Frost Staff is a mess right now.

MindOfTheSwarm · March 2021

I feel like it has to be said. On the one hand Frost Staff seems to be for tanks given its defensive nature but then we have Minor Brittle and an Ultimate that is DPS focused. Why not just split the morphs directly and have one morph of skills focused on tanking and the other on DPS. This way Frost tanks, bruisers and DPS builds all get something. Change Ancient Blessings into "Increase Critical Chance by 8%" as both Frost DPS and tanks would benefit more. Pool the Block reduction bonuses into Clench or a tank morph of another skill (Pulsar for example) and have it activated while that skill is slotted.

A skill line that looks something like this:

Tank Morphs:

Crushing Shock: Deal less damage but Interrupts casting enemies as normal.

Unstable Wall of Elements: Grants shields to you and allies that explode on expiration dealing damage and applying Minor Breach to enemies hit.

Destructive Clench: Remove the Immobilisation but keep the taunt and gives Minor Heroism. (Immobilize is counterintuitive on a taunt, Minor Heroism makes more sense.)

Pulsar: Remove Minor Mangle, instead it snares chilled enemies by 20%. Remove Minor Protection (it is an offensive ability) instead have it apply Minor Maim to enemies hit. While slotted, blocking costs are reduced and blocking costs Magicka. Damage is based on your Max Health. (This gives it good synergy with Gripping Shards.)

Elemental Drain: Leave untouched.

Eye of The Storm: Deal less damage but apply Major Maim and taunt all minor enemies in the area. Also grants you a shield that refreshes every second while the ultimate is up. (The AOE taunt is important to allow it to compete with Icy Rage suggestion but it won't taunt bosses. This is so that it won't take away taunt from another tank inconveniently. If the player is a solo tank, they have Destructive Clench for this purpose.)

DPS Morphs:

Force Pulse: Leave untouched.

Elemental Blockade: Increase damage but slightly less than with Fire and Shock. Remove immobilize Chilled targets, instead increase duration to 18 seconds to separate it from Fire and Shock.

Destructive Reach: Leave untouched.

Elemental Ring: Remove Minor Protection. Deals more damage and leaves behind a Frost vortex for 8 seconds dealing damage over time. (Fire and Shock would gain their own special effects different to Frost.)

Elemental Susceptibility: Remove Major Breach. Instead enemies affected take 8% more damage from Frost damage. (cannot stack but can stack with Fire and Lightning variants.) (Fire and Shock would operate the same way as this morph is rarely picked due to Magikasteal being too good to pass up, but an actual debuff that exposes weakness might be tempting and would be more inline with a DPS spec.)

Icy Rage: Remove Immobilize. Instead it freezes Chilled enemies, stunning them for 2 seconds. Also applies Major Brittle to enemies while they remain in the area and for 3 seconds after. (No sources of Major Brittle in the game so far but this Ult is the perfect candidate. However, I do realise that this debuff is very strong and so to counter this I recommend...) Increase cost of ultimate to 300.

Notes:

Also not sure on heavy attacks applying a shield, it's a bit clumsy and not exactly "Destructive". Maybe have it apply a weak DoT lasting 12 seconds that snares the target. The DoT would scale with Spell Damage and Max Magicka (around 500 per second at full power ((I really mean weak))), while the snare would scale in effectiveness based on your Max Health (I am thinking 10% at base up to a maximum of 40%.) Giving it both DPS and tanking synergy.

With changes similar to this you now have dedicated tank morphs and dedicated DPS morphs. The tank morphs being more offensive and "debuffy" to give them a different flavor and separate them from the more defensive Warden skills.

All Immobilizations have been removed but Warden has Gripping Shards for that so it's no big deal. Other classes would lose out but not by much as they have their own sources of Immobilize anyway. I did consider giving it to Pulsar but then there would be no need for Shards and it would be too stacked with effects. A small snare seemed more in character.

GreenHere · March 2021

Also, can I just say that I hate the shield vfx from Ice Wall? It's too damn bright! (Like a lot of other vfx in recent years; it feels like ZOS is trying to give me epilepsy so they can give me seizures for the lolz...)

Please, tone it down a few notches, ZOS! When you make everything bright in attempt to make it stand out (or whatever), none of it does; you just end up with diarrhea-christmas-lights syndrome onscreen. Stop it.

