Here is a thread started asking for it back: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/542792/crystal-shard-replaced-by-crystal-weapon-please-roll-back/p1

Pirateassassin3 wrote: »

respec it back to crystal shards. Not as good as it used to be though. I also got rid of necropotence and alfiq, went with mad tinkerer and mechanical aquity. Love having 2 sets that have procs. Dont have any monster sets yet, and i have twilight matriarch and volatile familiar. Lost about 25k max magika, but i pull about 55-65k dps. Love sitting back and watching pets and procs.
I only play casual and havent done trials or many dungeons. But most world bosses and all public dungeons are a cakewalk.

Is giving up the pet bonus for Necropotence worth it?

I put wrong pets, i have twilight tormentor and unstable clanfear

geschaftmaker wrote: »

Obviously not enough damage for serious dungeons trials etc.But I'm fully aware of it and one of the reasons why I'm not joining any group activities is I don't want to "play piano" for hours, I want to play game for fun, so I took Crystal Blast and went spamming it with that silly look on my face, you know. So I can't understand what was the problem with that skill and why nerf if it was so weak and not recommended as everyone explains?

They didn't nerf it, they removed it!

I agree with you. I play for fun (little true end game stuff) and now a huge part of my fun was stolen to make something that largely seems worthless. (Press a key to make another attack do a bit more? Like that delay is worth it overall....)

Lastly the comments saying it's now a useless skill miss the point. It's now a stamsorc skill, and not useless.

It would be on a MagSorc for sure...

geschaftmaker wrote: »

@Beardimus
Thanks for your help, I'll try that one. I've already read different guides and stuff, but the problem is that with Crystal Blast I could just buff and start smashing *** with two buttons (second one for finishing to replenish mana) and occasionally swap bars for buff and dot for fatties and press ultimate, and what I have to do now to get at least the same result is much more complicated and hard for me, finger- and mind-wise. I'm simply getting tired and bored quickly. I'm not a vigorate youngster nor a hardcore gamer to pound out on the keys in perfect progression within the hours, I don't care about metas, trials, high-end sets and stuff, I just want to play story, make quests and relax. Crystal Blast gave me such a possibility, I even could solo public dungeons without much effort, at least those I've tried.

And don't forget about moving, I've seen guys just standing in front of the puppet and casting their rotations, but it's not actual conditions where you always have to move to avoid damage, so much more keys to press simultaneously. And stun here is not just stun, it's also silence for mages, that's why I always started with them then switching fire to another mage to silence him too. First two-three hits to different targets and they are all down and silent, and it's not like you have to watch animation of spell creation each time, when you are spamming the blasts fly one after another almost immediately. I'm sure you know that but it's important to note talking specifics. So finally we get a damned bombarding machine with zero effort, ofc less dps for single target but I could live with that.

And speaking of dps, damage is not the only factor to account playing solo, for when couple of mages are down for 2-3sec means they do no harm to me so I can switch to their brawler mates who run to attack me, stunning couple of them and still damaging those silenced mages, all this while moving slightly back from brawlers so finally they are all dead and no one actually hit me. Who cares of dps then?

Maybe it's time to go play some "press X to win" finally

Overlapped on another thread I think @geschaftmaker but honnestly you need to give it chance, better DPS = easy life.

It doesn't mean you have to go off and do the hard content, but honnestly anything you could do before will MELT with a better setup.

Then you can enjoy harder content as easy as you found overland stuff with crystal blast. I.e. Maelstrom which is epic PvE content.

I agree standing like a robot in front of a dummy static to find that 0.02% gain is dull, but you don't need to go that far.

Even if you run Crit Surge, overlap blockade and lighting and heavy attack it will all die. With Frag firing when it procs

But I hear you sometimes it's the fun - I loved overload as felt like I was throwing shock balls of death about etc etc

Each to their own, just hope you find a solutiin

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Did they decide my pet sorcs weren't easy enough to kill?

Really, really annoying!

EDIT: I guess I just lose the knockdown or was it splash damage, though both were very useful. Can't have those sorcs being too powerful in the upcoming IC event after all!

This will mean lots of trips to change the morph as well.

Apparently there are better skill out there. Good luck finding them. Your gameplay has been determined to be out of style and to "meme"? ... no clue.

Rastoric wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Did they decide my pet sorcs weren't easy enough to kill?

Really, really annoying!

EDIT: I guess I just lose the knockdown or was it splash damage, though both were very useful. Can't have those sorcs being too powerful in the upcoming IC event after all!

This will mean lots of trips to change the morph as well.

Apparently there are better skill out there. Good luck finding them. Your gameplay has been determined to be out of style and to "meme"? ... no clue.

Its what I am used to. Is something wrong with that?

I am an altoholic, so I don't spend hours and hours perfecting a single character. Sorry if that makes me someone who just needs to L2P, but it is what it is.

second time in a week I don't play, just logged in to turn in a event quest.

Lost fun in playing since the skill is gone, which just added up to other nerfs from present and past.

