Suggestion: slight adjustment to Stone Giant, for healthier gameplay

TheYKcid · October 2019

ZOS' justifcation from the v5.2.2 notes:

Reduced the duration of the stacks to 5 seconds per application, down from 10 seconds, to help ensure that non-damage focused builds cannot maintain Stone Giant’s powerful group tool of damage taken as efficiently, since it works on again, literally everything.

While their intentions are good, the logic behind this change is backwards, for two reasons:

The duration of the stack (whether 5 or 10 seconds) is irrelevant to large groups. This is by nature of the zerg—individual players need not allocate time/GCDs towards performing defensive actions (since this is managed by other dedicated roles), thereby enabling the aforementioned "non-damage focused builds" (i.e tanks) to dedicatedly spam a single action. In this case stonefist, well within the 5s window.
Conversely, the tooltip of the Stagger effect scales extremely well with group size. The 135 damage per tick is multiplied by every damage source you add to the equation. 10x the players, 10x the ticks, 10x the damage.

Solution
ZOS' stated goals would be more realistically achieved using the original values of these effects (10s stack, 25 damage per stack). As already mentioned, this would curtail large group-usage, but it also has the benefit of enabling more practical usage at the solo/smallscale level:

Smaller group size means fewer damage sources, thus the damage-per-tick nerf to 25 has a lesser effect, proportionately-speaking.
A 10s window makes it more feasible for solo/smallscale to line-up a full stack and deliver the CC effect. This is because when outnumbered, one often has to alternate offensive windows with defensive and/or movement windows, for which a 5s stack duration is too short and will often expire before the next offense.

P.S. Keep the stack limit at 3.

NoodleESO · October 2019

yes I agree, in Cyrodiil when your target is moving around, weaving in-between other players, 5 seconds is way too short for a primary stun.

the only way to get a full stack would be to lock your target down with a cc, but then they have cc immunity.

TheYKcid · October 2019

NoodleESO wrote: »

yes I agree, in Cyrodiil when your target is moving around, weaving in-between other players, 5 seconds is way too short for a primary stun.

the only way to get a full stack would be to lock your target down with a cc, but then they have cc immunity.

Not to mention that for a solo player, it would be redundant and a waste of barspace to slot a dedicated CC (aside from ults) when you already have Stonefist.

Solariken · October 2019

I'd support this revision, because it's better than what they are currently planning. The skill will still look and feel dumb with that garbage animation though. And wtf is dragon-ish about throwing rocks? Ogres and trolls do this crap, get rid of it.

There's still a bigger problem though, WHERE IS OUR POISON WHIP

TheYKcid · October 2019

Solariken wrote: »

I'd support this revision, because it's better than what they are currently planning. The skill will still look and feel dumb with that garbage animation though. And wtf is dragon-ish about throwing rocks? Ogres and trolls do this crap, get rid of it.

There's still a bigger problem though, WHERE IS OUR POISON WHIP

@Solariken For practical reasons I gotta say I prefer Stonefist to Whip, if only because proccing those Earthen Heart passives on cooldown is going to be extremely valuable.

But yeah, visually and identity-wise it's poopoo.

Madhatten512 · October 2019

The skill is bad the mechanic is stupid and no one that plays DK wants it we want the class dots we have to actually do damage but what we get is a rock that zerglings will spam endlessly and a small scale player couldn't use if they wanted to... With the "increase" to dots my claw tool tip is now 8500 not even worth slotting. GG Zos GG Gilliam on another well designed patch glad you guys are listening like you tell us every patch note there is a big difference between listening and using the information you heard to make changes the community actually wants..

Ragnarock41 · October 2019

How about going one step further and redesigning this ability completely, both the looks and what it does?

I highly doubt coordinated groups will value something silly like 135 extra damage over having another bomber or healer. That stagger mechanic is most likely a thing meant for PvE identity(similar to engulfing flames change I guess), and I don't like it one bit.

So in a nutshell, literally nobody likes this ability, Why is zenimax insisting on giving this to us?

TheYKcid · October 2019

@Ragnarock41 I agree that ideally we'd get something else entirely (for me personally, that would be the Dizzy Swing of Wrathstone and prior).

But we're in week 3 of PTS so let's be real, that's not happening. Gotta work with what we have and make small tweaks. Every little thing that makes the game less zergy is a win.

Ragnarock41 · October 2019

TheYKcid wrote: »

@Ragnarock41 I agree that ideally we'd get something else entirely (for me personally, that would be the Dizzy Swing of Wrathstone and prior).

