Frost Staves and their future.

trowlk · December 2018

I would like to share you my Ice Staff Tanking Proposal

trowlk wrote: »

Welcome to my Ice Mage Tanking Proposal. This is my own idea of how the Frost Staff should work. I will analyze any feedback or idea you have for this thread, so feel free to let me know if anything bothers you or if you agree with my proposal. Point at any grammatical mistake aswell and I will correct them. English is not my main language!

In my own opinion, it was a good initiative to transform the Ice Staff into a tanking weapon, sadly the idea was poorly developed. To raise frost walls, to conjure armors made of ice, just like the wardens do, to freeze the enemies until they cannot move at all, to make this possible we need to be creative, not just add some stats into a weapon and call it tanking staff.

I have some ideas to make the frost tank inmersive and helpful for magicka guardians, and I will add them by considering the current problems and then offer solutions to said issues.

RavenSworn · December 2018

Joosef_Kivikilpi wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Hello Everyone!

Ill just get right into my post today.
To many people, theme is important Ice Dps is something people have called out for, for a very long time it has been desired for so very long. When I mean “Ice dps” I don’t exactly mean just snaring and ccing. But something better as a whole for pve ice dps and, to some extent, PvP Ice Dps too. There are those of you out there who don’t care. There are those of you out there who say that snares and immobilisations are cancer. This is a problem known at the moment and it’s not just warden who does it. DKs also play around with immobilisations, stuns and snares and i suspect there could be more Reflective Plates out there on the horizon. Today this isn’t about that. Today is about the future of the ice staff and how it can function as both tanking AND dps.

There are people who seek to use the Ice Staff as a DPS weapon because they enjoy it and there are people who seek to use the Ice Staff as a Primary Tanking weapon and to maybe also use the Ice staff as a backbar too as is also commonly done with the sword and shield. SnB/Ice Staff is the best combination for tanking. I am not disputing this. But sometimes people just want to have a fun option. People have said things such as “why do you even care? Ice staff is a good tanking weapon”. And the thing is, is that it’s not there just yet. It lacks polish such as a reliable taunt. One that has a cast time of 2 seconds is inefficient. While it costs nothing or any skill slots, its inefficient at best. It also lacks an essential debuff to the group! Major Fracture! Others have tried to dispute this and said “what about Noxious Breath, Subterranean Assault and Mark Target and Night Mother’s Gaze or Poisons” well there are problems with all of these ideas. Let’s go through them

Noxious Breath: this skill is the best on the list for this job. However. There is one simple problem. Engulfing Flames is the other morph and one of the best buff tools in the game that a tank provides around 9% more flame damage is too good to pass up. (I am NOT encouraging a nerf to this.)

Subterranean assault: this is an annoying tool to upkeep on a tank. As you have to weave it in with your other tanking skills and constantly re apply it and it is not really a skill that a tank would be looking to use. This is going to be harder on your sustain than it needs to be. And it is only doing one real job with this. Applying major fracture. It also takes time to come up so if you miss an enemy with it you need to wait 3 more seconds to apply it, this could mean life or death in some dungeons or even score if you care about that.

Mark Target: this skill is pretty interesting but its big problem is that it is limited to one target. I feel as if this might be the only downside to this skill.

Night Mother’s Gaze:
This is a stamina set, it applies
(2 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical
(3 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage
(4 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical
(5 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you reduce the enemy's Physical Resistance by 5280 for 6 seconds.

This is bad for several reasons,
1: it gives no maximum stamina which may be helpful enough to a tank to use.
2: a tank doesn’t spec into Weapon Crit
3: the proc chance(requirement is crit which is a proc chance) is just that. A proc chance. This is bad for an effect that tanks should be 100% applying straight away.

Poison: these stop really essential enchantments from proccing at all! No! They also have a proc chance which stops them from applying it straight away.

Zenimax Online Studios wants the weapon to be for tanking, and a large amount of us want it to be for DPS, I am sorry but I just can’t say that they will change this vision because I don’t know.

But, what I can do is suggest a solution to this problem that is a compromise between community and developer.

What do I suggest?

For now, I would suggest making changes to a passive and a skill.

