for melee fighters; or the staff flavor for mages, which could use more flavors too, and more options besides staves too...); there could be "marksmanship" with bows doing poison damage, with crossbows doing disease damage and with flails doing flame damage, and perhaps even with a spear-throwing atlatl doing lightning damage...

It's not as though there wasn't some precedence for this suggestion. I still remember when Scorched Earth was a thing (A bow ability that dealt Fire Damage) and don't see why that can't be a morph option for Volley again on DKs. Even Destruction Staves can be changed into Poison or Disease damage considering that magic, prior to their homogeneity in more recent Elder Scrolls game, did in fact include Poison/Disease as Magic abilities. It's also not at though their aren't Battlemages in Lore that mix Magic and Melee when fighting that imbuing something like a sword in magic would be out of the question; That's exactly what Imbued Weapon is in the Psijic Skill Line.

While I wouldn't mind more weapon skill lines in general, I don't think this idea should be brushed off either.

red_emu · July 2018

That's actually a really really cool idea. I would love for my MagBlade to be a sort of shadow magic archer.

tinythinker · July 2018

I've made/discussed similar ideas before. Always happy to see more. Infusing an arrow with cold as an ice mage isn't really out of line with sword and sorcery rpgs.

To make it consistent and easier to code, it would require having the baseline and special damage for each weapon ability to change. The damages types are physical, poison, and fire for Bow. If you wanted an ice Bow, well, does it do magic base damage? Or does just the poison change to ice? Does the fire also change to ice? And for fire damage, does the fire morph just stay fire? And do snares, stuns, etc. stay the same?

Some weapons don't really have a special damage other than "bleed" or what not, so, how does that work? Is it still bleed but magicka base damage and bleed damage?

And what about hybrids? How does the game know which morph to use? Can I choose? In fact, could there be some quest or training for that? So that I train to use a magicka version of a sword? And do secondary effects (elemental for magicka versions and disease or poison for stamina versions) just change for existing morphs that do such damage and can I choose those too?

Keep in mind I'm not against the general proposition. The thematic element is very cool and would shake off some staleness, but a lot of questions would have to be settled and numbers crunched for balance. A simpler version is listed in the spoiler below...

Examples of prior suggestions:

Swap magicka/stamina

They have the code already in the game to "scale off of whichever stat is higher" so the non-staff weapons could get new shimmery or glowy sets of animations indicating the user has charged or infused them with magic and let them do spell damage.

They could do the same on reverse for staves only charging them with spirit or nature energy or something.

Not class based but very simple. Drawback: Stamina totals/weapon damage totals don't evenly mirror magicka counterparts, leading to imbalances.

Special class passives for weapons

Class-based enhancements or differences with weapons (i.e. in the hands a of a Templar there is something you can do or a change to some active or passive ability that would be different in the hands of a Nightblade). For example, a chance to blind an enemy with light giving a % miss chance for a few seconds (Templar) or a chance to disorient a target with a dark chill for a few seconds. Or, this could tie into the weapon skin idea, with different classes having access to thematically distinct reskins.

This isn't a "DK's do poison damage with a magic staff version", but it does offer some class-based passive effects that can proc and be tied to combo of class theme and weapon type. Plus it has the unique class skins for each weapon. I mean, why not? Maybe each class could have 3 or 4 skins per weapons they could unlock somehow that only they could use. Maybe some matching class-based armor skins, too.

To get at OP's idea better, here is part of my version of underwater combat, a feature of the game ZOS says they will never do...

{S}ome (or all of the abilities) would have secondary effects based on the class of the caster, just like some destruction staff abilities have differences based on whether its element is fire, ice, or shock. In this case the versions would be fire/heat/steam (Dragonknights), shock and/or maybe daedric energy (Sorcerers), darkness (Nightblades), and light (Templars), and ice (Wardens).