- iceheart nerf
- rapid manoever nerf months ago (reduced from 30 to 5 seconds dismounted)
- switch of vigor and rapid manoever losing it on many toons
- now crystal blast as the skill that made sorcerers easily playable for handicaped and older people (example arthritis)

One setback after the other,, not motivating, in contrast.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

The loss of this skill is really highlighting why overland pve is way too easy in its current state. Most of the people upset about this change were using it to 2-3 shot hordes of pve trash without being touched. So of course they think nothing can replace it. There is no need for a real rotation when you can spam 1 skill that is aoe, stuns and heals you.

You erratically assume these players want to play endgame content.

I play since 3 years, never did a trial, avoid vet dungeons.
Why?
Cause I'm old.

If you like trials - nice, play them. But don't try to force other players to use the same playstyle and preferences as you do, as I am most certainly twice as old as you and meanwhile play very different compared to the time when I was 27.

you talk about ROI, so you should also see that by making the game hard to play for "seniors", they actually cut off important income.

Modern economy actually puts a lot of efforts in trying to get seniors as customers, basically for 2 reasons:

- the demographic pyramid - the society gets older
- the income: old people have lots of time, and often high income. For example I at the age of 54 have bought content for ESO for approx 700 Euro within 3 years

You also claim ESO would be an MMO, but this argument is invalid in so far, as the game allowed the established playstyle for seniors since years. It never was a pure MMO nor PVP game, what made ESO unique instead was the mix, the variety of playstyles.
The only reason I joined ESO after playing skyrim and oblivion indeed were reviews that explained, the you CAN play this game as single player if you accept to avoid endgame content.
So I don't see that it makes sense to cripple this option now, years later.

I concur with your suggestion, that an additional skill would be a good solution.
Keep crystal blast, but also offer something for stamsorcs.

markulrich1966 wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

The loss of this skill is really highlighting why overland pve is way too easy in its current state. Most of the people upset about this change were using it to 2-3 shot hordes of pve trash without being touched. So of course they think nothing can replace it. There is no need for a real rotation when you can spam 1 skill that is aoe, stuns and heals you.

You erratically assume these players want to play endgame content.

I play since 3 years, never did a trial, avoid vet dungeons.
Why?
Cause I'm old.

If you like trials - nice, play them. But don't try to force other players to use the same playstyle and preferences as you do, as I am most certainly twice as old as you and meanwhile play very different compared to the time when I was 27.

No, the only assumption I made is how ZOS chooses to design, test and balance skills in their game. This is an MMO, not a single player game, it's rather obvious that you don't balance skills for the lowest common denominator where the effects of those changes don't largely matter.

Skills don't get nerfed by -5% damage because a player was killing an overland mob too quick, they're balanced against each other in a competitive setting, whether it be pvp or pve end game.

Objectively, every skill should be made to have a distinct choice in a build for any piece of content not just a few, as a game designer you would hope to see every skill and the 2 morphs see close to a 50/50 choice amongst the entire playerbase. Anything getting remotely close to 80/20 or probably even 90/10 in this case shows a clear problem in the design of the morph.

Crystal Blast served 2 specific niches, while I don't consider it completely useless or a dead morph like some may say, it was not competitive for the content this type of game is balanced around and became the first up on the chopping block when trying to offer something to stam sorcs. Again, I would not be surprised if we see more morphs and passives start to change in the Sorc toolkit towards tank and healing roles. It's the nature of this combats design and it's long overdue.

You can go back to 4-5 years ago when many of the current stamina class skills were introduced, they always replaced underused morphs at the time, in the end, it came down to numbers.

markulrich1966 wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

This is an MMO, not a single player game,.

I see no sense in continuing this discussion, if you ignore facts I stated above and instead insist with bold text on your narrowed view of the game.

Have a good day, I will go to sleep now (europe, past midnight).

My response was made to the comment I quoted, not to your second comment I'm quoting below so I'm sorry you felt like I ignored your points.

markulrich1966 wrote: »

you talk about ROI, so you should also see that by making the game hard to play for "seniors", they actually cut off important income.

Modern economy actually puts a lot of efforts in trying to get seniors as customers, basically for 2 reasons:

- the demographic pyramid - the society gets older
- the income: old people have lots of time, and often high income. For example I at the age of 54 have bought content for ESO for approx 700 Euro within 3 years

You also claim ESO would be an MMO, but this argument is invalid in so far, as the game allowed the established playstyle for seniors since years. It never was a pure MMO nor PVP game, what made ESO unique instead was the mix, the variety of playstyles.
The only reason I joined ESO after playing skyrim and oblivion indeed were reviews that explained, the you CAN play this game as single player if you accept to avoid endgame content.
So I don't see that it makes sense to cripple this option now, years later.

I concur with your suggestion, that an additional skill would be a good solution.
Keep crystal blast, but also offer something for stamsorcs.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up age or why you felt the need to assume my age, I have no doubt ZOS is interested in everyones money and none of my comments suggested otherwise. It's why they refuse on making overland content any more difficult than it currently is, but I understand the hesitation given that the content there is primarly for quests, exploring and collection. That is a seperate argument entirely.