Tri Focus:
Let’s be real, you might have seen this one coming! But as it stands right now, the Ice Staff’s special effect is:
Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attack taunt the enemy to attack you for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 805 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking cost Magicka instead of Stamina

Depending on how you look at it, there are 2 things wrong with this Passive. Let’s go through this in order.

Heavy Attack Taunt: there are aspects about this that are good and bad. For one it’s an interesting idea, to make the heavy attack do something useful to keep a skill slot free while also restoring some max magicka. While it isn't the worst thing ever, it's also not too amazing either. We can do it better, while also giving ice dps a reason to use the passive. Ice dps do their best to exist but not taking a passive because it is detrimental to your group’s wellbeing? What if you run out of magicka? Ok you’re going to heavy attack… but you can’t because you will make the tanks job harder, maybe you will draw the wrong kinds of attention toward yourself. Taking passives is supposed to be beneficial.

Shield:
Why is the shield so small? What is the reason for this? It can block 1, maybe 2 trash mob hits. Why have a shield at all if it is that little and insignificant?

What do I suggest to do to the passive?:
I suggest removing the Taunt from the heavy attack and giving the enemy a small reduction to both armor and spell resistance, separated from major/minor breach and fracture. 1000 which is smaller than major breach/fracture but will still gain a noticeable difference and is also smaller than minor breach/fracture. This now means that the tank can heavy attack an enemy to reduce their resistances further for the group’s benefit. But, not only that. It also means that Ice Dps can contribute to a fight with a heavy attack on a boss or a player to assist their groups and their own DPS output. I would also increase the strength of the personal shield by 2x to make the passive do a little more than block 1-2 hits.

HOWEVER If a seperate amount of reduction is too much, being able to stack this with minor and major, what about giving straight up minor breach and fracture?

How will this look?:

Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attacks taunt the enemy to attack you for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 805 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking costs Magicka instead of Stamina.

1:Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attacks lower a target’s Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 1000 for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 1610 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking costs Magicka instead of Stamina.

OR:

2:Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attacks inflict the target with Minor Fracture and Minor Breach, reducing their Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 1320 for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 1610 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking costs Magicka instead of Stamina.

It just works! Even thematically, Ice can dent the armor if solid enough or freeze it making it more brittle!

Notes: damage shield number should be base and not scaling off bastion or anything else.

I have felt that Ice Staff users should receive Physical and Spell Penetration buff when using the staff. I mean, when you get cold, a saying is literally "chilled to the bone" --- bitter cold seriously bites through warmth (especially humid cold) and right past your skin. It chills you deep, where you start shivering and can't stop. Believe me - got a taste of it living in Finland for two years - it chills you to the bone when unprepared. The staff should definitely add penetration, or a group debuff of minor fracture and breach to help group. But since Flame gets an 8% single target damage boost, lightning gets 8% AOE damage boost, I think Ice should get a overall lesser buff of 4% damage boost from penetration, affecting both single target and AOE damage--- about 2640 penetration value.

Those are just my thoughts as well. The penetration would also help out the two Ice-damage proc sets available in game- Iceheart and Winterborn- actually deal more of the full damage base of the set proc.

Im going to have to agree here as Frost staff should have their theme revolve around penetration and control. love the rest of the changes though

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

RavenSworn wrote: »

Joosef_Kivikilpi wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Hello Everyone!

Ill just get right into my post today.
To many people, theme is important Ice Dps is something people have called out for, for a very long time it has been desired for so very long. When I mean “Ice dps” I don’t exactly mean just snaring and ccing. But something better as a whole for pve ice dps and, to some extent, PvP Ice Dps too. There are those of you out there who don’t care. There are those of you out there who say that snares and immobilisations are cancer. This is a problem known at the moment and it’s not just warden who does it. DKs also play around with immobilisations, stuns and snares and i suspect there could be more Reflective Plates out there on the horizon. Today this isn’t about that. Today is about the future of the ice staff and how it can function as both tanking AND dps.

