I'm not understanding the logic behind some of the weapon changes.

Ingel_Riday · July 2023

Title sums up my general sentiment. I'm not trying to be flippant or snarky. I genuinely don't understand the logic behind some of Update 39's weapon changes, especially in regards to destruction staves.

I mean, I don't like the nerfs to dual wield or two-handed, but I can understand them. In essence, ZOS is tweaking the "Twin Blade and Blunt" and "Heavy Weapons" passives to sync up with set bonsues from armor. 129 weapon and spell damage from your armor's two-piece set bonus or from a Molag Kena shoulder? Well, that's what a one-handed sword gives you too, now. 657 crit chance from your armor's two-piece set bonus? Well, that's what a dagger gives you too, now. One to one. This particular nerf is going to cost me 1.4% crit chance from my dual daggers and I'd rather they buff the other weapons up than smack melee weapons down... but at least, logically, I can see what they are syncing up to and begrudgingly recognize it.

But destruction staves... I'm at a loss. A complete loss. Just to toss out a few thoughts:

Magicka Dragonknight dps are built around dots and get a 5% flame damage bonus. Makes sense. They're pyromancers and fire causes damage to things over time. One would logically assume that inferno staves would therefore, you know, improve dots and synergize with this game's pyromancer spec... except they won't with Update 39? Instead, inferno staves will give an initial burst of 500 damage to the first tick of a status effect, frontloading any damage bonus to a singular, rather small burst bonus? Huh?

Also, magicka dragonknights are purposefully designed to have sustain management concerns (above average damage comes with a price) and are encouraged to use heavy attacks to regain resource... but you actually don't want to use multiple heavy attacks with inferno staves in Update 39, because you'll be overwriting the dot each time you do it. I think one bloke showed mathematically that if you do heavy attacks in quick succession, you can actually prevent the dot from even getting a single successful damage tick in. An almost utter lack of synergy. Your best bet, if you aren't ditching staves for dual wield, is to use... a lightning staff?
Magicka Sorcerer dps are built more around burst damage than dots and get a 5% lightning damage bonus. Fair enough. Lightning is known for being fast (thunder is the sonic boom from a lightning strike) and causing fairly instant damage (some might, dare I say it, describe it as AOE damage). Fine. One might logically assume that lightning staves would, you know, improve either single target or AOE damage. A fast burst of electrical mayhem and some synergy with the class that does bursty damage and has a lightning theme. However, lightning staves will instead boost dots... which aren't this class's forte at all. Also, the channeled heavy attack has lost its ability to harm multiple targets during the channel and only does so at the very last charged HA explosion... which I'm pretty sure is an AOE, which this staff will no longer even buff. Great. It doesn't even synergize with itself. Awesome. Why not use a bow, or switch to dual wield for the front bar? Why stick with this? What is happening here?

I don't get it. I don't see the logic behind designing each stave to be sub-optimal for the class it seemingly should synergize with the most, and I don't see how this is supposed to "boost build diversity." If anything, I'm seeing theorycrafters gossiping about bows being optimal weapons for ranged magicka players, and even I'm contemplating switching on my front-bars for my soon-to-be nerfed magicka sorcerer and magicka nightblade (who both use multiple single-target abilities and benefited quite well from the pre-update 39 inferno staff passives). Just... awkward all around to even fathom gear going this direction.

Am I missing something here? I'm not trying to be a jerk. I just don't see it. I don't see what ZOS is going for here. It's flabbergasting.

Edit addition: fixed a few typos.

Poss · July 2023

Perhaps not enough people bought the Arcanist. I mean why would you when you can play an oakensorc in the current patch and clear trifectas with that instead? So nerf everything even if it doesn’t make sense and pigeonhole you into making the purchase

kojou · July 2023

The goal of most changes has been to try to make them universally viable on all builds, but I feel like these changes missed the mark.

Bow:

The changes to the Bow passives are perfect IMO. Whether you are close or far you get some sort of buff, and you are rewarded additionally for keeping up light attacks with the Hawk Eye passive, so there is an additional player skill component. This is why Bow will probably be the preferred weapon for ranged builds if these changes go live as is.

Lightning Staff:

While I am less upset about the Lightning Staff passive, as it will still be useful in at least roughly the same situations, I agree the lack of synergy with itself is kind of off putting.

Tri Focus:

They could have just added a passive to make a light attack from the lightning staff a small AoE and left the heavy attack behavior alone. That way it will buff its own light attacks and heavy attacks.

Ancient Knowledge:

Just make it buff channeled abilities as well. This will make it a "goto" weapon for any class that has a large amount of AoE skills and Channeled skills (e.g. Templar and Arcanist)

Flame Staff:

This is where I feel they really missed the mark in all aspects.