AcadianPaladin · March 2021

@MindOfTheSwarm I share your disappointment in the current ice staff. You have clearly put some good thought into the problem and I agree with several aspects of your post.

Frankly though, I prefer the 'old' ice staff (when heavy attacks still taunted). My magward dps liked it just fine. Heavy attacking to regain resources came from her resto staff. The only time she ever used ice heavy attacks was to pull a rogue boss chasing squishies onto herself when there was no tank. This not only protected the squishies but held the boss in one spot for everyone's AoE attacks. The taunt was sometimes very handy and did not require assigning a valuable skill slot. My tank preferred the ice staff heavy taunt over either of the Inner Fire Undaunted morphs for the same reason (no skill slot required). My tank favored using a melee taunt for close targets and to simply pull/chain in ranged targets - a ranged taunt was occasionally handy but not enough so to slot a skill.

I also agree that the new frost shields from Wall of Elements is horrible. It obscures being able to see more than it helps. Would never inflict that on other player so, naturally no longer use ice staves. At all.

Krayl · March 2021

I agree a visual tweak would be nice.But If using ice and immobilizing is "counterintuitive" to your setup - dont...use..an ice . . .staff? I mean that's why there are two other staff types and several other weapon types to use.

Just because it's a destruction staff doesn't mean every skill has to 'destroy'. I mean if that's the case why do resto attacks do damage? Frost/ice and shield themes along with crowd control are staples of the genre and I think it's finally been implemented well in ESO.

"Remove all the crowd control and shields" isn't a fix. Good tanks will use these things strategically.

It sounds like you should just run a lightning staff?

Remove minor protection from ring? So we finally have a universal minor protection skill option for tanks but should remove it?

I do agree icy rage could use some cool utility but overall it sounds like you just want to revert ice staves to being basically useless for tanks and remain a non-option for dps.

GimpyPorcupine · March 2021

I've been frost staff tanking since it became a thing; not pure frost staff, mind you, I back bar it because it makes resource management incredibly easy. And I prefer it now that the taunt comes from Clench instead of a heavy attack. I also think it is more useful for healers now, since they can't accidentally taunt, but still have the bonus to blocking.

Although I would like a visual effect of an ice shield when blocking; that would be really cool.

lolo_01b16_ESO · March 2021

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Unstable Wall of Elements: Grants shields to you and allies that explode on expiration dealing damage and applying Minor Breach to enemies hit.

I'm getting flashbacks of dks spamming fragmented shield for insane dps in AA.

And as someone who currently uses ice staves front bar on tank and back bar on healers your ideas sound as if they make ice staves less enjoyable. Especially being forced to slot pulsar to have magicka block doesn't look like fun.

droscoe · March 2021

I'd say this is a rather heavy-handed approach to redesigning the Destro staff. Splitting the morphs 50/50 for tank and dps when only 1 single element is conducive to tanking?

Seems really overkill to divide the morphs in two, based on separate roles, when only 1/4 of the elemental damage types would use half of those morphs and the other 3/4 damage types would utilize the other half.

Could you elaborate on why Frost staff is "a mess right now"? I think I don't understand what your core issue is with its current iteration.

I certainly feel like Frost staff tanking is a somewhat novel, if not odd, addition to the Destro staff skill line. Almost feels like a square peg being put into a round hole to me. But with its current design, there could be some improvements made I'm sure. ZOS would have the metrics on any pertinent issues with this. In the mean time, I'd say any heavy-handed approach to redesigning the Destro skill line based on roles would go against its very nature. It's primarily a DPS skill line.

A novel, but limited, addition of tanking utilities is as far as it needs to go, which is why I like it's current form. Anything else, and I'd say it'd be crossing into the territory of warranting a new skill line altogether.

FrancisCrawford · March 2021

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

I've been frost staff tanking since it became a thing; not pure frost staff, mind you, I back bar it because it makes resource management incredibly easy. And I prefer it now that the taunt comes from Clench instead of a heavy attack. I also think it is more useful for healers now, since they can't accidentally taunt, but still have the bonus to blocking.

Although I would like a visual effect of an ice shield when blocking; that would be really cool.

Why would you use Frost Clench over Inner Rage?

