Please Implement Small Changes to Destruction Staff

thesarahandcompany · February 2023

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Stx · February 2023

Not much to add to this other than I agree and it should be given some attention.

The balancing of all skill lines should be smaller changes and more frequent.

Necrotech_Master · February 2023

so, the odd thing about the "ignore % of enemies resistance" is that is not at all how it works

before they changed the passive for maces in 2h or duel wield skill lines, it also was "ignored 10% of enemy resistance" however from extensive testing, what this ACTUALLY meant was that it increased your penetration value by 10% (because my penetration value changed just equipping the mace, not even engaged in combat so no "target" to ignore the resistance of)

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe · February 2023

Agreed. Destruction staff needs some real love.

Mr_Stach · February 2023

My hill to die on continues to be that there is no reason that Destro Staff should have shields and tanking tools at all. That it goes against what the "Destruction" School of Magic in the ES series is about:

"The school of Destruction is one of the six schools of magic. It is concerned with dealing damage to all forms of matter, both living and non-living, and with making matter more vulnerable to such damage."

Now I know that at this point ESO barely follows the Schools of Magic whatsoever, but I think that Destro should be purely for Damaging and Vulnerability and the like.

Protection, shields, even spells that Slow enemies would be great for an Alteration Weapon Skill line.

I would love for Destro to be updated to be more damage focused and have passives that are more competitive with Stamina skill lines but also skills that make you want to slot more than wall of elements.

phantasmalD · February 2023

I'm with you, tanking should definitely get decoupled from frost and moved to a whole new staff.

ZoS tried to do a 'two birds with one stone' by creating a magic tank weapon and give frost a better identity (and without significant resource investment), but I think it just ended up making the destro staff line a mess.

Creating a magic tank weapon was a good idea, but it should not have come at the expense of frost damage builds.

Schools of Magic do exist, as a relatively recent practice within the Mages Guild, although it's supposedly been utilized by private universities, like Shad Astula, for a lot longer.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Proposal:_Schools_of_Magic

ALCHEMY: The study of the magical virtues of different forms of matter, their effects, combinations, and recombinations. To include the concoction of potions, elixirs, and magical draughts.

ALTERATION: The distortion of local reality through direct imposition of the mage's will. To include spells of paralysis, water breathing, water walking, lock opening, and personal elemental shields such as flame cloaks.

CONJURATION: The summoning and binding of spirits from Oblivion or Aetherius. To include soul-trapping, spells that conjure Daedra or other creatures, spells to banish same, summoning of bound weapons and armor, as well as (for classification purposes) the forbidden necromantic arts of reanimation, conjuration, and manipulation of the undead.

DESTRUCTION: The splintering of material bonds by the direct application of force, typically elemental in nature. To include damaging spells of flame, frost, shock, and disintegration, as well as magic that drains essence or personal attributes.

ILLUSION: Altering perception in oneself or others. To include spells of light, invisibility, fear, frenzy, and silence, as well as magic that affects morale and obedience.

MYSTICISM: The class of spells used to alter the nature of magic itself. To include effects that dispel or absorb both spells and the magicka that feeds them, as well as telekinesis (which fits here as well as anywhere).

RESTORATION: The opposite of destruction, magic that resists damage or restores wholeness by reknitting the damaged material. To include wards, healing, curing of disease and poison, physical fortification, and the turning of undead (a forced purification effect).

THAUMATURGY: Magic that affects the will and personal state of mind. To include spells that calm or charm others, reflection of or resistance to magic, as well as levitation, which involves the personal rejection of gravity.

Based on this it seems a Mysticism staff would be the best for tanking?!

Tbh splitting staves into individually craftable elements was a bad idea imo, it lead to loot and collection bloat.
A better system would have been having a single staff craftable (potentially usable as a blunt weapon), that can imbued with magical energy at an enchanting table. But alas, the ship has long sailed.

lQrukl · February 2023

🧊⚡🔥

Totally agree, let destro staff be the weapon of destruction, not (only?) support or tank tool. Make alteration staff skill line at least, this even no requires new motifs

I can’t understand how this can be justified by the fact that “it has been designed as support/tank/pvp/etc...”
If a huge part of the playerbase suffers for years, it only means that it bad design!

Many players experience taunts being "roleplayers" only by playing with lightning staff on necro/sorc, or even by backbaring ice staff instead of inferno on warden

Mr_Stach · February 2023

phantasmalD wrote: »

I'm with you, tanking should definitely get decoupled from frost and moved to a whole new staff.

ZoS tried to do a 'two birds with one stone' by creating a magic tank weapon and give frost a better identity (and without significant resource investment), but I think it just ended up making the destro staff line a mess.

Creating a magic tank weapon was a good idea, but it should not have come at the expense of frost damage builds.