To give an example of how this could work, take that ability for to blind/distract enemies and get a brief speed boost to escape. For a DK, maybe it roils the water to osbcure the enemy view while doing a small AoE in the affected sphere. For a Nightblade, maybe it is like the octopus with inky darkness as well as adding a small snare. For the Sorc, a small stun with blurry vision. For the Templar, a refracting light that increases enemy miss chance.

Zacuel · July 2018

Pretty cool. Always wanted to shred badguys on my magdk with a flaming greatsword. That was literally my delusion when I first started.

TheShadowScout · July 2018

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Even Destruction Staves can be changed into Poison or Disease damage considering that magic, prior to their homogeneity in more recent Elder Scrolls game, did in fact include Poison/Disease as Magic abilities...

Which would be a good case if people were asking for things like acid-based destruction staves, or disease based restoration staves... (which totally should be a thing!)
...not so much to make an argument that flame staves somehow should be able to morph their effets into disease.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

It's also not at though their aren't Battlemages in Lore that mix Magic and Melee...

...I think you mean "spellswords", since "battlemages" are generally more considered casters in heavy armor that can fight in physical combat as a backup. The spellswords on the other hand are supposed to truly mix magic and melee as classic "hybrid characters"... and I agree that those options should be more of a thing then they are - as options for -hybrid characters- not by letting magica and stamina characters all access the same options.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

...that imbuing something like a sword in magic would be out of the question; That's exactly what Imbued Weapon is in the Psijic Skill Line.

And rejoice, you get that skill there, and its fire-based conterpart over among the DK skills. And there could be a great deal more yet similar sbilities to imgue weapons with all sorts of effects...

But none of that makes these imbued swords, axes or bows suddenly magica weapons, right?

And that's the thing that vexes me... that people think if everyone has access to all the same things regardless of stamina or magica setup, that things will be more diverse. No, things will get more similar, which is not a good thing.

So I still say... ass new and -different- options rather then making magica morphs for stamina weapons and stamina morphs for magica class skills, which would make no sense whatsoever...

dodgehopper_ESO · July 2018

Silver_Strider wrote: »

TheShadowScout wrote: »

I am not really sure about this idea.
I mean, it sounds a lot of effort to rewrite the skill morph system to bring class "class-flavor" into the weapon skills which are supposed to be "allround"...

Worse I find the notion that muscle powered weapons should "somehow" morph into magica weapons. If you want to shoot bolts of lightning, you should grab a lightning staff, not a muscle powered bow! Latter will always only shoot arrows, tho those could of course be enchanted with a lightning rune...

Dracan_Fontom wrote: »

Yea! My idea is to make it so that all weapons can be viable for as much content and as many builds as possible. So if want to be a bow wielding magsorc, then go fire your lightning infused arrows!

...so you want -everyone- to be able to use the same weapons, and don't see how that would be a step -against- build diversity?

We had similar discussions here recently as I recall...
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/424722/melee-magicka-weapons/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/425373/why-cant-all-class-skills-have-a-stamina-variant
...and I liked neither of those ideas for very much the same reasons.

Stamina builds are -supposed- to use "warrior arts" - meaning weapons powered by their muscles and physical prowess - bulging muscles and sharp edged steel, agility and well trained martial arts skills are their domain.

Magica builds are supposed to use -magic-, because those are the brainy nerdy people fo the fantasy setting, and they have no place swinging swords and drawing bows, but instead use their mental powers to creafe balls of fire and bolts of lightning...

And I dislike how some people always think it would be a good idea to "make then the same" in allowing each of them to grab the others gear/skills and run with it for their build!
(A better argument for bow-wielding sorcerors would be for ways to make hybrid characters great again, or at least competetive to the current META by re-introducing softcaps, but that would be a different discussion)

Personally I would much prefer more weapon skill lines and choices for weapons, so people have more diverse options for building their characters, instead of opening the same old options to more builds.
I would prefer not doing morph options per class, but adding more weapons to skill lines, and then giving special effects depending on weapon type (like the sword-damage / axe-bleed / mace-penetration / dagger-critical thing for melee fighters; or the staff flavor for mages, which could use more flavors too, and more options besides staves too...); there could be "marksmanship" with bows doing poison damage, with crossbows doing disease damage and with flails doing flame damage, and perhaps even with a spear-throwing atlatl doing lightning damage...

