Impact of crystal weapon DOUBLE NERF

JerBearESO · May 2022

as a lighting staff heavy attack build pvp main, ive had to stay creative while the devs continuously nerf this playstyle.... it was pretty broken back in the infiltrator unweaver days, so ok. now i use crystal wep on sorc with a secret build combo which makes my current build....viable. oooooh scary. cant win a 1v1 vs a meta templar or DK.... its just a fun BGs build i use, my own creation.

the thing is, crystal wep WAS getting buffed. YAY! now i can ALMOST win vs the meta builds. ALMOST!!! good enough for me. but...then they nerfed it. now i have to...weave? heavy attack ability weaving??? wierd....

but wait! i said DOUBLE NERF for a reason. you see, and this is important, fully charged heavy attacks dissapear into an alternate realm of who knows where often due to servers simply...giving up on em. this happens somewhat often if you pay attention, and MUCH more frequently during peak hours. this WAS ok, as the failed crystal wep hit would apply at the start of the next heavy. it no longer will.... so now the dropped final tick of lightning heavy attacks will fully drop the attached crystal wep instance

noteworthy, the problem with dropped full charge heavy attacks has been on ongoing bug for...years....

i hope they reverse this nightmare of a double nerf

or at least SOLVE the full charged heavy attack bug??? i get it, network code....EW. but really, years? ZoS please....

TPishek · May 2022

wut

PvP_Exploiter · May 2022

Crystal Weapon on PTS is a buff compared to live.

xStaticx · May 2022

Crystal Weapons is a nice buff for LA Stam Sorcs but not so much for a HA Mag Sorc.

Can you HA weave Crystal Weapons with a lightning staff? Cast CW then a 3 second fully charged heavy, then cast another skill and follow up with another 3 second fully charged heavy. All in 6 seconds time?

I'm on console so I can't check myself.

merpins · May 2022

It's still a buff to the skill overall. It needed a small nerf from its buffed state since the other morph got a QoL buff as well, but the pre-nerf buffed Crystal Weapons was so much better than frags for most builds that frags was getting overshadowed despite also getting a buff.

xStaticx · May 2022

Crystal Frags didn't receive any buffs for Mag toons though. They only got there proc chance reduced.

Crystal Weapons is still far superior. The increased cost only really affects Mag users.

acastanza_ESO · May 2022

100% @xStaticx, ZOS is really favoring StamSorc over MagSorc this patch which SUCKS because MagSorc really needs help.
StamSorc can now use Crystal Frags just as well as MagSorc (as long as you're onyl casting the proc'ed version and not hard-casting which is how it is typically used) and Crystal weapon is superior now anyway but they're making it too expensive for MagSorc to use effectively. At this point they need to remove the channel time from Crystal Frags entirely and, like, make the Proc'ed version apply Major Breach or something.

Tannus15 · May 2022

@acastanza_ESO it's still fine to use crystal weapon on a max mag build. no drama's sustaining with max mag / stam regen food or keeping up dark deal

acastanza_ESO · May 2022

"no drama just decimate your mag sustain"

Minalan · May 2022

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

"no drama just decimate your mag sustain"

Just delete your magsorc already, it’s trash next patch. [snip]

[edited for mild bashing]

WrathOfInnos · May 2022

Minalan wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

"no drama just decimate your mag sustain"

Just delete your magsorc already, it’s trash next patch. [snip]

There's not much difference tbh. I've been playing "stam" sorc with crystal weapon, daedric prey and two inferno staves (including vMA with unstable wall) on PTS. It works great.

I can't complain about crystal weapon or sorc in general, but crystal frags is a dead morph. Its clunky cast time and the fact that even a frag proc deals less damage than a crystal weapon cast make it entirely useless. Frags should be buffed, I'd recommend making it instant cast for a start, but it still would not compete with CW.

[edited to remove quote]

Tannus15 · May 2022

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

"no drama just decimate your mag sustain"

Just delete your magsorc already, it’s trash next patch. [snip]

There's not much difference tbh. I've been playing "stam" sorc with crystal weapon, daedric prey and two inferno staves (including vMA with unstable wall) on PTS. It works great.

I can't complain about crystal weapon or sorc in general, but crystal frags is a dead morph. Its clunky cast time and the fact that even a frag proc deals less damage than a crystal weapon cast make it entirely useless. Frags should be buffed, I'd recommend making it instant cast for a start, but it still would not compete with CW.

agreed. it's harder to sustain than on live, but sorc can balance mag and stam drain so well now that it's not an issue honestly. plus we can get away with running an extra medium piece because of the crystal weapon pen bonus.

on top of that we can run a double staff (or 2h/dw) build and balance our sustain as necessary with dark conversion / dark deal for one resource and heavy attacks for the other.

sorc is in a very strong position with update 34 for single target damage.
their cleave damage is terrible however so don't expect them to replace DK's anytime soon.

it's also worth noting that shock damage is really weak, lightning staffs are terrible and trying to make a "shock sorc" is not a thing. the "new" exploiter passive, with maximum uptime can compete with wrathful strikes, but that means anything less than max uptime you're better off with wrathful.

the changes to the other morph of storm atro make literally no difference and you're still far better off using greater storm atro.

[edited to remove quote]

Dracane · May 2022

Also do not quite see myself using crystal fragments anymore as a Magsorc after these changes to crystal weapons.

OneWingedAnge7 · May 2022

So I currently use CW as my main spammable on my stamsorc, on console so have not seen it live.

Do I still use it as I would now? Just with an increased cost?
The idea of swing 2 light attacks per cast or shoehorning another skill in between seems awkward to me.

Anyone got any thoughts?

I also use a 2h on my front and a bow on the back.

olsborg · May 2022

Dracane wrote: »

Also do not quite see myself using crystal fragments anymore as a Magsorc after these changes to crystal weapons.

I was just thinking that myself. If shard got minor penetration or the cc back(?), the dmg on it is also quite meh if you compare it to CW wich is a spammable.

MashmalloMan · May 2022

OneWingedAnge7 wrote: »

So I currently use CW as my main spammable on my stamsorc, on console so have not seen it live.

Do I still use it as I would now? Just with an increased cost?
The idea of swing 2 light attacks per cast or shoehorning another skill in between seems awkward to me.

Anyone got any thoughts?

I also use a 2h on my front and a bow on the back.

The optimal way to use it now would be Crystal Weapon -> Any Other Skill. You don't want to light attack twice in a row.

1. If you want to use it the same way as live you can because this situation happens pretty naturally with a Stam Sorc rotation when using Bound Armaments every 4s. Any time you swap to a back bar or apply a front bar dot, etc. You will get that second tick of damage.

2. If you want to add a little more thought to your rotations, try to cast Crystal Weapon first when you swap from back bar and last when you leave front bar.

3. To go that extra step that most people won't do when you reach a situation where all you have left is to spam Crystal Weapon because your dots are up, you would want to alternate with a recast of a dot that has upfront direct damage. For example, you can use Barbed Trap, Rending Slashes or Carve. Of course, Bound Armaments is a given.

As a rough guess, 1. would give you roughly an uptime of 50%, 2. 75%, and 3. 100%. Missing out on half of those free damage ticks is not that bad, it's not optimal and would effect your sustain/dps a bit, but you're still going to see an improvement vs live.

In execute, I'm unsure how you would go about it perfectly, but I will personally be using it until 0% hp to keep up the 1k pen, alternating with an execute skill every 5s. That or not using an execute at all to save bar space and just using the same rotation from 100-0% hp.

MashmalloMan · May 2022

olsborg wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Also do not quite see myself using crystal fragments anymore as a Magsorc after these changes to crystal weapons.

I was just thinking that myself. If shard got minor penetration or the cc back(?), the dmg on it is also quite meh if you compare it to CW wich is a spammable.

They're both considered spammables, but can be used as semi delayed burst skills to different effect.

Crystal Shard has a slightly higher tooltip damage because the damage increases as it ranks up. Crystal Weapon does not, the pen scales from 700 to 1000 as it ranks up. When you add 5% physical damage, it still comes slightly under Crystal Shard, but not by much, maybe 1-2%. They're basically the same tooltip damage.

I think what you meant to say was DPS as most of the complaints here are from PVE DPS rotation points of view. DPS is an objective averaged number and doesn't necessarily highlgiht the "balance" of a skill.

For PVE, the higher DPS skill or morph will almost always come out on top despite having a potentially higher cost since cost can be mitigated through group setups.

AKA, balancing the game and skills around PVE DPS and Meta chasing is quite boring for skill diversity and doesn't look at the whole picture. There will always be a winner, not every skill can be the best in every piece of content.

The 66% damage applied to Instant Crystal Shard makes it hella bursty and very cost efficent. Overall, it's hard to adjust these morphs for PVE DPS as they're both very powerful and mostly in a good place now, the major issue here is how cast time skills are designed which makes them bad as spammables.

My suggestion for spammables like Crystal Frag, Dark Flare and Snipe.