Don't you think it's a bit of a stretch to connect Crystal Blast's core desgin directly being influenced by providing an easier playstyle for an older age demographic or people with motor skill disabilities? I don't doubt that it was useful and I sympathize for people with accessibility concerns, but I don't think for 1 moment that Crystal Blast was ever made for that express purpose.

Cast times are chosen for skills to provide counterplay first and foremost, it allows them to have features that aren't possible on instant cast skills. It's why Crystal Blast was allowed to be ranged, aoe, high damage and stun in 1 skill. The longer cast time made that possible. They made this balance perspective very clear when they updated burst ultimates to include cast times within 2019/2020 that previously didn't have them.

To your point, ZOS is interested in raising the skill floor while lowering the skill ceiling, so concerned they started using the term APM (actions per minute) when explaining why they would like to change light and heavy attacks, they ended up realizing their intended goals were not met, putting the changes on hold for the foreseeable future.

My point about this being an MMO and not a single player game is how they choose to design and balance abilities, in a single player game, unless an absurd amount of players are ignoring a specific piece of content because 1 other playstyle is is a clear winner, generally speaking there is very little reason for a developer to change how a single player game functions from a balance arguement.

The base game of Skyrim for example was barely changed from the final official version. Balance changes were made by community mods. Spells did not scale well and were hard coded for x damage, making harder difficulties and/or higher levels, near impossible. Potions and smithing on the other hand, made sneaking and physical weapons exponentially powerful, to the point where you could 1 shot enemies on the hardest difficulty.

If Skyrim was an MMO, the above would of been patched as soon as they were made aware of it, but it's not, and you can still break vanilla Skyrim today.

Just because this is an MMO, doesn't mean there isn't a place for people to play solo, they obviously try to market the game to any playstyle, not just people who like to play in a group... but it's still an MMO at its core so the balance of the game is taken from that lense.

markulrich1966 wrote: »

The only reason I joined ESO after playing skyrim and oblivion indeed were reviews that explained, the you CAN play this game as single player if you accept to avoid endgame content.
So I don't see that it makes sense to cripple this option now, years later.

I fail to see how this 1 ability change has crippled your option to complete solo content completely, it may be harder by comparison, but there are some excellent suggestions in this thread for alternatives. @Beardimus has a ton of great suggestions above.

For those struggling through mobs I can share some thoughts, yesterday I've learned that you don't have to press twice to cast Elemental Ring, for this you just have to switch an immediate cast of ground aoes without confirmation "on" instead of "automatic" in the game settings. So now it looks much more convenient to cast this aoe.

Crystal Frags make a sound when they proc so it's convenient enough to use them too. I removed the pets as they require two slots, one slot per each panel for each pet for they not disappear when you swap panels, so four slots for 2 pets, two slots for one, that's too much considering their weak damage.

Take into account that I have no psijic nor undaunted skills, so I'm maximally casual and storyline solo quester.

So now I have Crystal Frags, Crushing Shock, Ele Ring, Streak and Inner Light on front panel (+ Storm Atronach ultimate) and Daedric Curse, Elemental Susceptibility, Boundless Storm, Critical Surge and Dark Conversion on back panel (+ Energy Overload ultimate if ran out of mana).

I will maybe replace Elemental Susceptibility for second morph to restore mana and move Ele Ring to back panel in exchange for Critical Strike to have my aoes on back bar together with Lightning Staff for it gives more benefits for aoe than the Fire one, see details on Lightning Staff under spoiler below.

For now I buff Critical Strike, Boundless Storm (for Major Resistance) and spam Elemental Ring for large group of mobs, Streaking if needed to stun them and move off the crowd; for 2-3 mobs I just shoot'em with Crushing Shock weaving light attacks (weaving means pressing a key for spell right after clicking for light attack without waiting for light attack animation to finish, so it is skipping the light attack animation actually, this technique hugely increases damage over time compared to that without weaving, google some videos to see how it works) and proc'd Crystal Frags; for single fatties I buff as above, use Elemental Susceptibility and Daedric Curse on them and spam as for 2-3 mobs. And I can move around with no problems casting all this stuff. So it looks like all main cases covered, but looks like it can be further improved .

Ofcourse you will require a bit more swapping but not so hardcore as when rotating like hell. Personally I don't always swap because little groups are pretty well destroyed without any buffs, but even if you want constant buff then swapping once per 20-30 sec is not so hard I think. And fat mobs were hardly destroyed with spamming crystal blast anyway due to quick running out of mana, so you anyway required some swapping to DOT them or something.

Obviously it requires some practice to retrain and accustom but hey, they say finger exercises strengthen your brain preventing Alzheimer and stuff, so give it a try fellas It is certainly not these mad rotations circled by end-game players over a puppet, it is much much more easier, and you get benefits of higher dps and maybe go trials some time. Think about it

Some more details under spoiler: