Why do ultimate's have cast times in the first place

But I 100% agree with this. Ultimates that don't do damage shouldn't have cast times to begin with

I don’t know for certain but I think it’s due to the way they have the all the skills setup. It seems to me after observing over the years that zos can’t have more than two morphs currently and the code for many of the morphs is reliant on the root skill. So, players tend to think they should be able to modify all three skills independently easily but in reality, zos probably has to recode the entire ultimate line for that skill tree.

Mayrael wrote: »

umagon wrote: »

I don’t know for certain but I think it’s due to the way they have the all the skills setup. It seems to me after observing over the years that zos can’t have more than two morphs currently and the code for many of the morphs is reliant on the root skill. So, players tend to think they should be able to modify all three skills independently easily but in reality, zos probably has to recode the entire ultimate line for that skill tree.

TBH I doubt it. Look at crystal frags. It has cast time at base and no cast time with proc. Same with Accelerate and Channeled Acceleration. Basic skill doesnt have cast time while morph has it.

I should have been clearer I was speaking in context to all the ultimate skills.

The idea behind cast times on some ults, primarly the bursty ones, was to provide counterplay so you could interupt them..

So mission accomplished I guess because it happens like half the time you use these ults in high apm pvp.

I've used Dawnbreaker for years, it's manageable, I would never quit like some claimed to do when they changed it, but very frustrating.

It feels punishing because the cast time is short enough that not many people will actually react to it as intended, it's mainly just a way to add lag to skills causing them to be interupted by random hard CC's like Dark Convergence, Streak, etc.

The most annoying thing about skills like Dawnbreaker where it hits a target area is that you need to predict where they will be 0.4 to 0.8s or so before it ever lands. Leads to a lot of situations where people avoid it by accident due to just moving around your player.

There's a very small advantage, well.. more like a silver lining to the problem. Since the game uses a queue system for actions to make combat feel fluid, instead of punishing you for precisely timed button presses centered around a hard locked 1 second global cooldown, you can cancel a Dawnbreaker with a dodge or block mid cast so it's not wasted. The reaction time you need isn't anywhere near 0.4s, it's more because you know you queued it before you even started casting.

It can be kind of a neat way to feint someone. I don't do it deliberately and there isn't much benefit because it still wastes your 1s gcd, but I've seen people react to a Dawnbreaker coming with a reactive burst heal or stun. A happy little accident.

In regards to Soul Siphon, I have no idea why it's there when it's not a burst dmg ult. I think it's most likely just because the base skill has damage, ZOS has a tendancy to apply their arbitrary rulesets to all morphs if the base skill has it, even if 1 morph changes the skill completely. Pretty sure it's why they avoid changing most skills from their base core function.

Like a single target skill changing into aoe or vise versa is pretty rare. Soul Trap and Deep Slash come to mind. Deep Slash is the aoe morph, but inherits Single Target AND aoe damage CP for some reason (ESO University). Skills like Silver Shards and Reverse Slice are functionaly "aoe" but fall into a sub category of Single Target attacks that do splash/cleave damage as their extra component. Maybe thats a design decision, but in some cases it makes morphs like Reverse Slice just worse because it's an "aoe" that doesn't follow the "aoe" rules, aka.. can't be dodged. It's 1 of the primary reasons Whirling Blades is a great melee execute while Reverse Slice is not even comparable.

All cast times on ults need to go. Single target ults with low range can often be outrun at this point, especially with this pitiful PvP performance. Almost all good ults are the ones which don't have a cast time or aren't heavily affected by it at least...

It's a powerful Ult that has a Synergy. It's two ults with a buddy. It's the best healing ult in the game with no los restrictions. Should have a 1.5 second cast time.

Mayrael wrote: »

Silversmith wrote: »

It's a powerful Ult that has a Synergy. It's two ults with a buddy. It's the best healing ult in the game with no los restrictions. Should have a 1.5 second cast time.

So corrosive armor should be channeled since there is no other ultimate that can provide such power.

first of all, cast times and channels have existed in eso since day 1.

Secondly, corrosive armor is a duration effect that can be reacted to in real time and is not in any way an instant burst effect.

I am personally indifferent to cast times in eso. They have a place in theory. The issue is not tying powerful ultimates to cast times feels bad, it's that eso doesnt exactly operate in the same way as other mmos where counterplay comes in the form of CDs on all abilities practical interrupts, fake casting, etc etc. In eso, the only CD abilities are ultimates, and you either make the instant burst effect ones high impact with zero counterplay, unremarkable in actual tooltip output, or you telegraph the hell out of them so the only way you are ever landing one is if the target is out of stamina (in which case they are basically dead already in pvp frankly) or they are completely distracted.