Bump the damage standard by 5% due to the cast time. They're damage is backloaded and should be rewarded a smidge.
Consider reducing the cast time from 0.8s to 0.6s. Flurry has issues, but it's a lot more enjoyable to use, 0.8s feels like a life time and you will constantly find yourself cancelling the attack or putting yourself in danger to pull off the full cast.
Remove the snare ranged cast time skills apply to the caster to give full freedom of movement.
Spammables should be excempt from interupt, regardless of melee or ranged. Instead, give melee cast time skills a damage boost higher than the 5% suggested above. Gap closers, movement speed and CCs are a thing, the added punishment is unnecessary for ESO's context.

In the case of Crystal Shard, change it to Shock damage. This will give Crystal Shard a base damage increase of 5% (Cast Time), 5% (Shock), and about 5% (Ranking from 1-4).

Base damage would be roughly 15% higher than Crystal Weapon, which would in turn boost the 66% damage bonus of insta frags (aka 90% stronger than 1 hit of Crystal Weapon). The skill would be more fun to use, still extremely cost efficient and bursty.

I'd add, it might be interesting to add a small aoe blast to hard casting Crystal Frags (not insta) as a way to make it more fun to use and similar to the previous Crystal Blast morph, it would help Sorc's Cleave DPS. That might be going a bit far balance wise though, there is other ways to tackle Sorc's Cleave like making Liquid Lightning morphs actually good to use again...

OneWingedAnge7 · May 2022

Thanks for the reply and insight @MashmalloMan

I figured I would most likely end up using it more or less how I do now, old habits die hard...
But ultimately just gain a little bit more when I swap bars or reapply carve etc. Like with the extended duration to 8 seconds I believe and having it proc from double the light attacks I figured it's a win regardless really.

Hescrow · May 2022

It will better fit to molag kena i think

Dracane · May 2022

MashmalloMan wrote: »

In the case of Crystal Shard, change it to Shock damage. This will give Crystal Shard a base damage increase of 5% (Cast Time), 5% (Shock), and about 5% (Ranking from 1-4).

I never understood why Sorc's dedicated element passives gives a meager 6% damage only. Dragonknight can achieve 11% more damage with its dedicated element passively and Warden 10% with their dedicated elements.

At least they could reduce our passive to 5% and have it apply to all elements and damage types to highlight that Sorcerer is a master of all magic. Otherwise, a dedicated passive with such a low value makes little sense and should as well be 10%. Divines know, Sorcs need a lift in pve at the very least.

EDIT: Pffff I just realized, that it even IS only 5%.

What in Oblivion.

MashmalloMan · May 2022

Dracane wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

In the case of Crystal Shard, change it to Shock damage. This will give Crystal Shard a base damage increase of 5% (Cast Time), 5% (Shock), and about 5% (Ranking from 1-4).

I never understood why Sorc's dedicated element passives gives a meager 6% damage only. Dragonknight can achieve 11% more damage with its dedicated element passively and Warden 10% with their dedicated elements.

At least they could reduce our passive to 5% and have it apply to all elements and damage types to highlight that Sorcerer is a master of all magic. Otherwise, a dedicated passive with such a low value makes little sense and should as well be 10%. Divines know, Sorcs need a lift in pve at the very least.

EDIT: Pffff I just realized, that it even IS only 5%. What in Oblivion.

Yeah it's a bit dissapointing and doesn't make enough of a difference to make Sorc feel like a shock mage. DK actually only gets 5% Fire/Poison like Sorc does. Difference with DK is they also have +50% poisoned and burning status effect damage that returns stam/mag. Their kit is almost entirely of those 2 elements, at least in the places that matter so they have a ton of class and element synergy.

Warden's get 10% Magic and Frost damage, additionaly they get 10% crit damage and crit healing to targets that are chilled. This was initially given at 10% instead of 5% most likely because Magic and Frost damage in the game 5 years ago was pretty barebones and seen as the weakest elements. Magic for instance had no status effect, Frost was entirely reserved for CC/tanking. To some extent, Frost is still in that category, but Warden's are capable of pushing past that barrier with the passives, staff, set and skill changes.

Warden has some nice Element synergy on passives, but they lack the DK's ease of access to skills with Frost. They're meant to be the Frost mage, yet they only really use 1 Frost damage class skill. Magic damage doesn't really fit their kit and many Warden's would prefer to change everything over.

In regards to your mention about Sorcs being masters of all elements, I'd dissagree. Sorc is meant to be the Shock mage, the Elementalist is Necromancer. Necro has 15% dot damage and access to all the elements in their kit. The mag kit has 2 shock, 2 frost, 2 fire, and 2 magic damage skills. The stam side has 3 disease, 1 poison, 2 physical and 1 bleed.

Sorc only has physical, shock and magic damage in their kit. Magic damage is basically a genergic damage type used as a replacement for themes like "Dark" and "Holy" magic thus why Sorc, Templar and NB are filled with them on their skills. Physical in a similar fashion is used as a thematic filler for "Air" magic and used to be used for "Bleed", but bleed damage changed from physical into its own thing awhile back.