Schools of Magic do exist, as a relatively recent practice within the Mages Guild, although it's supposedly been utilized by private universities, like Shad Astula, for a lot longer.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Proposal:_Schools_of_Magic

ALCHEMY: The study of the magical virtues of different forms of matter, their effects, combinations, and recombinations. To include the concoction of potions, elixirs, and magical draughts.

ALTERATION: The distortion of local reality through direct imposition of the mage's will. To include spells of paralysis, water breathing, water walking, lock opening, and personal elemental shields such as flame cloaks.

CONJURATION: The summoning and binding of spirits from Oblivion or Aetherius. To include soul-trapping, spells that conjure Daedra or other creatures, spells to banish same, summoning of bound weapons and armor, as well as (for classification purposes) the forbidden necromantic arts of reanimation, conjuration, and manipulation of the undead.

DESTRUCTION: The splintering of material bonds by the direct application of force, typically elemental in nature. To include damaging spells of flame, frost, shock, and disintegration, as well as magic that drains essence or personal attributes.

ILLUSION: Altering perception in oneself or others. To include spells of light, invisibility, fear, frenzy, and silence, as well as magic that affects morale and obedience.

MYSTICISM: The class of spells used to alter the nature of magic itself. To include effects that dispel or absorb both spells and the magicka that feeds them, as well as telekinesis (which fits here as well as anywhere).

RESTORATION: The opposite of destruction, magic that resists damage or restores wholeness by reknitting the damaged material. To include wards, healing, curing of disease and poison, physical fortification, and the turning of undead (a forced purification effect).

THAUMATURGY: Magic that affects the will and personal state of mind. To include spells that calm or charm others, reflection of or resistance to magic, as well as levitation, which involves the personal rejection of gravity.

Based on this it seems a Mysticism staff would be the best for tanking?!

Tbh splitting staves into individually craftable elements was a bad idea imo, it lead to loot and collection bloat.
A better system would have been having a single staff craftable (potentially usable as a blunt weapon), that can imbued with magical energy at an enchanting table. But alas, the ship has long sailed.

I mean there's different aspects that would fit into a Tanking aspect. Mysticism has effects that absorbs spells. Alteration can create physical and magical barriers, as well as burdening spells to slow targets or feather spells to unburden allies. Thaumaturgy, which later got split up into Mysticism and Illusion, had to do with Altering the wills of targets, such as command and calm spells.

If they really wanted to do a true magic tanking skill line, it would need to be a mix of Mysticism, Alteration, and Illusion. A magic Sentinel weapon skill line that uses Runic Gloves or something would be cool.

Cast_El · February 2023

I bet they won't make any changes for this patch

emilyhyoyeon · February 2023

The thing with the magic schools is that magic and spells exist, and people categorize them into the categories that are the schools based on similar traits they share, ex. spells that do damage or cause destruction are categorized as destruction spells. People of Nirn probably disagree on the categorizations somewhat and they may change over time just like anything else, probably, and this is reflected in the way that spells' categories have changed between the different games, in the way that the schools weren't established at the beginning of TES time, etc.

But anyway I'm just saying this since the tanking staff thing got brought up, which I would totally love. I don't think the staff would need to be a ''mix'' of spells, really. Alteration is the most fitting IMO and that's a topic I could go on and on about but isn't the topic of this thread.

As for the thread topic: destruction staff definitely needs some changes, including restoring ice destruction's identity.

I do not care that some ESO devs have pushed ice destruction into a support role for game mechanics' sake.

Lore/world-buildingwise, it is simply not what it is. In the same way that changing Vivec into a 50m pink elephant for game mechanics' sake (somehow), it would lorewise be a bad choice. ESO isn't a standalone game without decades of preestablished worldbuilding. Some things are worthy of ''good faith'' retcons. Game mechanic retcons are not. I will never be convinced otherwise.

To be clear, I think it's a fair reason considering that ESO is a game, and it's not as egregious as turning Vivec into a pink elephant, but I think some reexploring of it is warranted at this point.

The_Titan_Tim · February 2023

Cast_El wrote: »

I bet they won't make any changes for this patch

Of course not, we’re going into Week 4 of the PTS, you can’t expect anything as game impacting as a Destruction Staff change to make it into the PTS with under a week.

Mr_Stach · February 2023

Just so we could keep this topic focused on Destro Staff and not not Destro Staff, I've opened up a post specifically on a Magicka Tanking Skill Tree here:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/627696/magicka-tanking-needs-its-own-dedicated-weapon-skill-tree#latest

Mr_Madness · February 2023

I just want a Poison Staff

endgamesmug · February 2023

An execute on destro line maybe?

Necrotech_Master · February 2023

endgamesmug wrote: »

An execute on destro line maybe?

there is a slight execute on destro, with fire staff on impulse, could it be better? or on other skills? sure, since it is not that great and impulse does not fit in every build

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

endgamesmug wrote: »

An execute on destro line maybe?

there is a slight execute on destro, with fire staff on impulse, could it be better? or on other skills? sure, since it is not that great and impulse does not fit in every build

it's also frustrating that it's only for the fire staff.

techprince · February 2023

Fire Clench should be reworked to become an execute.
Shock Clench should have its stun back.