Tri Focus:

Most of the player base that I am aware of, abhors the flame staff heavy attack. Any mechanic that requires a flame staff heavy attack is going to largely get ignored, unless they make it so powerful that you "have" to do it, and then they will do it, but not because they enjoy its engaging game play. I think the original passive was fine, and time would have been better spent making the heavy attack animation itself more fun and engaging to use rather than changing the passive.

Ancient Knowledge:

I agree that the original passive was kind of meh, but they took something that was useful on most builds and made it into something that only seems to be useful on some PvP builds. I could not find a PvE build/situation that this passive made sense. Even with a DK and the Concentrated Force staff the damage is still behind what it is on live with the same setup, and I would have thought that would be the situation that would make it shine if it was going to.

I'm not sure what I would change with this passive, but even just a boring 284 (same as Heavy Weapons) weapon and spell damage buff would be better.

Basically any other weapon (other than Restoration and Sword and Board) will be better on a DK now and that should be the class that has a synergy with flame damage.

Dagoth_Rac · July 2023

I don't think ZOS were trying to make new destro passives synergize with certain classes or builds. They did not like that it was "fire always for min/max destro DPS" and "lightning always for destro heavy attack". They seemed to have attempted to mix things up in a way that breaks that meta. I often get the impression that ZOS does not think about the new meta. They just break metas from time to time and leave it up to the players to figure out what the new meta will be.

"This meta is getting stale. Let's blow it up!"
"What will become new meta?"
"¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

The_Lex · July 2023

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

I genuinely don't understand the logic behind some of Update 39's weapon changes

One cannot understand what does not exist. Seriously, though, I agree.

karthrag_inak · July 2023

The logic is simple and self-evident. The combat team needs a reason to justify their continued existence, and so random "spin-the-wheel-of-nerfings" is performed regularly, dictating what should be changed, and then dictating what should be fixed.

JerBearESO · July 2023

Lightning staffs were being abused in PvP, heavy attacking mobs was causing nuking cleave. The change only AoE on the end makes this counterplayable as you can get away by then, and maybe even survive the one hit anyway. On live the full channel nukes anyone near a mob, so it's exploited in imperial city PvP.

The inferno staff is gaining amazing backbar utility, which is very nice especially for PvP where you can now backbar inferno over ice to throw another dot on the enemy with the new HA effect. The loss of 10% single on frontbar is hard to accept, but building into status effects seems to be the focus there.

Anyone who can't make the new staffs work may consider bow instead at this point, if you can work out the sustain difference?

acastanza_ESO · July 2023

JerBearESO wrote: »

Lightning staffs were being abused in PvP, heavy attacking mobs was causing nuking cleave. The change only AoE on the end makes this counterplayable as you can get away by then, and maybe even survive the one hit anyway. On live the full channel nukes anyone near a mob, so it's exploited in imperial city PvP.

The problem here was order of operations. Empower buffs damage against monsters, Trifocus splashes 100% of damage to nearby enemies. So Empower was being calculated before the splash resulting in the empower buff being baked in to the damage that players were being dealt even though it shouldn't be. Rather than actually fix this calculation so it behaves correctly, they seem to be going for an across-the-board nerf to lightning staves even though the AoE potential of them is piddly in comparison to the arcanist's beam AoE which is what is actually deserving of a nerf.

merpins · July 2023

I like the bow change. It already gets a big crit buff, and it has poison skills in its kit already, so all you probably need to do is slap a fire enchant on your bow, put poison injection on your bar, and you can probably get away with using Nirnhoned on said bow. You get 1314 crit from the dual wield passive now with daggers, and you get 1314 crit from the Accuracy passive. Hawk Eye buffs bow skills regardless of the health of enemies, whereas Slaughter is an execute with 5% less additional damage. The new bow skill increases damage by 5% while at close range, and your crit rate by an additional 1314 while at long range? Other than missing out on a second glyph and the Charged trait, I don't really see any upsides of dual daggers over bow now. I dunno if bow will out parse daggers, but I can't see it being far behind.

I agree with everything you said though.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

Lightning staffs were being abused in PvP, heavy attacking mobs was causing nuking cleave. The change only AoE on the end makes this counterplayable as you can get away by then, and maybe even survive the one hit anyway. On live the full channel nukes anyone near a mob, so it's exploited in imperial city PvP.

The problem here was order of operations. Empower buffs damage against monsters, Trifocus splashes 100% of damage to nearby enemies. So Empower was being calculated before the splash resulting in the empower buff being baked in to the damage that players were being dealt even though it shouldn't be. Rather than actually fix this calculation so it behaves correctly, they seem to be going for an across-the-board nerf to lightning staves even though the AoE potential of them is piddly in comparison to the arcanist's beam AoE which is what is actually deserving of a nerf.

trifocus splash dmg ignores battle spirit, so that the lightning heavy doesnt double dip when your attacking a player with a heavy attack

so when your attacking a monster, your trifocus splash dmg is ignoring battle spirit, but also carrying over other buffs that should only be affecting monster dmg (from both empower and heavy attack sets)

Billium813 · July 2023

I do like the changes they are making to Bow. It seems like this change is specifically addressing Bow/Bow builds and how parasitic the passives are to only buffing Bow. I like when weapon passives are less parasitic on their own skills and more generically enhance gameplay. Like Bow scaling on the distance from the target; it's a flavorful mechanic and makes the weapon feel unique.

