Elemental Weapon (and other variations) Possible Change?

Sealish · April 2021

So something that I have never liked about this skill is how janky it looks, and how actually using it feels busier than it needs to be.

What if the light attack was built into the cast of the skill. Like you would press the button and the animation would be for a basic attack of the weapon with a little flare added in (like the weapon starting to glow in the windup). That way using it multiple times in a row would just use the standard attack chains that weapons have (where applicable) and the light attacks would get to play their full animations without interruption. Give the skill a 1 sec lockout so that you could not double-weave light attacks within the same GCD.

Mechanically the skill would still perform identically to how it does now, but with one less un-needed button press and it would look nicer. It wouldn't eliminate weaving altogether because you would still have to weave your other skills. It would also (minorly) increase the DPS of people who have yet to get the cadence of the skill, while not increasing the DPS of mid to high skill players at all.

WrathOfInnos · April 2021

That sounds like it would feel bad when you’re alternating Ele Weapon or other skills. You’d be weaving on every other cast, but skipping it on spammables. Would be difficult to find any rhythm.

Maybe players could still click as though they were light attack weaving every cast with no consequence? That might be ok, but I’d be concerned something would end up clunky. IMO Ele Weapon weaving with an Inferno Staff is currently the smoothest skill in the game, and touching that timing just seems like it opens the door to break something.

Sealish · April 2021

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

That sounds like it would feel bad when you’re alternating Ele Weapon or other skills. You’d be weaving on every other cast, but skipping it on spammables. Would be difficult to find any rhythm.

Maybe players could still click as though they were light attack weaving every cast with no consequence? That might be ok, but I’d be concerned something would end up clunky. IMO Ele Weapon weaving with an Inferno Staff is currently the smoothest skill in the game, and touching that timing just seems like it opens the door to break something.

You can already still press the button without consequence when it won't do anything so you could still do that if you wanted to maintain your rhythm trough still pressing something.

washbern · May 2021

But if we go a step further and bake in a LA into every skill then we don't have to weave.

Sealish · May 2021

washbern wrote: »

But if we go a step further and bake in a LA into every skill then we don't have to weave.

Too much automation and the system becomes boring. Keeping a way for players to improve is important, and learning to weave/getting better at it provides this. If you were going to go that rout, you may as well have the auto-attack system in place that many other MMOS have where you don't press a button for them and they just happen... but ESO wanted to have a different feel to their combat.

I personally think that it should only happen with this skill but SHOULD happen with this skill because all the damage of the skill is carried by the next light attack you do and you have to do it right away for it to count. In this one instance, light attacking isn't giving you a bit of extra damage between abilities, it IS the damage of the ability.

Amottica · May 2021

Sealish wrote: »

washbern wrote: »

But if we go a step further and bake in a LA into every skill then we don't have to weave.

Too much automation and the system becomes boring. Keeping a way for players to improve is important, and learning to weave/getting better at it provides this. If you were going to go that rout, you may as well have the auto-attack system in place that many other MMOS have where you don't press a button for them and they just happen... but ESO wanted to have a different feel to their combat.

I personally think that it should only happen with this skill but SHOULD happen with this skill because all the damage of the skill is carried by the next light attack you do and you have to do it right away for it to count. In this one instance, light attacking isn't giving you a bit of extra damage between abilities, it IS the damage of the ability.

If it is ok to make one skill easier to use why is it a problem making the same with all skills or all spamables?

danno8 · May 2021

What if you wanted to use it with a heavy attack? How does the system know you want to HA and not LA.

What if you are a Sorc in PvP and you are looking to stack the burst with Crystal Weapon? Now you can't.

I don't like the suggestion.

twing1_ · May 2021

washbern wrote: »

But if we go a step further and bake in a LA into every skill then we don't have to weave.

I actually really like this idea, with a minor tweak.

Sealish wrote: »

washbern wrote: »

But if we go a step further and bake in a LA into every skill then we don't have to weave.

Too much automation and the system becomes boring. Keeping a way for players to improve is important, and learning to weave/getting better at it provides this. If you were going to go that rout, you may as well have the auto-attack system in place that many other MMOS have where you don't press a button for them and they just happen... but ESO wanted to have a different feel to their combat.

I personally think that it should only happen with this skill but SHOULD happen with this skill because all the damage of the skill is carried by the next light attack you do and you have to do it right away for it to count. In this one instance, light attacking isn't giving you a bit of extra damage between abilities, it IS the damage of the ability.

Have you played the Arkham Knight series?

I loved the combat weaving in those games, where pressing the attack keys in the correct rhythm sped up attack speed, allowing you to get more dps into your opponents. Missing a press by a fraction of a second would throw you out of rhythm and slow down your attacks, until you nailed the perfect rhythm again in three or so consecutive presses.

I believe a system like this could greatly improve the combat in eso while maintaining a skill ceiling, and would finally put the klunky light weaving mechanic to rest. Maybe then, substituting a skill press for a light attack would boost sustain by a bit at the cost of damage output, but would keep the attack speed rhythm going. Heavy attacks could remain a channel for gaining greater amounts of resources back and taking advantage of off balance opponents, but would come at the the cost of a greater dps loss and also throwing you out of the attack speed rhythm and requiring you to spin it up again.

Numeric examples of this could be the current 1s global cool down when out of rhythm, then bumping the attack speed up to .8s cool down while in rhythm, with 3 global cool down spin up time, provided you hit the buttons in the correct rhythm. Substituting a light attack for a skill press would keep the .8s global cool down rhythm (provided you time it correctly), but channeling a heavy attack would throw you out of it. Channelled abilities could be reset to standards of .8s and 1.6 seconds to stay on the rhythm, with longer channels requiring you to skip a press to stay in rhythm.

These numbers would remove light weaving and animation canceling out of the equation, but grant a 25% dps increase to players that are able to keep up attack speed rhythm.

After losing rhythm, to further increase the skill ceiling too, might hrequire players to "spin up" back to max flow speed, like requiring the first two presses to be exactly 1s apart (standard global cool down), then the 3rd being exactly .9 seconds after that, then each subsequent press exactly the max attack speed flow of .8 seconds apart after that.