Sooo, what about Magicka Ability Altering Weapons?

Hexys · May 2020

In it's current state on the PTS the Stamina Ability Altering weapons are far superior over the Magicka ones. Blackrose Dual Wield giving offense/defence on a skill that already applies major evasion/expedition and potential to carry poisons/enchants over to the other bar while being mobile, Master Axes that make rending slashes worth it as a spammable with a very strong DoT, Maelstrom 2h that has a strong DoT (which can be used on stampede and everyone hit by the AoE get's the VMA 2h DoT) and last but not least Master 2h which has potential to kill larger groups efficiently. I really like these changes, I would like for the Magicka Ability Altering weapons to also make such an impact.

Currently the Master Destruction Staff, Asylum Destruction Staff and Blackrose Destruction Staff do not compete with the above.

Master Destruction Staff
The bonuses that this staff applies is very good. It is just that Destructive Reach is not worth the DoT due to it being a 10 seconds DoT on a 4 seconds duration buff. Due to the loss of the 2000 extra damage added to reach/clench, shock clench lost it's AoE potential. It is currently only 'an option' on flame clench due to it having a stun but the 15 meter range is to short. I would love to see clench getting a range increase so that the flame staff can be used as ranged cc reliably. This will make the Master Destruction Staff more impactful on Magicka Necromancer & Warden while bringing more build diversity to Ranged Magicka builds.

Asylum Destruction Staff
3 Force Pulses is just not worth it, especially in PvP this makes the weapon not impactful and not worth a slot. Bring it back to 2.

Blackrose Destruction Staff
This ability altering weapon is used for a AoE spammable, but spamming elemental ring is counter productive for the DoT as it re-applies. I would like to see this weapon doing something else or an adjustment to how to DoT works.

I hope it is possible for these Magicka Ability Altering weapons to receive a buff to be on parse with it's stamina equivalents.

Thanks for the read and have a nice day!

Flaminir · May 2020

Whilst I agree with you 100%, there has been total silence since around 30+ pages of feedback in one of the fastest growing and largest feedback threads ZOS has ever had, all on the initial ability altering weapons changes with perfected versions.

Given they haven't even had the common decency to post a reply to that level of feedback, I would imagine this could go on deaf ears as well sadly.

TBois · May 2020

Edit: Disregard my initial post as the OP is talking about some weapons that could use some love. I misread this initially.

The Maelstrom staff can be strong in some cases for both pve and pvp evn on stam based builds (mostly stam sorc).

Mayrael · May 2020

Because magicka is ment to be support, kneel before your stamina masters

everything from class skills, through sets and weapon skills has better stamina versions. New exceptions are vampires and thrassian stranglers.

Austinseph1 · May 2020

Mayrael wrote: »

Because magicka is ment to be support, kneel before your stamina masters everything from class skills, through sets and weapon skills has better stamina versions. New exceptions are vampires and thrassian stranglers.

It's true that much of what stamina gets seems to be better than the mag version, VO (a fairly strong stam set but not the strongest) for example... PFG is one of the best things to come to mag since sliced bread. And it's just a rebrand of a stam set. If Mag got a rebranded relequen it would immediately become a (if not the) top single target mag set in the game. They do seem to be much more careful about letting mag get shiny toys.

lucky_Sage · May 2020

Well the black rose destroyed staff should of been for ele drain but zos had to skip that

Vaoh · May 2020

On Greymoor PTS:

Perfect Wild Impulse
(2 items) Adds 1190 Spell Penetration
Reduce the cost of Impulse by 10%. Impulse places lingering elemental damage on your targets, dealing 3965 Flame, 3965 Shock, and 3965 Frost Damage over 8 seconds.

No one uses this because it is meant to be a spammable skill, yet the DoT resets on cast. It’s also not worth sacrificing your set bonuses to use it as an AoE DoT either. In other words.... it’s poorly designed.