ESO_Nightingale · March 2021

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

I feel like it has to be said. On the one hand Frost Staff seems to be for tanks given its defensive nature but then we have Minor Brittle and an Ultimate that is DPS focused. Why not just split the morphs directly and have one morph of skills focused on tanking and the other on DPS. This way Frost tanks, bruisers and DPS builds all get something. Change Ancient Blessings into "Increase Critical Chance by 8%" as both Frost DPS and tanks would benefit more. Pool the Block reduction bonuses into Clench or a tank morph of another skill (Pulsar for example) and have it activated while that skill is slotted.

A skill line that looks something like this:

Tank Morphs:

Crushing Shock: Deal less damage but Interrupts casting enemies as normal.

Unstable Wall of Elements: Grants shields to you and allies that explode on expiration dealing damage and applying Minor Breach to enemies hit.

Destructive Clench: Remove the Immobilisation but keep the taunt and gives Minor Heroism. (Immobilize is counterintuitive on a taunt, Minor Heroism makes more sense.)

Pulsar: Remove Minor Mangle, instead it snares chilled enemies by 20%. Remove Minor Protection (it is an offensive ability) instead have it apply Minor Maim to enemies hit. While slotted, blocking costs are reduced and blocking costs Magicka. Damage is based on your Max Health. (This gives it good synergy with Gripping Shards.)

Elemental Drain: Leave untouched.

Eye of The Storm: Deal less damage but apply Major Maim and taunt all minor enemies in the area. Also grants you a shield that refreshes every second while the ultimate is up. (The AOE taunt is important to allow it to compete with Icy Rage suggestion but it won't taunt bosses. This is so that it won't take away taunt from another tank inconveniently. If the player is a solo tank, they have Destructive Clench for this purpose.)

DPS Morphs:

Force Pulse: Leave untouched.

Elemental Blockade: Increase damage but slightly less than with Fire and Shock. Remove immobilize Chilled targets, instead increase duration to 18 seconds to separate it from Fire and Shock.

Destructive Reach: Leave untouched.

Elemental Ring: Remove Minor Protection. Deals more damage and leaves behind a Frost vortex for 8 seconds dealing damage over time. (Fire and Shock would gain their own special effects different to Frost.)

Elemental Susceptibility: Remove Major Breach. Instead enemies affected take 8% more damage from Frost damage. (cannot stack but can stack with Fire and Lightning variants.) (Fire and Shock would operate the same way as this morph is rarely picked due to Magikasteal being too good to pass up, but an actual debuff that exposes weakness might be tempting and would be more inline with a DPS spec.)

Icy Rage: Remove Immobilize. Instead it freezes Chilled enemies, stunning them for 2 seconds. Also applies Major Brittle to enemies while they remain in the area and for 3 seconds after. (No sources of Major Brittle in the game so far but this Ult is the perfect candidate. However, I do realise that this debuff is very strong and so to counter this I recommend...) Increase cost of ultimate to 300.

Notes:

Also not sure on heavy attacks applying a shield, it's a bit clumsy and not exactly "Destructive". Maybe have it apply a weak DoT lasting 12 seconds that snares the target. The DoT would scale with Spell Damage and Max Magicka (around 500 per second at full power ((I really mean weak))), while the snare would scale in effectiveness based on your Max Health (I am thinking 10% at base up to a maximum of 40%.) Giving it both DPS and tanking synergy.

With changes similar to this you now have dedicated tank morphs and dedicated DPS morphs. The tank morphs being more offensive and "debuffy" to give them a different flavor and separate them from the more defensive Warden skills.

All Immobilizations have been removed but Warden has Gripping Shards for that so it's no big deal. Other classes would lose out but not by much as they have their own sources of Immobilize anyway. I did consider giving it to Pulsar but then there would be no need for Shards and it would be too stacked with effects. A small snare seemed more in character.

Personally. I'd keep crushing shock the same. For dps/tank morphs i think the idea is fine, but in that case, unstable wall should be the dps morph since it explodes for extra damage. Frost clench needs its taunt shifted to elemental susceptibility and frost pulsar could use something else entirely instead of minor protection. I bet Minor Force instead of minor protection for a decent duration would actually be used. Icy Rage's current effect is total trash. It should try to mirror the other effects or do something else that is actually dps related. Ideas are that it costs less than the other rages, or that it provides some type of critical bonus either while slotted or against enemies.