There are people who seek to use the Ice Staff as a DPS weapon because they enjoy it and there are people who seek to use the Ice Staff as a Primary Tanking weapon and to maybe also use the Ice staff as a backbar too as is also commonly done with the sword and shield. SnB/Ice Staff is the best combination for tanking. I am not disputing this. But sometimes people just want to have a fun option. People have said things such as “why do you even care? Ice staff is a good tanking weapon”. And the thing is, is that it’s not there just yet. It lacks polish such as a reliable taunt. One that has a cast time of 2 seconds is inefficient. While it costs nothing or any skill slots, its inefficient at best. It also lacks an essential debuff to the group! Major Fracture! Others have tried to dispute this and said “what about Noxious Breath, Subterranean Assault and Mark Target and Night Mother’s Gaze or Poisons” well there are problems with all of these ideas. Let’s go through them

Noxious Breath: this skill is the best on the list for this job. However. There is one simple problem. Engulfing Flames is the other morph and one of the best buff tools in the game that a tank provides around 9% more flame damage is too good to pass up. (I am NOT encouraging a nerf to this.)

Subterranean assault: this is an annoying tool to upkeep on a tank. As you have to weave it in with your other tanking skills and constantly re apply it and it is not really a skill that a tank would be looking to use. This is going to be harder on your sustain than it needs to be. And it is only doing one real job with this. Applying major fracture. It also takes time to come up so if you miss an enemy with it you need to wait 3 more seconds to apply it, this could mean life or death in some dungeons or even score if you care about that.

Mark Target: this skill is pretty interesting but its big problem is that it is limited to one target. I feel as if this might be the only downside to this skill.

Night Mother’s Gaze:
This is a stamina set, it applies
(2 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical
(3 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage
(4 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical
(5 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you reduce the enemy's Physical Resistance by 5280 for 6 seconds.

This is bad for several reasons,
1: it gives no maximum stamina which may be helpful enough to a tank to use.
2: a tank doesn’t spec into Weapon Crit
3: the proc chance(requirement is crit which is a proc chance) is just that. A proc chance. This is bad for an effect that tanks should be 100% applying straight away.

Poison: these stop really essential enchantments from proccing at all! No! They also have a proc chance which stops them from applying it straight away.

Zenimax Online Studios wants the weapon to be for tanking, and a large amount of us want it to be for DPS, I am sorry but I just can’t say that they will change this vision because I don’t know.

But, what I can do is suggest a solution to this problem that is a compromise between community and developer.

What do I suggest?

For now, I would suggest making changes to a passive and a skill.

Tri Focus:
Let’s be real, you might have seen this one coming! But as it stands right now, the Ice Staff’s special effect is:
Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attack taunt the enemy to attack you for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 805 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking cost Magicka instead of Stamina

Depending on how you look at it, there are 2 things wrong with this Passive. Let’s go through this in order.

Heavy Attack Taunt: there are aspects about this that are good and bad. For one it’s an interesting idea, to make the heavy attack do something useful to keep a skill slot free while also restoring some max magicka. While it isn't the worst thing ever, it's also not too amazing either. We can do it better, while also giving ice dps a reason to use the passive. Ice dps do their best to exist but not taking a passive because it is detrimental to your group’s wellbeing? What if you run out of magicka? Ok you’re going to heavy attack… but you can’t because you will make the tanks job harder, maybe you will draw the wrong kinds of attention toward yourself. Taking passives is supposed to be beneficial.

Shield:
Why is the shield so small? What is the reason for this? It can block 1, maybe 2 trash mob hits. Why have a shield at all if it is that little and insignificant?

What do I suggest to do to the passive?:
I suggest removing the Taunt from the heavy attack and giving the enemy a small reduction to both armor and spell resistance, separated from major/minor breach and fracture. 1000 which is smaller than major breach/fracture but will still gain a noticeable difference and is also smaller than minor breach/fracture. This now means that the tank can heavy attack an enemy to reduce their resistances further for the group’s benefit. But, not only that. It also means that Ice Dps can contribute to a fight with a heavy attack on a boss or a player to assist their groups and their own DPS output. I would also increase the strength of the personal shield by 2x to make the passive do a little more than block 1-2 hits.

HOWEVER If a seperate amount of reduction is too much, being able to stack this with minor and major, what about giving straight up minor breach and fracture?