I'd trade some power from Amplitude for 10% Physical/Shock damage personally or remove Amplitude all together for another element related passive like Warden and DK have. Amplitude is an okay passive if you're parsing, but counter intuitive for when you need it and an awfully boring replacement for our old element related passive called Implosion.. It use to have I think... a 6% chance to proc X physical or shock damage on targets below 15% based on physical or shock damage dealt.

Man, extremely cool passive completely gutted. It made building dot or multi hit builds as sorc a ton of fun because it helped proc Implosion and Crit Surge more frequently. It made crit chance more averaged out instead of a variable. it was a cool class design item.

Implosion was basically an insta kill, but what isn't at that hp threshold? I understand the replacement because it was a bit gimicky, but I don't agree with the little thought they put into Amplitude. That would be like taking Burning Light away from Templars, a staple of their unique damage kit.

Dracane · May 2022

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

In the case of Crystal Shard, change it to Shock damage. This will give Crystal Shard a base damage increase of 5% (Cast Time), 5% (Shock), and about 5% (Ranking from 1-4).

I never understood why Sorc's dedicated element passives gives a meager 6% damage only. Dragonknight can achieve 11% more damage with its dedicated element passively and Warden 10% with their dedicated elements.

At least they could reduce our passive to 5% and have it apply to all elements and damage types to highlight that Sorcerer is a master of all magic. Otherwise, a dedicated passive with such a low value makes little sense and should as well be 10%. Divines know, Sorcs need a lift in pve at the very least.

EDIT: Pffff I just realized, that it even IS only 5%. What in Oblivion.

Yeah it's a bit dissapointing and doesn't make enough of a difference to make Sorc feel like a shock mage. DK actually only gets 5% Fire/Poison like Sorc does. Difference with DK is they also have +50% poisoned and burning status effect damage that returns stam/mag. Their kit is almost entirely of those 2 elements, at least in the places that matter so they have a ton of class and element synergy.

Warden's get 10% Magic and Frost damage, additionaly they get 10% crit damage and crit healing to targets that are chilled. This was initially given at 10% instead of 5% most likely because Magic and Frost damage in the game 5 years ago was pretty barebones and seen as the weakest elements. Magic for instance had no status effect, Frost was entirely reserved for CC/tanking. To some extent, Frost is still in that category, but Warden's are capable of pushing past that barrier with the passives, staff, set and skill changes.

Warden has some nice Element synergy on passives, but they lack the DK's ease of access to skills with Frost. They're meant to be the Frost mage, yet they only really use 1 Frost damage class skill. Magic damage doesn't really fit their kit and many Warden's would prefer to change everything over.

In regards to your mention about Sorcs being masters of all elements, I'd dissagree. Sorc is meant to be the Shock mage, the Elementalist is Necromancer. Necro has 15% dot damage and access to all the elements in their kit. The mag kit has 2 shock, 2 frost, 2 fire, and 2 magic damage skills. The stam side has 3 disease, 1 poison, 2 physical and 1 bleed.

Sorc only has physical, shock and magic damage in their kit. Magic damage is basically a genergic damage type used as a replacement for themes like "Dark" and "Holy" magic thus why Sorc, Templar and NB are filled with them on their skills. Physical in a similar fashion is used as a thematic filler for "Air" magic and used to be used for "Bleed", but bleed damage changed from physical into its own thing awhile back.

I'd trade some power from Amplitude for 10% Physical/Shock damage personally or remove Amplitude all together for another element related passive like Warden and DK have. Amplitude is an okay passive if you're parsing, but counter intuitive for when you need it and an awfully boring replacement for our old element related passive called Implosion.. It use to have I think... a 6% chance to proc X physical or shock damage on targets below 15% based on physical or shock damage dealt.

Man, extremely cool passive completely gutted. It made building dot or multi hit builds as sorc a ton of fun because it helped proc Implosion and Crit Surge more frequently. It made crit chance more averaged out instead of a variable. it was a cool class design item.

Implosion was basically an insta kill, but what isn't at that hp threshold? I understand the replacement because it was a bit gimicky, but I don't agree with the little thought they put into Amplitude. That would be like taking Burning Light away from Templars, a staple of their unique damage kit.

Hm, I think you're right. Maybe my idea of what Sorcerer is wasn't quite accurate. Then of course, it doesn't make much sense that it only gains 5% damage to its elements and none to magic damage at all, which makes up almost half of its kit.

The reason I said Dragonknight has 11%, is because fire breath also passively increases fire damage against inflicted targets. Counts in my book at least.