————

What it should do is this:

Perfect Wild Impulse
(2 items) Adds 1190 Spell Penetration
Gain 150 Magicka for each target struck by Impulse. Impulse places lingering damage from your Staff element onto your targets, dealing 4758 Flame, Shock, or Frost Damage over 4 seconds each time it is cast. This effect can stack.

Now it is much stronger for AoE since it’s stackable, and the DoT damage is reduced (by 60%) so it’s not hitting harder than a single target spammable. The element is based on your Staff element so a DK will want flame, Sorc will want lightning, etc. It also gives more Magicka back for hitting more targets instead of cost reduction so it’s much more favored for AoE instead of single target. If it worked this way I can see it being used in PvE.

BohnT2 · May 2020

Hexys wrote: »

In it's current state on the PTS the Stamina Ability Altering weapons are far superior over the Magicka ones. Blackrose Dual Wield giving offense/defence on a skill that already applies major evasion/expedition and potential to carry poisons/enchants over to the other bar while being mobile, Master Axes that make rending slashes worth it as a spammable with a very strong DoT, Maelstrom 2h that has a strong DoT (which can be used on stampede and everyone hit by the AoE get's the VMA 2h DoT) and last but not least Master 2h which has potential to kill larger groups efficiently. I really like these changes, I would like for the Magicka Ability Altering weapons to also make such an impact.

Currently the Master Destruction Staff, Asylum Destruction Staff and Blackrose Destruction Staff do not compete with the above.

Master Destruction Staff
The bonuses that this staff applies is very good. It is just that Destructive Reach is not worth the DoT due to it being a 10 seconds DoT on a 4 seconds duration buff. Due to the loss of the 2000 extra damage added to reach/clench, shock clench lost it's AoE potential. It is currently only 'an option' on flame clench due to it having a stun but the 15 meter range is to short. I would love to see clench getting a range increase so that the flame staff can be used as ranged cc reliably. This will make the Master Destruction Staff more impactful on Magicka Necromancer & Warden while bringing more build diversity to Ranged Magicka builds.

Asylum Destruction Staff
3 Force Pulses is just not worth it, especially in PvP this makes the weapon not impactful and not worth a slot. Bring it back to 2.

Blackrose Destruction Staff
This ability altering weapon is used for a AoE spammable, but spamming elemental ring is counter productive for the DoT as it re-applies. I would like to see this weapon doing something else or an adjustment to how to DoT works.

I hope it is possible for these Magicka Ability Altering weapons to receive a buff to be on parse with it's stamina equivalents.

Thanks for the read and have a nice day!

All of those are in desperate need of help.
There's no reason to kill asylum destro, by nerfing it not only to 3 casts but also reducing the time between casts to 5 seconds, if they really have to nerf it because the spreadsheet says so, keep the 5 sec requirement but it has to be every second cast otherwise this thing will go straight into the shredder.

BRP destro makes no sense whatsoever, you can turn a non spammable to a spammable ability but not vice versa, especially with a skill that has already no place on most skill bars: magdk doesn't need an AoE skill, neither does magplar, magsorc doesn't gain anything from using the skill and has barspace issues to begin with, magnb could use sap essence if they wanted an AoE skill which they don't, that leaves magwarden and magnecro and both of them make much better use of the current master destro.

This brings me to my only gripe here, the bonus effect from master destro on pts is completely underwhelming, not only is clench a trash ability to begin with, but current master destro is the only thing keeping both shock and ice clench relevant, fire clench at least has a stun even if it's a trash one. There is no reason in my eyes to change master destro they way they did on the pts as those 600 spelldamage don't help much as using clench is a damage loss to begin with and 4 seconds duration is just laughably short.
The classes which rely most on this weapon are warden and necro both of which would lose their only useable spammable they have as börds and skulls are bad due to traveltime/ no bonus effect while skills like force pulse aren't good enough which leaves elemental weapon which is okayish i guess but still not comparable to master clench.

Imo the best way is to keep both Master destro and Asylum as they are on the live servers and completely rework Brp destro to give it a new niche that makes people actually want to slot impulse

Dracane · May 2020

Stamina always gets the most exciting sets.

