I am actually planning on switching away from destruction staff. I was forced to switch weapons for a quest in order to kill an NPC that had healing orbs because the staff just could not attack fast enough (I was doing a fast attack as well).

The destruction staff just doesn't seem to do a ton of damage, and the first skill you can get is really nice as fire, but the lightning was really bad and I never got to try the frost one.

First of all, if you are using Destruction Stave abilities then you will NOT be using them for their raw damage potential, but for their synergistic and status effects.

Destructive Touch:
-morphed to Destructive Clench can give you the ability with a fire stave to knock back a target and also stun a target. This ability is VERY effective to clear a mob off of a squishy class such as a mage or a healer.
-morphed to Destructive Reach can give you the ability with a frost stave to freeze a target in place at a fair distance and still dps the target without the effect breaking early. On my Sorcerer I use this as part of my main rotation because the only spell I have that is even remotely close to this is Encase. Encase has a shorter range and ONLY roots. Destructive reach hits from further, does damage, AND roots for the same amount of time.

Wall of Elements:
- Great for AoE builds like a Sorcerer that does dungeons and runs with Daedric Mines, Daedric Curse Lightning Splash, and Mages' Fury. It just adds a fifth AoE ability to the tool kit and can be obtained at a much lower level.

Force Shock:
- Does decent damage and when fully buffed has a 55% chance to Snare for 5 seconds, 55% chance to apply a fire DoT for 5 seconds, or a 55% chance to reduce the target's damage output by 10% for 5 seconds.
- When morphed to Force Pulse it hits two additional targets that are burning/concusses/chilled for 50% additional damage. This is eventually replaced by Impulse. However, after the next patch this spell will do more damage than Impulse so it may be worth using along side Impulse in the future.

Weakness to Elements:
- Will be one of the, if not the most, important spells for any class dealing elemental damage come end game content.
- When morphed to Elemental Drain is a very powerful opening effect. It not only reduces the targets spell resistance by a whopping 40%, but, also returns magicka when you cast an elemental spell against said target.
- Becomes even stronger of an effect for other players that use melee weapons enchanted with fire/frost/lightning enchants. Allows you to do combos like open up with a destruction stave and then swap to melee weapons that do elemental damage to regenerate magicka.
- Has a very long duration

Impulse:
- When morphed to Elemental Ring has a 55% chance to apply status effects in an AoE.
- Will become very strong when followed up by Force Pulse spam after the next patch (See above).


So, in conclusion, All of these abilities synergize very well with Dragonknight's and Templar's fire abilities as well as a Sorcerer's Lightning abilities. Not to mention it allows a player the ability to make FULL AoE damage builds or drastically increase the penetration of a boss' high armor values. They all may not be beneficial or preferable depending on whatever class you chose to play but they do provide an additional skill set for build tweaking and definitely have group synergy.

~Æther

Can resistance be a negative value that increases damage received?

Khazaad wrote: »

Can resistance be a negative value that increases damage received?

I'd like to know this too.

redsteven wrote: »

Khazaad wrote: »

Can resistance be a negative value that increases damage received?

I'd like to know this too.

No. You can reduce an enemy's resistance by a % not by a set amount.

Destruction staff at the moment is only good for additional crowd control or AoE, raw damage on single targets is a joke compared to almost any class ability, but the AoE potential is astounding and the debuffs aren't bad either. Sadly as a templar the first is out of the window as I can just use templar abilities which do the same thing as destruction staff abilities but with better damage at around the same magicka cost, so I'm left with elemental wall and impulse, along with elemental weakness against any higher health mobs. Looking forward to destruction staff buffs in the near future.