How will this look?:

Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attacks taunt the enemy to attack you for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 805 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking costs Magicka instead of Stamina.

1:Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attacks lower a target’s Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 1000 for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 1610 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking costs Magicka instead of Stamina.

OR:

2:Fully-charged Frost Heavy Attacks inflict the target with Minor Fracture and Minor Breach, reducing their Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 1320 for 15 seconds and grant a damage shield that absorbs 1610 damage.
While a Frost Staff is equipped, blocking costs Magicka instead of Stamina.

It just works! Even thematically, Ice can dent the armor if solid enough or freeze it making it more brittle!

Notes: damage shield number should be base and not scaling off bastion or anything else.

I have felt that Ice Staff users should receive Physical and Spell Penetration buff when using the staff. I mean, when you get cold, a saying is literally "chilled to the bone" --- bitter cold seriously bites through warmth (especially humid cold) and right past your skin. It chills you deep, where you start shivering and can't stop. Believe me - got a taste of it living in Finland for two years - it chills you to the bone when unprepared. The staff should definitely add penetration, or a group debuff of minor fracture and breach to help group. But since Flame gets an 8% single target damage boost, lightning gets 8% AOE damage boost, I think Ice should get a overall lesser buff of 4% damage boost from penetration, affecting both single target and AOE damage--- about 2640 penetration value.

Those are just my thoughts as well. The penetration would also help out the two Ice-damage proc sets available in game- Iceheart and Winterborn- actually deal more of the full damage base of the set proc.

Im going to have to agree here as Frost staff should have their theme revolve around penetration and control. love the rest of the changes though

I went for the resistance reduction as it is easier to implement. everyone gets a buff when the enemy's resistance is reduced making it good for DPS and ESPECIALLY tanks. and all of the destruction staves already have 10% spell penetration anyway with Penetrating Magic.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

this then makes frost useless for DPS who want to use it.

trowlk wrote: »

I would like to share you my Ice Staff Tanking Proposal

trowlk wrote: »

Welcome to my Ice Mage Tanking Proposal. This is my own idea of how the Frost Staff should work. I will analyze any feedback or idea you have for this thread, so feel free to let me know if anything bothers you or if you agree with my proposal. Point at any grammatical mistake aswell and I will correct them. English is not my main language!

In my own opinion, it was a good initiative to transform the Ice Staff into a tanking weapon, sadly the idea was poorly developed. To raise frost walls, to conjure armors made of ice, just like the wardens do, to freeze the enemies until they cannot move at all, to make this possible we need to be creative, not just add some stats into a weapon and call it tanking staff.

I have some ideas to make the frost tank inmersive and helpful for magicka guardians, and I will add them by considering the current problems and then offer solutions to said issues.

Maura_Neysa · December 2018

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Jamdarius wrote: »

As much as I like the ideas you have provided I have just 1 thing that is really weird to me since the beginning of the idea for frost staves to be a tank weapon:

It is DESTRUCTION STAFF so why is it a tank weapon ?

Because for 4 years it was a DPS weapon, and NO ONE used it. In Morrowind they converted it to Tanking, and now it has a solid, though niche use. I 1000% think its in a better spot now, than it was for the first 4 years.

However, ZoS needs to make 2x Frost Tanking viable. It needs its own version of Pierce Armor. It will never be viable until it has that. As well, it needs something to counter S&B Battler Field Mobility passive, Deflect Bolts passive, and the Shields worth of Resistance. I suggest, a Reduced effectiveness of Snare, and a reduced melee damage passive, and an conjured Ice Shield.
Over course all of this could be moved onto some new Magicka Tanking weapon. Or if the Pierce Armor equivalent was sperat from the taunt, that could very well be the DPS boost that Frost needs to make it a DPS option

Noone used it because it was bad. instead of fixing it they tried to give it another job but that has kind of failed too.

Much less of a fail than the first. And honestly, only because it doesn't have Pierce Armor yet.
They have buffed Frost tanking several times already.
- Changed the CP Star "Bulwark" to work with Frost,
- Buffed Block Cost reduction from to 36%
- Feel like there was one more, but cant think of it off the top of my head

rexagamemnon · December 2018

I never see anyone running ice staffs, very rarely. They just use the wardens ice ultimate...(forget what its called).