Has been this way since 1.6 I would say.
Stamina is so used to getting strong and efficient stuff, while still whining that they have so little available.

Imagine the outrage if magicka gets something strong for a change. They even almost escalated after the current changes to the Master Staff. Which in itself is nothing compared to even the worst of these stamina starlights.

Dracane · May 2020

Mayrael wrote: »

Because magicka is ment to be support, kneel before your stamina masters everything from class skills, through sets and weapon skills has better stamina versions. New exceptions are vampires and thrassian stranglers.

And Thrassian Stranglers are the biggest troll of the century. They want you to feel strong and superior to stamina, while only making you even easier to kill, so you finally forsake and stop playing magicka classes. Come on... nobody will use these in pvp after the recent nerf. Before it was a risk, not it is out of question.

And vampires... well I do not think anyone in no-CP will handle this cost increase.

Derra · May 2020

BohnT2 wrote: »

This brings me to my only gripe here, the bonus effect from master destro on pts is completely underwhelming, not only is clench a trash ability to begin with, but current master destro is the only thing keeping both shock and ice clench relevant, fire clench at least has a stun even if it's a trash one. There is no reason in my eyes to change master destro they way they did on the pts as those 600 spelldamage don't help much as using clench is a damage loss to begin with and 4 seconds duration is just laughably short.

And these are only half of the problems of the current master destro on pts.

Can anybody tell me what use WHATSOEVER masterstaff is supposed to have with the three reach morphs? Or more like one as zos butchered their unique effects because they were too lazy to work on them...

As it stands master destro is semi useful with 1 morph + weapon choice for a skill that has 6 in total. 1 out of 6. Congratulations to whomever thought of that. It has less use than on live now (and you can figure they changed it bc most ppl on live think it´s trash and don´t use it).

wheem_ESO · May 2020

In my view, it's poor design when the top-end PvP gear is locked behind non-trivial PvE. Just imagine if players who didn't enjoy PvP were forced to defeat coordinated BG premade teams consisting of some of the really high MMR players in order to get access to the best sets for doing whatever trials they wanted to run. The forums would explode from all the rage.

So if ZOS doesn't want to make these weapons accessible to those of us who play the game solely for PvP, they need to be left where they belong - in PvE. Either change the effect(s) so that PvP players don't want to use them, or simply have the set bonus become disabled in Battlegrounds, Cyrodiil, and duels.

PS
When I say accessible through PvP, I really do mean accessible. Not something that might show up once a year on the gold vendor, and be totally unavailable if you happen to not log in that weekend.

Septimus_Magna · May 2020

Only place I see for master destro staff is in PVP, maybe the master shock staff would work on a HA magsorc build but thats far from meta ofc. The rest of the weapons is complete garbage now, it would be nice if the master weapons also increased build diversity for magicka DDs.

Why is the BRP dual-wield getting increased dmg done and reduced dmg taken but the BRP destro staff gets a weak dot on a skill that nobody uses? I doesnt make any sense, it feels like they just forgot about the magicka based weapons.

Derra · May 2020

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Why is the BRP dual-wield getting increased dmg done and reduced dmg taken but the BRP destro staff gets a weak dot on a skill that nobody uses? I doesnt make any sense, it feels like they just forgot about the magicka based weapons.

At this point i wish they had forgotten about them but no - they nerfed the two that were still used (albeit niche).

Baraber · May 2020

It's not enough that the BRP destro staff is a joke, I remind you that spamming impulse makes the dot not tick at all! since the first tick has a 2 second delay and repeated impulse casts keep "refreshing" it, You get zero dot ticks.
Now look at similar stamina sets and skills that apply bleed, you will see that the bleeding effect is not refreshed upon repeated casts of the associated skill, making the dot actually work.
Did someone say stamina favourism?

