Warden Ice staff buff, Possibility for other class enhancements?

BewareTheSea · December 2022

With the enhancements to ice staff DPS and its unique identity (now tied) to warden DPS, how likely is it we start to see classes like DK get fire staff buffs? sorc get lightning staff buffs? or even templar bonus damage when using a resto? Would this help create new class identities and help differentiate the stale two-handed/daggers meta we've seen brought in with hybridization? I personally think so, following the hybridization changes most classes are now forced into two-handed/daggers for top-tier DPS. By right, if you want to compete in end-game content then of course you should follow these rules but for how long can this continue before players start to feel a real loss in class identity contributing to stalemate?

Stinkyremy · December 2022

BewareTheSea wrote: »

With the enhancements to ice staff DPS and its unique identity (now tied) to warden DPS,

What do you mean? Can you explain please

Melzo · December 2022

BewareTheSea wrote: »

With the enhancements to ice staff DPS and its unique identity (now tied) to warden DPS, how likely is it we start to see classes like DK get fire staff buffs? sorc get lightning staff buffs? or even templar bonus damage when using a resto? Would this help create new class identities and help differentiate the stale two-handed/daggers meta we've seen brought in with hybridization? I personally think so, following the hybridization changes most classes are now forced into two-handed/daggers for top-tier DPS. By right, if you want to compete in end-game content then of course you should follow these rules but for how long can this continue before players start to feel a real loss in class identity contributing to stalemate?

And I, being a necromancer, have all types of damage, but there is no such staff. And what do you think you should do?Create an avatar staff? Master of all elements...

Necrotech_Master · December 2022

sorc already kind of does get a bonus for lightning staves, since they have a passive which boosts all shock dmg

but a fire staff is still better for them single target

DK also kind of does this with fire staff, since i think they have a bonus passive for fire/poison dmg

but the thing is they arent really required to use either as the bonuses are much smaller, and very general

in this case wardens are heavily tied to using an ice staff, because its like a 2% bonus if you dont, and a 10% bonus if you do, its a huge difference

is it nice that ice staff is a decent option? sure, should wardens feel forced to use it if they want decent dps? no

YandereGirlfriend · December 2022

As a Warden player, you do not want this for your class.

There are much better ways to incentivize the use of elemental staves other than Flame by certain classes than the brute-force approach that was taken with the Warden.

Having class abilities and passives tied to a specific weapon is NOT a good design choice.

AndreNoir · December 2022

The whole story of elements tied to specific class is a bad design overall. This just lead us to a pile of very niche sets like Bane of elves or Ysgramor something. The same story with weapons is even worse

ESO_Nightingale · December 2022

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

As a Warden player, you do not want this for your class.

There are much better ways to incentivize the use of elemental staves other than Flame by certain classes than the brute-force approach that was taken with the Warden.

Having class abilities and passives tied to a specific weapon is NOT a good design choice.

Agreed, i get what they were trying to do with the change and it does work to make ice staves viable. But the wording is just "use this or you get little benefit from your passive" and creates an attitude that you have to build your character a certain way. it's unfortunate that they doubled down on it. The previous bonus was better in that it didn't sound like it was restricting your build choice. i really think they should make a hybrid passive between the 2 designs.

However, if they want to keep the frost staff damage bonus on it, tying it to specifically the frost damage increase would mean it's much less punishing for other builds. Frost staff dps players actively want to use frost damage skills and sets, that's literally the whole point of the movement. so the current bonus increasing ALL damage just means it's incentivised more as a stat stick as opposed to being hyper focused on what is actually desired. like i said, it works and makes us viable but it's in a way that is intrusive to other build types which isn't what we wanted. and getting scapegoated for that is incredibly frustrating because we tried to tell zenimax that this passive wasn't a healthy change.

i think some sort of bonus like:
increases your damage done by 5%
increases your frost damage done by 5%. The frost damage bonus increases to 15% with a frost staff equipped.

would fix a large amount of issues with piercing cold in it's current state. This change means instead of gaining a 10% increase to all damage with an ice staff, the damage floor is higher for other builds and the bonus with a frost staff gets specialised to builds that want to use a ton of frost damage and should mean it's generally better to use more and more frost damage in your kit especially now that chilled is as good as it is.

BahometZ · December 2022

It was a bad move, and cries of desperation to keep the merry-go-round spinning, rather than progressing or adding new things, just change what exists and pretend it's fresh content. Hybridisation was the same rationale. It's all lateral movement. A long time ago they removed elemental damage from racial passives to "simplify" and "create balance" and "open up possibilities", and now they're looking to confine classes to weapon types. Any buzz words or reasoning they give is just a fig leaf.