But we're in week 3 of PTS so let's be real, that's not happening. Gotta work with what we have and make small tweaks. Every little thing that makes the game less zergy is a win.

And what will that achieve? I'm sorry however it is you who should get ''real'' in this case.I don't disagree this game needs to get less zergy, however isn't the whole point of this PTS was to achieve ''class identity''?

I wanted stamDk to be less boring and more interactive of a class. I wanted tools that would achieve more skill expression. Look at stonefist and tell me why should we try to rebalance this ability when the existance of a ranged spammable on a class like stamDk goes against the very identity of the class, and the ranged nature promotes no-skill ranged spamming rather than taking risk by getting in melee range, which is what stamDK is all about, this class is all about being in the eye of the storm, not standing in the back and throwing rocks.

Ignoring the real problem will only prolong the inevitable. So I'm asking again, no matter how much they polished this ability, rebalanced it, nerfed/buffed it, if stamDks are not happy with it, if we only use it because its overperforming , then isn't that just go against their own design vision?

Heck, speaking of vision, do they even have one? These are not the type of questions that can wait another 3 months at this point. They either get the combat right till next chapter or they don't. I don't want to reach this summer and reading @ZOS_BrianWheeler telling me that those class identity changes we waited for like near 7 years, needs another year.

The game is already very old , this isn't a time to ask for small changes. Quite the opposite this is exactly the right time for asking them to get it RIGHT , and get it right sooner, rather than later.

NBrookus · October 2019

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

I highly doubt coordinated groups will value something silly like 135 extra damage over having another bomber or healer. That stagger mechanic is most likely a thing meant for PvE identity(similar to engulfing flames change I guess), and I don't like it one bit.

It won't be worth a person for the 16 mans, but groups that stack multiple raids will. They already have people that do nothing but spam roots and cc. I'm not sure the damage will be high enough in PVP to be a legit problem; time will tell.

I feel like the group damage was intended for PVE utility, a reason to bring stamDK to a trial.

TipsyDrow · October 2019

Making stonefist the stamina spammable was the wrong decision. The community wanted a stamina version of whip and have wanted it for years. That's what should have happened and stone fist should have been changed to an execute with a stam and magica version. If the devs would have done this they would have made every DK player I know happy and a well rounded class that retained it's identity.

Ragnarock41 · October 2019

TipsyDrow wrote: »

Making stonefist the stamina spammable was the wrong decision. The community wanted a stamina version of whip and have wanted it for years. That's what should have happened and stone fist should have been changed to an execute with a stam and magica version. If the devs would have done this they would have made every DK player I know happy and a well rounded class that retained it's identity.

It could have a somewhat different animation to help separate it from magDk spammables, but yes, crushing majority of stamDK players longed for a ''stamwhip''. We wanted poison Dk to be a thing just like fire Dk is.

If it happened I would be celebrating right now, instead of whining about it. And well if they wanna make stamDks feel unique and stuff they could work on new animations for molten armaments(It looks sort of ugly to have your weapon turn to magma, even your bow or staff) or corrosive armor. ( For both visual clarity/counterplay and looking cool so win-win, who wouldn't want to grow wings for 10+ seconds? It works great for the necro bone colossus ult)

Arciris · October 2019

It's the new design philosophy of the new team guys.

Clap your hands 3 times, turn around clockwise, clap your hands 2 times, turn around conter clockwise... congratilations, you get a buff, or a Hard CC or some damage or heal proc.

And you're lucky it doesn't have a kiss curse attached to it, like when you get the proc, the next 2k of healing you do to yourself is denied.

A lot of super interesting gameplay ahead, I tell you

Quantum_V · October 2019

Good feedback, thanks!

Joxer61 · October 2019

Quantum_V wrote: »

Good feedback, thanks!

lol.....

Nomadic_Mind · October 2019

For a skill that costs over 3k magicka to cast, 5 seconds is too short of a duration for the stack. Either reduce the cost to make it truly spammable or increase the duration, but it's not sustainable in end game content unless as op suggests that entire groups can contribute to stacks. Even then, you have to coordinate and make sure everyone has it in the rotation. In arenas or dungeons a DK would have to double bar this and make it every 3rd ability, realistically.

I understand the pvp needs are for zero sustain and bursty gameplay. But this is not compatible with end game pve content. it's the opposite. You need high sustained damage, where something like this buff would actually make a large difference. adding a few damage in pvp (outside of huge zergs, where you are dead anyway) doesn't really make much difference. The greater utility gain from this is really in pve.

TheYKcid · October 2019

Quantum_V wrote: »

Good feedback, thanks!

TheYKcid · October 2019

Bump.