Olupajmibanan · May 2020

wheem_ESO wrote: »

In my view, it's poor design when the top-end PvP gear is locked behind non-trivial PvE. Just imagine if players who didn't enjoy PvP were forced to defeat coordinated BG premade teams consisting of some of the really high MMR players in order to get access to the best sets for doing whatever trials they wanted to run. The forums would explode from all the rage.

So if ZOS doesn't want to make these weapons accessible to those of us who play the game solely for PvP, they need to be left where they belong - in PvE. Either change the effect(s) so that PvP players don't want to use them, or simply have the set bonus become disabled in Battlegrounds, Cyrodiil, and duels.

PS
When I say accessible through PvP, I really do mean accessible. Not something that might show up once a year on the gold vendor, and be totally unavailable if you happen to not log in that weekend.

That's why they introduced non-perfect and perfect variants. You can complete nMA, nDSA and even nAS without any significant troubles even if going there in full PvP gear. So you can acquire the special weapon with its unique function without any problems. The additional set bonus on perfect ones is a marginal bonus, nothing that would significantly affect your gameplay - nice to have but not mandatory.

The point you make is valid but outdated because that will be of no problem as of Greymoor.

Kolzki · May 2020

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Only place I see for master destro staff is in PVP, maybe the master shock staff would work on a HA magsorc build but thats far from meta ofc.

I tried it on an ha sorc. It’s pretty bad. Also, the staff gives spell damage. Sorc pets don’t scale with spell damage.

wheem_ESO · May 2020

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

wheem_ESO wrote: »

In my view, it's poor design when the top-end PvP gear is locked behind non-trivial PvE. Just imagine if players who didn't enjoy PvP were forced to defeat coordinated BG premade teams consisting of some of the really high MMR players in order to get access to the best sets for doing whatever trials they wanted to run. The forums would explode from all the rage.

So if ZOS doesn't want to make these weapons accessible to those of us who play the game solely for PvP, they need to be left where they belong - in PvE. Either change the effect(s) so that PvP players don't want to use them, or simply have the set bonus become disabled in Battlegrounds, Cyrodiil, and duels.

PS
When I say accessible through PvP, I really do mean accessible. Not something that might show up once a year on the gold vendor, and be totally unavailable if you happen to not log in that weekend.

That's why they introduced non-perfect and perfect variants. You can complete nMA, nDSA and even nAS without any significant troubles even if going there in full PvP gear. So you can acquire the special weapon with its unique function without any problems. The additional set bonus on perfect ones is a marginal bonus, nothing that would significantly affect your gameplay - nice to have but not mandatory.

The point you make is valid but outdated because that will be of no problem as of Greymoor.

Difficulty for the best version is part of it, but there's also the time aspect and the potential need to switch guilds and/or spam LFG in zone chat (which can sometimes end in disaster). I really don't enjoy PvE in ESO (or MMO's in general, especially as DPS), and don't want to have to spend hours on end farming the same thing over and over, hoping that I get the one item I really "need" in order for my build to not be hands-down inferior to that of other players of my same class.

Way back when, I was farming VMA repeatedly for the dual wield set. I ended up getting 1 Destruction Staff, 3 Restoration Staves, and a 1h/shield set, none of which interested me at the time. This was also the era where you weren't guaranteed to get a weapon at all, so there were numerous times I really got ripped off by RNG. More recently, I was farming normal Maelstrom for the Succession set, hoping to get one of those weapons from the last stage. After spending numerous hours over quite a few runs spread out over a week or so, and never getting one (not even a "wrong" weapon type that I wouldn't want), I got sick of it and quit trying.

Monster sets are a little more forgivable, I think: you can queue for a specific Vet dungeon and know that you'll get a helm of the proper set as long as you're able to finish the last boss, and many of the PvP-oriented sets aren't really wanted in PvE, so it's usually not that hard to trade for the proper armor type. Not to mention the gold vendor having some available every weekend, even if you don't have access to the associated DLC for the set you want.

SeaUnicorn · May 2020

Totally agree with OP. Only useful ability altering weapon for Magicka players is Crushing Wall.