As for the passives, you could move the tank block cost and mit increase to the bulwark slotted cp and the magicka block cost to a slotted red cp. And move minor brittle to some type of blue slotted. That way, the passives for the frost staff mean it can be used as a dps tool in more scenarios than just one guy in a group who can apply chilled a lot. Seeing just fire staves really annoys me. And a lot of tanks don't care that it's really the only viable actual magicka dps weapon. Some of us are using dual wield right now because it gives crit chance and we don't use our existing magicka weapon skills that much because they're mostly generic bar for wall. Turns out we can actually have both a tank and dps staff in one. But it just means that one has to be in cp. And the reasons why i put the tank stuff in cp in the concept are because, bulwark and block cost exist in there already, and dps is about achieving the maximum possible damage. Where as tanking is mostly relegated to support. And additionally, so we can give the frost staff +8% critical damage for being slotted instead of the block cost. Minor brittle can still be a group buff, but throwing it on a cp where any status effect can proc it is more inclusive overall and less restrictive.

StarOfElyon · March 2021

Increase movement speed while blocking with an ice staff please!

AcadianPaladin · March 2021

Actually I'd love to see the addition of a tanking staff (like we have a healing staff) and focus the 3 destro staves on dps.

With a staff built from the ground up to support tanking, I'd imagine it would make life better for that rare breed of magtanks.

Vermintide · April 2021

I prefer that it's not pushed into the niche of tanking. I also like the shields.

I agree the visial effects are a little... Over the top. I play frost staffs on my Necromancer and I swear... You put the WoE down as well as activate your Siphon ability? Can't see a god damn thing. Can't even see yourself, never mind any red you're standing in.

Surely this could at least be a graphical setting we can turn down.

MindOfTheSwarm · April 2021

droscoe wrote: »

I'd say this is a rather heavy-handed approach to redesigning the Destro staff. Splitting the morphs 50/50 for tank and dps when only 1 single element is conducive to tanking?

Seems really overkill to divide the morphs in two, based on separate roles, when only 1/4 of the elemental damage types would use half of those morphs and the other 3/4 damage types would utilize the other half.

Could you elaborate on why Frost staff is "a mess right now"? I think I don't understand what your core issue is with its current iteration.

I certainly feel like Frost staff tanking is a somewhat novel, if not odd, addition to the Destro staff skill line. Almost feels like a square peg being put into a round hole to me. But with its current design, there could be some improvements made I'm sure. ZOS would have the metrics on any pertinent issues with this. In the mean time, I'd say any heavy-handed approach to redesigning the Destro skill line based on roles would go against its very nature. It's primarily a DPS skill line.

A novel, but limited, addition of tanking utilities is as far as it needs to go, which is why I like it's current form. Anything else, and I'd say it'd be crossing into the territory of warranting a new skill line altogether.

To clarify the tank morphs would only apply to Frost. The "tank" morphs would not be tanks morphs for Lightning and Fire.

MindOfTheSwarm · April 2021

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

And move minor brittle to some type of blue slotted.

Could you clarify more on this idea? I don't get what you mean.

If I understand correctly Brittle would be unlocked on the CP tree. If that's the case then Fire and Lightning staff could apply Brittle? Not sure I agree with that.

On the other hand having Brittle on the CP tree once you have put enough points into Frost Damage. Maybe.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

And move minor brittle to some type of blue slotted.

Could you clarify more on this idea? I don't get what you mean.

If I understand correctly Brittle would be unlocked on the CP tree. If that's the case then Fire and Lightning staff could apply Brittle? Not sure I agree with that.

On the other hand having Brittle on the CP tree once you have put enough points into Frost Damage. Maybe.

Yeah no problem, I'll clarify. So, because in that suggestion, i said that frost staves would get +8% crit damage on ancient knowledge instead of the blocking bonuses, because you could move those to cp instead. But because the frost staff currently applies minor brittle when proccing chilled, that would need to go since that would overload the frost staff to have both. So, instead, removing it from the frost staff and putting it into CP under the condition of applying it via any status effect means that anyone can apply it, but in groups only one or two members would need to slot the passive, meaning it can be slot by tanks and supports instead of dps.

BejaProphet · April 2021

I am seriously loving the current implementation of frost staff.

Snow_White · April 2021

BejaProphet wrote: »

I am seriously loving the current implementation of frost staff.

So am I.

As a tank, I’m barely using S&B.

Trash pulls are double ice. AOE Brittle and major breach. Done.

Only time I S&B is boss fights.

I double bar ice in most dungeons. The destro passives let me do more damage, which doing random normals in a low DPS group can mean it doesn’t take 20 minutes to kill a boss.

