The State of Mag/Frost tanking and its problems explained. This Post is for the Developers.

Ardan147 · July 2018

My suggestion is remove the taunt from frost staff heavy attacks and change the Crushing Shock morph of Force Shock so that it taunts instead of interrupts if used with a frost staff (effect would be unchanged if used with inferno or lightning staff.)

The way things are, DPS can't use frost staves at all (in group dungeons and trials at least) because the heavy attack taunt will interfere with the tank doing their job, and it doesn't really work well for the tank either because heavy attacks take a couple of seconds to fire off during which time you can't block, so a frost staff tank would need a more effective taunt anyway (there's still Inner Fire, but more options are always better). Or instead of removing the taunt completely from frost staff heavy attacks they could tweak it so heavy attacks only taunt if you're wearing five or more heavy armor pieces.

OneKhajiitCrimeWave · July 2018

Depends on the content i am running as to whether my ice staff goes on. In vDSA I run it back bar with ele drain on so we keep that on ads and bosses (run 3 DPS and a Tank).

In dungeons/trials where an interrupt is a huge bonus (vCoS in the cave or vHRC the upstairs boss/Flame Shapers in general) then i'll run it with crushing shock on the bar.

Other than that i'll run dual Sword and Board but i always carry both options around with me.

Drummerx04 · July 2018

I've always thought ice staves should provide resistance debuffs, Sort of like off-balance triggered by lightning staves, the ice blockade could trigger a resistance debuff against chilled enemies which would have made 1 ice back bar dps pretty valuable in a raid... but I digress.

The main buff I agree with in OP's list is the heavy attack speed increase. I think 50% is too high, but a solid 20-30% decrease in cast time would make it more friendly to use. This would probably need to come with a slight cut to the mag return as well

Sylosi · July 2018

Difficult to take the thread seriously when the OP wants to change what really was the main point of the frost staff that you can use magicka as your block resource.

As for trials, really who cares, putting aside most players do not even do trials, the notion of diverse balance in trials is never going to happen, because tryhards will always take what is most efficient (just look at the merry go round of DPS everytime that changes), so homogenising frost staff to stamina, which is completely contrary to why it was added in the first place just to try and compete with s&b DK in niche content, comes across as a rather narrow self absorbed view.

Beyond which other than the slow taunt it is fine for most things, dungeons / vet dungeons can be tanked with a frost staff tank, people use it in PvP, people use it on the backbar (which probably in terms of tanking trials is where any balance in that regard should be directed). etc.