Maura_Neysa · December 2018

rexagamemnon wrote: »

I never see anyone running ice staffs, very rarely. They just use the wardens ice ultimate...(forget what its called).

Permafrost.
And S&B front Destro back is BiS. Lighting for the most support, Frost for the extra defensive while still giving better support than S&B

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Jamdarius wrote: »

As much as I like the ideas you have provided I have just 1 thing that is really weird to me since the beginning of the idea for frost staves to be a tank weapon:

It is DESTRUCTION STAFF so why is it a tank weapon ?

Because for 4 years it was a DPS weapon, and NO ONE used it. In Morrowind they converted it to Tanking, and now it has a solid, though niche use. I 1000% think its in a better spot now, than it was for the first 4 years.

However, ZoS needs to make 2x Frost Tanking viable. It needs its own version of Pierce Armor. It will never be viable until it has that. As well, it needs something to counter S&B Battler Field Mobility passive, Deflect Bolts passive, and the Shields worth of Resistance. I suggest, a Reduced effectiveness of Snare, and a reduced melee damage passive, and an conjured Ice Shield.
Over course all of this could be moved onto some new Magicka Tanking weapon. Or if the Pierce Armor equivalent was sperat from the taunt, that could very well be the DPS boost that Frost needs to make it a DPS option

Noone used it because it was bad. instead of fixing it they tried to give it another job but that has kind of failed too.

Much less of a fail than the first. And honestly, only because it doesn't have Pierce Armor yet.
They have buffed Frost tanking several times already.
- Changed the CP Star "Bulwark" to work with Frost,
- Buffed Block Cost reduction from to 36%
- Feel like there was one more, but cant think of it off the top of my head

yeah much less of a fail. but it's still a fail because it's not complete.

trowlk · December 2018

Even if you desire a dps Ice Staff and I a better tanking Ice Staff, we should at least try to find common ground. I put a lot of thought to my proposal, and so did you, I suppose.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

this then makes frost useless for DPS who want to use it.

Is that all you have to say about my proposal? I'm a bit dissapointed. For someone who has been talking about this stuff for about +5 months I expected a nice and detailed overview of my proposal.

I like the idea of starting fresh by separating the Ice Staff from its cousins, but lets keep them together for the sake of your proposal.

Remove the Heavy Attack taunt from Tri Focus passive? I agree with the idea. Now dps would be able to attack without interfiring with the tank's aggro.
ZOS is clearly homogenizing armor and spell reduction sets and abilities, I think they'll never add an stand-alone reduction for Ice Staff.

Add taunt to Elemental Susceptibility ability? I like this idea aswell. This will be great addition because this morph refreshes its duration everytime the enemy is attacked. But I don't agree it should add Major Fracture to its arsenal, it would entirely replace Pierce Armor and Inner Rage.
But what if this taunt is applied by Ice Destructive Clench ability instead? It would be easier as it has its own elemental effects according to each staff.

I'll leave a final thought as conclusion. Do you think Ice Staff will be powerful enough despite the current chilling status effect, defensive passives and crowd control as side effects?

Edited to correct some grammatical mistakes

Betty_Booms · December 2018

Dun you mess with my ice staff. Its a tanking/ pvp staff....the colour of your spells is of little consequence...

Luckylancer · December 2018

Elemantal weakness's other morp give you perma major fracture. You can use default morp too.

Toggleable heavy atack taunt + good amount of extra spell pen againts frostbitten will make it more usefull at pve and wont touch pvp. You can keep frostbite up with trial group but not with zerg.

theyancey · December 2018

My magden runs inferno on the front and ice on the back. Still an inferior nerfed to Oblivion and back class but I like her and will continue to run with this until we have a new class/race in the future.