WrathOfInnos · February 2023

techprince wrote: »

Fire Clench should be reworked to become an execute.
Shock Clench should have its stun back.

That's fair, it's not like Shock Clench is a useful AoE spammable compared to Shock Ring. It could become the CC morph, and Shock Reach could be made into a decent single target spammable like Frost Reach (good instant damage tick, long range, guaranteed Concussion proc).

The_Titan_Tim · February 2023

techprince wrote: »

Fire Clench should be reworked to become an execute.
Shock Clench should have its stun back.

I love your idea for Flame Clench!

Frost Clench should be a short duration massive snare or root.

Shock Clench should be an area-of-effect stun, or an unblockable single target stun.

Vevvev · February 2023

techprince wrote: »

Fire Clench should be reworked to become an execute..

Worried vampire noises.

I like it!

techprince · February 2023

This was the old shock clench. The stun animation was "pinned down with a bolt".

thesarahandcompany · February 2023

endgamesmug wrote: »

An execute on destro line maybe?

I would like them to take the morph of ring that is ranged and turn it into a scaling execute like whirling blades. And add unique modifiers based on the staff type.

EX:

Flame Ring: No longer grants afterburn on burning targets. Instead, Deals X [similar to spin to win] damage to targets in its radius (28m range, 8m radius), and up to 100% more damage on targets below 50% health.

Aces-High-82 · February 2023

Ranged whirling blades

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

endgamesmug wrote: »

An execute on destro line maybe?

I would like them to take the morph of ring that is ranged and turn it into a scaling execute like whirling blades. And add unique modifiers based on the staff type.

EX:

Flame Ring: No longer grants afterburn on burning targets. Instead, Deals X [similar to spin to win] damage to targets in its radius (28m range, 8m radius), and up to 100% more damage on targets below 50% health.

Ranged whirling blades... NOPE

CaptainVenom · February 2023

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).

I wonder why you left Frost Staves out of the proposed buff, considering Ice is part of the destruction skill line.

ZOS_Kevin · February 2023

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

acastanza_ESO · February 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

The meta has literally been entirely melee weapons for multiple patches now, and you've only continued to buff melee weapons further. "Keeping an eye on" seems to mean looking at the disparity and going "yep, this is fine".

ZOS_Kevin · February 2023

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

ForumBully · February 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

I keep seeing these comments that, from a developer perspective, a bad gameplay experience for several months is fine. Everyone just hang in there while we take our time having a good look.

GetAgrippa · February 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also wanted to add one additional note on destro staff. We are aware that many of the Passives for weapon lines aren’t as finely tuned as they could be to ensure each weapon stands up in their proper environments numerically. We’ll be investigating those more in the long term to bring them in line to ensure they are able to hold their own in the right play scenarios.

This game is almost 10 years old lol

Credible_Joe · February 2023

Changing ice staves from tanking tools to high direct damage DPS might balance things out. Complete the trifecta; lightning for area damage, fire for DOT, ice for burst/direct damage.

Never sat well with me, defensive frost. Ice spike projectiles are traumatizing. And it's hard to defend against freezing the air. What, is your shield or ward going to stop the temperature from dropping?

Ice clench can be an execute. Put the taunt on the ranged morph for all three elements. Wall of ice can deal instant damage; ice spikes erupting from the ground. Destruction passives can buff the direct damage ice staves do.

This would address the under performance of destruction staves relative to melee options as well as give ice staves a more practical niche to fill, both in PvP and PvE.

bachpain · February 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

I was hoping this would be the patch that destruction staves would get some much needed buffs to be on par with stamina weapons.

1. Raise base spell damage of inferno and shock staves to that of a greatsword (1571 weapon damage).
2. Change the penetrating magic passive to be all elemental abilities ignore 10% of the enemy's Spell Resistance.

Just wanted to follow up on this in general. In chatting with the dev team, we wanted to make sure we highlighted some of the general feedback regarding the general view of Destro Staff. Part of the advantage of running a weapon like destro staff is having access to ranged attacks. Range attacks allow players more time to react and to assess an encounter, so to balance they do less damage than their close combat counterpart.

With that being said, the team will continue to keep an eye on anything seen as a disparity on range vs. melee weapon choice. They'll make needed changes accordingly.

The problem with the Devs logic on this is EVERYONE is buttonholed into using dual wield front bar in order to do the most DPS because of this mechanism. We aren't using a single dual wield skill, we are only using them for the passives. It honestly stinks. Why are we arguing ranged vs melee when the barriers are being shredded in all other forms of identity of playstyle? Mag vs Stam, Ranged vs Melee, if we are getting hybridization at least let my caster use a staff and still do the same damage and not be nerfed because "ranged you know."