I tried Master Destro on PTS with Necro and it was underwhelming, trying to manage blatbones that does not want to leap ever and 4s buff was super annoying. Where it did help is with cheesing a high damage HA for RO proc, it's much easier to proc than Kena and gives more spell damage. So it's super situational and for very specific job that was created by poor design of RO set. May be in PVP it would be of use?

Asylum destro was murdered. RIP.

Galarthor · May 2020

Look at all the stamina sets and then look at all the magicka sets. Why stop giving stamina builds the besser / more interesting sets now? Why break with a dear tradition?

John_Falstaff · May 2020

Austinseph1 wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

Because magicka is ment to be support, kneel before your stamina masters everything from class skills, through sets and weapon skills has better stamina versions. New exceptions are vampires and thrassian stranglers.

It's true that much of what stamina gets seems to be better than the mag version, VO (a fairly strong stam set but not the strongest) for example... PFG is one of the best things to come to mag since sliced bread. And it's just a rebrand of a stam set. If Mag got a rebranded relequen it would immediately become a (if not the) top single target mag set in the game. They do seem to be much more careful about letting mag get shiny toys.

That would be Siroria, no? It does outperform PFG, it's also situational like Relequen and comes with restrictions. I think both magicka and stamina got their new toys simultaneously in Summerset. Granted, afterwards stamina got Lokke (which is beneficial to pair with Rele), while magicka got rebranded VO (which is not usually paired with Siroria), but I would say that on magicka, PFG is more impactful than VO on stamina, because max magicka on perfected version brings it a notch higher, plus it goes well with presence of purple buff food for magicka (and since max magicka gets better multiplier than max stamina, it's again more impactful), so PFG shines on magicka more than VO shines on stamina. It's the comfy selfish set magicka was waiting for.

Granted, Greymoor sets look underwhelming. RO went from 'Alkosh v2.0' to 'decon material', but ZOS can't make it be a good DD set. But I think it's better than having a set that cannibalizes good sets like Master Architect that encourage skill and better variety of classes in group comp. I'd rather they made perfected MA by now so it wouldn't be that much of a sacrifice to run for the benefit of neighbors.

VoidCommander · May 2020

I just wish the brp destro staff did all three damage types every second for 8 seconds, with the damage scaled down. When draugrkin’s grip came out, I thought this staff would finally serve a viable purpose. RIP.

Dracane · May 2020

Blackrose Destruction staff was an insult anyway. This should have went to Elemental Drain. But of course they just broke tradition and skipped that due to being scared to give an already belowed magicka ability something good.

Derra · May 2020

Dracane wrote: »

Blackrose Destruction staff was an insult anyway. This should have went to Elemental Drain. But of course they just broke tradition and skipped that due to being scared to give an already belowed magicka ability something good.

Afaik it wasn´t - the destruction staff abilities switched order at some point (same almost every weapon line).
The ability altering weapons still adhere to the original release unlock of skills if i´m not mistaken.

Hexys · May 2020

The comments so far are very positive towards buffing the ability altering destro staves. Let's hope ZOS can/will make some changes before chapter release.

SHOW · May 2020

Hexys wrote: »

The comments so far are very positive towards buffing the ability altering destro staves. Let's hope ZOS can/will make some changes before chapter release.

Agreed.

BohnT2 · May 2020

Tivnael · May 2020

I totally agree concerning the vDSA staff. Duration of Spell damage buff should be longer so it fits to DoT duration. Also, its quite strange why some ranged CCs have 22m, while destro staff skills stay with 15m, which is really not enough for PvP

Ezhh · May 2020

These changes break my favourite trash set up (shock clench) and my magDK (I don't enjoy using whip) and pretty much the only fun alternate build I really enjoyed for my sorc (asylum destro). I'm sure I'll adept. But I really, really wanted to look forward to this chapter...

Add to it all the lack of response regarding existing vMA weapons ending up as nMA weapons and the quite useless perfected bonus to the vMA staff, and well...

Can we stay on Elsweyr please? (Or maybe, just maybe, undo some of these changes?)