MindOfTheSwarm · April 2021

Don’t get me wrong I have an Ice bruiser in light armor that works very well as an off tank and in PVP. Just think that focused DPS Frost should be an option although it’s probably more to do with sources of Frost damage than the element itself.

BejaProphet · April 2021

Yeah I agree. A LOT of players have a frost mage fantasy. And that should be accommodated better.

MindOfTheSwarm · April 2021

On a side note I think a lot of games interpret Frost damage with shards of ice impaling enemies but would this not be physical damage? I’d like to see more polar wind style abilities. I like Sleet Storm and Arctic Blast. Give us more cold winds.

GimpyPorcupine · April 2021

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

I've been frost staff tanking since it became a thing; not pure frost staff, mind you, I back bar it because it makes resource management incredibly easy. And I prefer it now that the taunt comes from Clench instead of a heavy attack. I also think it is more useful for healers now, since they can't accidentally taunt, but still have the bonus to blocking.

Although I would like a visual effect of an ice shield when blocking; that would be really cool.

Why would you use Frost Clench over Inner Rage?

I generally don't. I said I prefer that the taunt now comes from Clench instead of the heavy attack, which reduces the accidental taunts. But since you asked why I would, then I guess it would be for the root.

MindOfTheSwarm · April 2021

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

unstable wall should be the dps morph since it explodes for extra damage.

How about having my suggestion but make the explosion damage of the shield scale from your Spell Damage and Max Mag. With the shield strength scale off Max Health? This way, Unstable Wall can be used by DPS for shattering shields and high damage or tanks for the defensive role. While Barricade can stay as is. Offering more damage over time but less burst.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

unstable wall should be the dps morph since it explodes for extra damage.

How about having my suggestion but make the explosion damage of the shield scale from your Spell Damage and Max Mag. With the shield strength scale off Max Health? This way, Unstable Wall can be used by DPS for shattering shields and high damage or tanks for the defensive role. While Barricade can stay as is. Offering more damage over time but less burst.

no-one would use it then and it's a little too much work. unstable for dps and blockade for utility/tanking is better and more efficient.

MindOfTheSwarm · April 2021

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

unstable wall should be the dps morph since it explodes for extra damage.

How about having my suggestion but make the explosion damage of the shield scale from your Spell Damage and Max Mag. With the shield strength scale off Max Health? This way, Unstable Wall can be used by DPS for shattering shields and high damage or tanks for the defensive role. While Barricade can stay as is. Offering more damage over time but less burst.

no-one would use it then and it's a little too much work. unstable for dps and blockade for utility/tanking is better and more efficient.

Fair enough but would that not make barricade obsolete for Fire and Lightning? In which case it needs a rework

karekiz · April 2021

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Elemental Drain: Leave untouched.

Of all of the skills listed elemental susceptibility is the one that needs a biggest change - honestly ice is fairly fine tank wise and its getting its spot as a support DPS now. Just remove the "taunt" from the other skill in ice and place it onto elemental susceptibility.

And please leave Crushing along damage wise. All this does is basically hurt players that do interrupt duty or use it as a spammable, which currently is an ok choice. You can use Crushing currently on a tank already and its fine.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

unstable wall should be the dps morph since it explodes for extra damage.

How about having my suggestion but make the explosion damage of the shield scale from your Spell Damage and Max Mag. With the shield strength scale off Max Health? This way, Unstable Wall can be used by DPS for shattering shields and high damage or tanks for the defensive role. While Barricade can stay as is. Offering more damage over time but less burst.

no-one would use it then and it's a little too much work. unstable for dps and blockade for utility/tanking is better and more efficient.

Fair enough but would that not make barricade obsolete for Fire and Lightning? In which case it needs a rework

the change only really needs to be done for ice.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

karekiz wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Elemental Drain: Leave untouched.

Of all of the skills listed elemental susceptibility is the one that needs a biggest change - honestly ice is fairly fine tank wise and its getting its spot as a support DPS now. Just remove the "taunt" from the other skill in ice and place it onto elemental susceptibility.

And please leave Crushing along damage wise. All this does is basically hurt players that do interrupt duty or use it as a spammable, which currently is an ok choice. You can use Crushing currently on a tank already and its fine.

yeah crushing shock and force pulse are in a fine spot at the moment. they don't need changes whatsoever.