Viability of heavy attack sets next patch (maelstrom staff, infallible mage)?

Kharnamantic · July 2022

So light attacks/heavy attacks are getting nerfed in U35. They will deal a flat amount of damage and will not be affected by player stats.

How viable will sets that affect light/heavy damage be? I've set up my sorcerer to run two heavy attack damage increase sets:

Maelstrom inferno staff (crushing wall): Your Light and Heavy Attacks deal an additional 1353 damage to enemies in your Wall of Elements.
Infallible mage: your heavy attacks deal an additional 868 damage

And DPS mainly just by holding the attack button with a lightning staff.

Will this update make my sorcerer completely rubbish?

To be fair I stopped playing my sorcerer main about three years ago because the playstyle was really boring, and switched to other alts (necro), so I don't even know if infallible mage + maelstrom inferno staff (crushing wall) is meta or competitive anymore. Do I need to farm necropotence on my sorc now?

luchtt · July 2022

Kharnamantic wrote: »

Will this update make my sorcerer completely rubbish?

Yes, as it currently stands the heavy attack builds will do significantly reduced damage. They did very nice buffs on the actual sets (taking a lot of feedback I gave back when they initially nerfed them in Ascending Tide) and I'm happy with the state of most of the sets. Unfortunately they absolutely annihialated HA builds for no reason seemingly.

I have a 94k HA petsorc parse, and it went down to 58k with the BUFFED dummy. Lower end you should see similair results especially if you dont do the rest of your rotation well since the main part that got hard nerfed is the heavy attack, and dots are your only other damage normally, which also got nerfed this patch.

I'd honestly feel extremely betrayed by the devs if you use these types of builds often, because they litteraly said they were ''looking out for heavy attack enjoyers''.

Essentially, your build likely got nerfed quite significantly.

merpins · July 2022

Maelstrom Staff + Empower makes light attacks deal about the same amount of damage they were doing before the nerf. Maybe a 10 or 15% damage decrease at most.

So Heavy Attacks are going to be garbage this next patch, and the disparity between end game players and new players is going to increase since now you not only need to keep Empower up at all times, but you also need to both have and use the maelstrom staff properly in order to do proper DPS.

ccfeeling · July 2022

I play HA build for most contents in game , I don't play trial , b/c I cannot meet the dps requirement with HA build . ( Lag is another reason lol )

Not cool dmg but respectable , ZOS going to help those low dps like me , so they NERF HA ? wow , thank you !

Mr_Stach · July 2022

ccfeeling wrote: »

I play HA build for most contents in game , I don't play trial , b/c I cannot meet the dps requirement with HA build . ( Lag is another reason lol )

Not cool dmg but respectable , ZOS going to help those low dps like me , so they NERF HA ? wow , thank you !

Yeah. It was never about accessibility. Or if it was they faily REALLY badly.

Lalothen · July 2022

Kharnamantic wrote: »

So light attacks/heavy attacks are getting nerfed in U35. They will deal a flat amount of damage and will not be affected by player stats.

How viable will sets that affect light/heavy damage be? I've set up my sorcerer to run two heavy attack damage increase sets:
Maelstrom inferno staff (crushing wall): Your Light and Heavy Attacks deal an additional 1353 damage to enemies in your Wall of Elements.

Infallible mage: your heavy attacks deal an additional 868 damage

And DPS mainly just by holding the attack button with a lightning staff.

Will this update make my sorcerer completely rubbish?

To be fair I stopped playing my sorcerer main about three years ago because the playstyle was really boring, and switched to other alts (necro), so I don't even know if infallible mage + maelstrom inferno staff (crushing wall) is meta or competitive anymore. Do I need to farm necropotence on my sorc now?

A good HA build was never really about just holding down the attack button with a lightning staff, even when you could get heavies ticcing for 45k crits.

That aside though, unless lightning heavies get unnerfed (see below) or the attack-buffing sets get a significant boost before U35 goes live, HA builds are effectively dead for anyone looking to use them as a viable alternative in vet content. They were already behind by a significant margin, and now relatively speaking (since everyone's DPS is down) they're going to be further behind - especially since:

1) One tic of the lightning channel has been removed (this wasn't referenced in the patch notes).
2) The "spammable period" of a rotation is so much longer, and even channeling heavies buffed by empower, crushing wall, undaunted unweaver & sorc shock passive results in a DPS loss vs. LA>spammable>LA.

If ZOS wants "better" for HA build lovers, then they should probably actually listen to the people who've spent years playing and eking the most that they can out of such builds. We're not asking to be top of the DPS dungheap, but an HA themed build should be able to peak around 95K on the CURRENT PTS - especially given we're seeing LA build PTS parses of 115k+.

Darkstorne · July 2022

Yes, sorry. LA/HA builds are heavily impacted in this patch, more than any other builds.

I really enjoy LA builds when I'm questing, to play this game like (shock horror) an Elder Scrolls game, and I've noticed that while my LA damage has notably decreased due to the complete lack of scaling from any of our stats or gear (a ridiculous decision for a stat-heavy and build-customization-heavy RPG), my HAs laughably hit for about the same damage as my LAs now, because their starting values are all so damn low.

I appreciate that they've identified a problem (DPS among the elite is getting out of hand, LAs make up a decent chunk of that) but their solution is awful, like hulk-smashing the problem and just seeing what the fallout will be.

Potential solution that could solve this problem: Combo System for LAs/HAs
Keep stat scaling for LAs/HAs for those of us that like building around them. Lower the base damage of light attacks slightly. Program in a system that ramps up the damage of subsequent LAs significantly, up to 5 LAs in a row for a combo chain. Program in a system that allows HAs that are fired after LAs to deal more damage than standalone HAs (so a standalone HA is focused on resource restore and functions as it does on Live. Combo ending HAs are more focused on damage). If they feel like doing this job really well, they could add unique animations for each HA combo ender, so they can have unique applications. Bonus resource restore after a 2-hit LA combo. An AOE HA after a 3-hit LA combo. A single target mega damage HA after a 4-hit LA combo.

That way new players and casuals who LA spam or enjoy HA builds, and mid-tier players who can and do weave but often run out of resources and still need to use more LAs/HAs than elite players, are all buffed and have new engaging mechanics to play with, while the weaving ceiling is slightly nerfed while still remaining the "best" way to play. They could even leave the standard LA unchanged if they decide that actually... the ceiling is fine, because who cares if the best players are performing well? Good for them!

Bless Unleashed is an MMO that makes great use of this LA/HA combo system in tandem with traditional MMO button-press abilities, in an action combat system like ESO's:

https://youtu.be/f2lidMGeTeY