It's not as though there wasn't some precedence for this suggestion. I still remember when Scorched Earth was a thing (A bow ability that dealt Fire Damage) and don't see why that can't be a morph option for Volley again on DKs. Even Destruction Staves can be changed into Poison or Disease damage considering that magic, prior to their homogeneity in more recent Elder Scrolls game, did in fact include Poison/Disease as Magic abilities. It's also not at though their aren't Battlemages in Lore that mix Magic and Melee when fighting that imbuing something like a sword in magic would be out of the question; That's exactly what Imbued Weapon is in the Psijic Skill Line.

While I wouldn't mind more weapon skill lines in general, I don't think this idea should be brushed off either.

In Skyrim there were spells for poison and such. Its not that old. (See: Master Neloth)

Mettaricana · July 2018

Lightning flurry,Flaming wrecking blow yeeeesss yeeeesss YEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!

Zelos · July 2018

Dracan_Fontom wrote: »

So I have been playing this game on and off since the initial launch on the Playstation four. While this game has a lot of high points; it does, however, have plenty of low points. For me, one of these low points is how similar every class can be in PvE due to the reliance of weapon skills to be above average in their respective roles. For example, most stamina dps have to have poison arrow, volley, rending slashes, blade cloak, and at times ballista, and healers usually run a lot of the same abilities as well, such as regen, healing springs, and combat prayer.

My suggestion is to give every weapon skill a morph that is completely class specific. These morphs could even get a magic or stam morph to increase build diversity, and the idea that "people can play as they want." ZoS could even make it a similar system to how could reset skill lines in TES:5 Skyrim, and make it feel like you are mastering your weapons to be an extension of your class! With this reset system, ZoS could even put in new passives that could help both magic or stamina builds.

As an example, Poison Arrow could morph into the main damage types of the other classes and be a fire/shadow/lighting/Ice/holy arrow for magic based builds or morph into their respective stamina based damage type for stamina builds. Each skill/morph could even get a unique effect that goes with the class's image.

This is a great innovative idea, unfortunately this is zos we are dealing with. That's too much work for them, they are too busy creating the next *** reskin or every mount in the game, so this is a pipe dream.

Chaos2088 · July 2018

It is a very interesting idea

Dracan_Fontom · July 2018

Zelos wrote: »

Dracan_Fontom wrote: »

So I have been playing this game on and off since the initial launch on the Playstation four. While this game has a lot of high points; it does, however, have plenty of low points. For me, one of these low points is how similar every class can be in PvE due to the reliance of weapon skills to be above average in their respective roles. For example, most stamina dps have to have poison arrow, volley, rending slashes, blade cloak, and at times ballista, and healers usually run a lot of the same abilities as well, such as regen, healing springs, and combat prayer.

My suggestion is to give every weapon skill a morph that is completely class specific. These morphs could even get a magic or stam morph to increase build diversity, and the idea that "people can play as they want." ZoS could even make it a similar system to how could reset skill lines in TES:5 Skyrim, and make it feel like you are mastering your weapons to be an extension of your class! With this reset system, ZoS could even put in new passives that could help both magic or stamina builds.

As an example, Poison Arrow could morph into the main damage types of the other classes and be a fire/shadow/lighting/Ice/holy arrow for magic based builds or morph into their respective stamina based damage type for stamina builds. Each skill/morph could even get a unique effect that goes with the class's image.

This is a great innovative idea, unfortunately this is zos we are dealing with. That's too much work for them, they are too busy creating the next *** reskin or every mount in the game, so this is a pipe dream.

I know but a man can dream.