Cinbri · December 2018

My way of using frost staff is to not invest into Tri-Focus, so block will cost for stamina as always. It transforming frost staff into literally offensive sword&board on magicka build, something how stamina builds use snb for their rotations with puncture and bash.
It fun idea to manablock but prefer to not able to block but spending mana on healing than able to block but unable nor to heal nor to counter-attack coz block drained all my mana. It very effective to use stamina restore skills to help blocking than use mana pool as blocking resource.
For this reason any change to Tri-Focus, if it keep passive to transform blocking into mana, still will have this passive undesirable to invest for such build.
And this is kinda problem coz you have passive where - one of effects is weak, other one is reason why you don't want this passive, so you can easily gave up on it. But if this passive will have strong effect it will be problematic coz than you will have some good effect but in return loose one of possible ways of using frost staff overall and vice versa. I.e. loosing passive.
Snb can be used both offensively and defensively same as frost staff now but change to Tri-Focus may shift balance of frost staffs into more negative.

Change to Elemental Susceptibility looking more viable coz right now its dead morph as it barely have any actual benefit. Why would you need morph that prolong effect for free when skill itself cost zero mana and can be spammed as much as you want. Wasting 1 global cooldown is barely a problem in both pve/pvp. While other morph grating one of the most desirable minor debuffs.

P.S.: Break Free for magicka implemented into frost staff somehow could be very interesting, it have same benefits as manablock but dont have its drawbacks. Unless zos plan to make new skilline frost&rune for such things where manablock would be more lore-wise.

Artim_X · December 2018

trowlk wrote: »

But what if this taunt is applied by Ice Destructive Clench ability instead? It would be easier as it has its own elemental effects according to each staff.

As someone who likes to frost staff tank relatively easy content every now and then this would be a change I can get behind. A pure ice DPS would probably prefer destructive reach so changing clench would give frost staff tanks a fast taunt that can also immobilize certain enemies for a decent amount of time.

richo262 · December 2018

I think a great idea would be strip a skill line from every class and work it into the base game as a skill tree or revamped skill tree.

Nightblade - Siphon merged with Soul Magic
Dragon Knight - Earthen Heart merged with Fighters Guild
Sorc - Dark Magic / Daedric Summoning merged with Mages Guild
Templar - The most Meridia orientated tree awarded at completing the main quest
Warden - Winters Embrace revamped and turned into a whole Defensive Staff tree orientated toward tanking.
*I own warden class and have no issue in losing 1 of the unique trees for this to happen.

The biggest value of this, is ZOS can then introduce new classes, and as they only have 2 unique trees, the balancing problems would be far less. Across all of my toons, very few of them utilize all three trees. Mostly just 2 trees, and perhaps a few passive perks in the third, if any. I know my Stam warden does not use Ice at all, or the healing tree, my Mag warden only uses the ice DOT.

Presently Tanks have Sword / Board (Stam) and Undaunted (only for ranged taunt) having a full fledged defensive staff tree would be ideal for mag orientated tanks.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

trowlk wrote: »

Even if you desire a dps Ice Staff and I a better tanking Ice Staff, we should at least try to find common ground. I put a lot of thought to my proposal, and so did you, I suppose.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

this then makes frost useless for DPS who want to use it.

Is that all you have to say about my proposal? I'm a bit dissapointed. For someone who has been talking about this stuff for about +5 months I expected a nice and detailed overview of my proposal.

I like the idea of starting fresh by separating the Ice Staff from its cousins, but lets keep them together for the sake of your proposal.

Remove the Heavy Attack taunt from Tri Focus passive? I agree with the idea. Now dps would be able to attack without interfiring with the tank's aggro.
ZOS is clearly homogenizing armor and spell reduction sets and abilities, I think they'll never add an stand-alone reduction for Ice Staff.

Add taunt to Elemental Susceptibility ability? I like this idea aswell. This will be great addition because this morph refreshes its duration everytime the enemy is attacked. But I don't agree it should add Major Fracture to its arsenal, it would entirely replace Pierce Armor and Inner Rage.
But what if this taunt is applied by Ice Destructive Clench ability instead? It would be easier as it has its own elemental effects according to each staff.

I'll leave a final thought as conclusion. Do you think Ice Staff will be powerful enough despite the current chilling status effect, defensive passives and crowd control as side effects?

Edited to correct some grammatical mistakes

My appologies. What i do is i try to find a compromise between 3 parties. Frost DPS, Frost tanks and ZOS's Agend- i mean "vision". There are many people who like it as a tanking weapon but it still lacks as its just a backbar weapon. At the moment dps are hurt when they take the tri focus passive and they would seriously like to use that shield. I have to rebut the Frost Clench taunt idea. For one, its quite and expensive taunt. But 2, it roots an enemy. You want that enemy to run straight over to you so that you get them in the dps aoe fields. When you do this, you have to wait 4 seconds or so for the immobilize to break and it just wouldn't work. Elemental Succeptibility would now need to have another downside where it would have its uses over pierce armor. Such as a bigger cost for its benefit of range. A cost of 4050 magicka maybe. As pierce is very cheap and does damage too. Inner fire costs 4050 and has a synergy and does damage. But can be used on your sword and shield bar. Maybe it's duration can be decreased. There are multiple ways to balance it. But it needs taunt fracture and breach together to be able to compete.

The changes i suggest mainly benefit the tank. I think it's important that we do have a defencive destro staff. But at the moment it doesn't benefit DDs really at all over fire or lightning adding this small heavy attack effect will help DDs out and they can finally take the passive.

Your post only makes it for tanking whch is bad for the community as the DPS are left out. Which is what i stated before. It has cool ideas like the frontal cone heavy which is something i also thought about but didn't act upon.

Ill go onto your post now and make a detailed comment

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

Cinbri wrote: »

My way of using frost staff is to not invest into Tri-Focus, so block will cost for stamina as always. It transforming frost staff into literally offensive sword&board on magicka build, something how stamina builds use snb for their rotations with puncture and bash.
It fun idea to manablock but prefer to not able to block but spending mana on healing than able to block but unable nor to heal nor to counter-attack coz block drained all my mana. It very effective to use stamina restore skills to help blocking than use mana pool as blocking resource.
For this reason any change to Tri-Focus, if it keep passive to transform blocking into mana, still will have this passive undesirable to invest for such build.
And this is kinda problem coz you have passive where - one of effects is weak, other one is reason why you don't want this passive, so you can easily gave up on it. But if this passive will have strong effect it will be problematic coz than you will have some good effect but in return loose one of possible ways of using frost staff overall and vice versa. I.e. loosing passive.
Snb can be used both offensively and defensively same as frost staff now but change to Tri-Focus may shift balance of frost staffs into more negative.

Change to Elemental Susceptibility looking more viable coz right now its dead morph as it barely have any actual benefit. Why would you need morph that prolong effect for free when skill itself cost zero mana and can be spammed as much as you want. Wasting 1 global cooldown is barely a problem in both pve/pvp. While other morph grating one of the most desirable minor debuffs.

P.S.: Break Free for magicka implemented into frost staff somehow could be very interesting, it have same benefits as manablock but dont have its drawbacks. Unless zos plan to make new skilline frost&rune for such things where manablock would be more lore-wise.

Ah, I've thought about this and ill need your help. Tri Focus's other problem is the magicka block cost. However its probably not going be a problem for much longer. The reps brought up before and the devs said something along the lines of "we thought it would work" i wouldn't know where to put this passive now.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

Betty_Booms wrote: »

Dun you mess with my ice staff. Its a tanking/ pvp staff....the colour of your spells is of little consequence...

Aim is to make it better for tanks and DPS.

Artim_X · December 2018

Destructive clench isn't that costly and most bosses/big priority enemies can't be immobolized.

In some cases it is better to immobolize bosses from the start (the pack in the blessed crucible or the imperial guards in the white gold tower) and once they start coming at ya you can be more precise in where you want them to be.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

Artim_X wrote: »

Destructive clench isn't that costly and most bosses/big priority enemies can't be immobolized.

In some cases it is better to immobolize bosses from the start (the pack in the blessed crucible or the imperial guards in the white gold tower) and once they start coming at ya you can be more precise in where you want them to be.

the taunt can be used on the main boss. yes. but what about the other smaller (but still big) trash? there are plenty of these around that you can immobilise and it's not really good to immobilise them and taunt them at the same time because of the aforementioned pull to group dps. i think this skill should gain something to do with DPS. I think the best things for it are: increased initial damage or cost reduction. this will help it synergise with the vDSA staff much better than a taunt.

codestripper · December 2018

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Artim_X wrote: »

Destructive clench isn't that costly and most bosses/big priority enemies can't be immobolized.

In some cases it is better to immobolize bosses from the start (the pack in the blessed crucible or the imperial guards in the white gold tower) and once they start coming at ya you can be more precise in where you want them to be.

the taunt can be used on the main boss. yes. but what about the other smaller (but still big) trash? there are plenty of these around that you can immobilise and it's not really good to immobilise them and taunt them at the same time because of the aforementioned pull to group dps. i think this skill should gain something to do with DPS. I think the best things for it are: increased initial damage or cost reduction. this will help it synergise with the vDSA staff much better than a taunt.

I do like most of your ideas, but I'm going to have to go with them on this as well. There really aren't many high priority or boss targets that can be cc'ed . You figure that out as a tank pretty fast when you use time stop lol. and I mean, the immobilize would probably be removed anyway if it were adjusted as a taunt lets be real. Zos isn't one to give a skill too many things.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

codestripper wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Artim_X wrote: »

Destructive clench isn't that costly and most bosses/big priority enemies can't be immobolized.

In some cases it is better to immobolize bosses from the start (the pack in the blessed crucible or the imperial guards in the white gold tower) and once they start coming at ya you can be more precise in where you want them to be.

the taunt can be used on the main boss. yes. but what about the other smaller (but still big) trash? there are plenty of these around that you can immobilise and it's not really good to immobilise them and taunt them at the same time because of the aforementioned pull to group dps. i think this skill should gain something to do with DPS. I think the best things for it are: increased initial damage or cost reduction. this will help it synergise with the vDSA staff much better than a taunt.

I do like most of your ideas, but I'm going to have to go with them on this as well. There really aren't many high priority or boss targets that can be cc'ed . You figure that out as a tank pretty fast when you use time stop lol. and I mean, the immobilize would probably be removed anyway if it were adjusted as a taunt lets be real. Zos isn't one to give a skill too many things.

lol you're right about ZOS. but if you guys want it so badly, there's no way it can be worse than on tri focus lol. at the very least, susceptibility should gain fracture. however i still think that taunts and immobilise should not be together.

MLGProPlayer · December 2018

There is no future for the frost staff or the magicka warden class. ZOS simply doesn't care.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

There is no future for the frost staff or the magicka warden class. ZOS simply doesn't care.

nothing will be done with an attitude like that!

SilverIce58 · December 2018

Betty_Booms wrote: »

Dun you mess with my ice staff. Its a tanking/ pvp staff....the colour of your spells is of little consequence...

Its not about the color of spells. Its about changing a lackluster weapon into one thats better for all parties involved.

And it most certainly is not just a "tanking/pvp staff." It's far more than that.

Wildberryjack · December 2018

Why not just separate the taunt into its own passive?

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

Wildberryjack wrote: »

Why not just separate the taunt into its own passive?

sure, but where would it go?

Kadoin · December 2018

rexagamemnon wrote: »

I never see anyone running ice staffs, very rarely. They just use the wardens ice ultimate...(forget what its called).

I use it. If it gets buffed it might become broken in the way that I use it...

Well, maybe not if they cut the snare out of it, but then it would be worthless to me.

It's unlikely ZOS will add anything without first taking something away. If they don't, ice staff will be broken for sure.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2018

Kadoin wrote: »

rexagamemnon wrote: »

I never see anyone running ice staffs, very rarely. They just use the wardens ice ultimate...(forget what its called).

I use it. If it gets buffed it might become broken in the way that I use it...

Well, maybe not if they cut the snare out of it, but then it would be worthless to me.

It's unlikely ZOS will add anything without first taking something away. If they don't, ice staff will be broken for sure.

If they do what ive suggested to tri focus i doubt it would be OP.

ccfeeling · December 2018

Ice staff never can be a good main tanking weapon unless ZOS would like to revamp those active and passive skills , maybe better create a new skill line for magical tanking weapon ?

Back bar is still OK at this moment ...