Another change I would like is to see is to the Hawk Eye passive. I REALLY like the spooling up behavior with stacks, but it's rather punishing that you lose all 5 stacks on a 5 second window. I don't necessarily think the stack duration should just be increased. Perhaps the player could lose 1 stack every 5 seconds instead of losing all 5 stacks? It would certainly help with backbaring Bow

Also, the Accuracy passive is a bit meh. Can we get a more interesting design? The new Vinedusk Training gives the Crit Chance rating in a much more flavorful and interesting way. Accuracy seems a bit redundant and uninteresting. Maybe Accuracy could increase Penetration on Fully Charged HAs?

Tyrant_Tim · July 2023

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the Inferno Staff and Lightning Staff changes are opposite.

When I first read them, I assumed it was an accident, as Fire has always been portrayed as something that eats away at whatever’s burning, and Lightning as a quick flash of destruction.

Perhaps changing the Lightning and Inferno heavy attacks to better represent how these elements actually work in our real world would help people to become more invested into playing an elemental mage, honestly, I would rework the Ice Staff heavy attack too at this point, into something similar to a 7 foot channeled Frost Breath that applies a hefty AoE snare leading to an AoE stun.

Ingel_Riday · July 2023

Heya all!

Thank you for your responses. You made a lot of good points and I enjoyed reading them. Just a few comments here or there:

You all did a great job explaining the logic behind the bow changes. I feel like I understand them a lot better now, and I appreciate that.
@Billium813 : Honestly, you bring up a great point about liking when "weapon passives are less parasitic on their own skills and more generically enhance gameplay." I hadn't thought of weapon passives in those terms before, but yeah... the passives I tend to get most excited about are the ones that improve my overall gameplay experience, not the "ignore 10% of enemy resistances with destruction staff abilities" ones. (I usually only have 1 to 2 destruction staff abilities equipped per character, so... great?)
@JerBearESO : You raise fair points about lightning staves in pvp, but I do wonder... why not just adjust how the weapon works in PVP land? This game already does that with abilities like Grim Focus (I keep my stacks between fights in PVE zones and lose them between fights in PVP zones). One of the age-old problems with ESO is that balancing things for PVP tends to torment the PVE camp and balancing things for PVE tends to torment the PVP camp. I really wish ZOS would skip a quarterly mini-expansion and devote the resources to better segmenting the two modes. Ex: Inferno staves do X in PVE zones, but they do Y in PVP zones. You know, instead of turning inferno staves into niche pvp staves for everyone.
I'm relieved that I'm not wildly off-base about my confusion regarding the proposed destruction staff changes.Well, kind of. Wah wah wah. :-P

But yeah, thank you everyone. I appreciate your answers. I'm waiting to see how update 39 pans out, but right now... I'm going to have to re-work a few kids and I'm not sure how. I've already switched my magicka dragonknight dps to dual wield on the front-bar, and he's truthfully much better for it. If I need to heavy attack to get resource back, I switch to the backbar and use my staff. Works great. But... his front-bar abilities were already melee range to begin with.

My magicka templar has enough ranged abilities on his front bar that I don't want to take the same plunge, though. I guess I can tweak my magicka templar to use lightning staves. I mean, he has enough dots that I might make up for the lost single target damage and I'm not foregoing any "5% bonus to X damage type" bonus. Maybe it'd be worth it. I'm not sure.

But my poor magicka nightblade and magicka sorcerer... I don't know what to do with either of them. Both are focused on ranged damage and both utilize a goodly number of single target spells. I guess I can put a bow on both of their front-bars and switch my sorcerer's spammable to elemental weapon, but bleh. I hate the thought of it, haha. A daedra-summoning wizard that shoots lightning and crystal shrapnel, using a bow and arrow... thematically bizarre.

Edit addition:

@kojou : I wanted to add some recognition here. Thank you for going above and beyond in your comment. It was great, and you made some wonderful points. Just to pick one in particular: yeah, inferno heavy attacks have never felt particularly great. I only do them when I absolutely have to, because they feel needlessly slow and cumbersome (and do less damage than popping off a few light attacks within the same time-frame). I agree with your assessment 100%.

Ingel_Riday · July 2023

Just as an addendum, here...

Did some more goofing around on the test server. At this point, I think I only "don't understand the logic" in the sense that I would never make this change.

Flame Staves, which for almost a decade have been single-target focused magic weapons, are now a niche PVP staff type. Their front-bar PVE usefulness is supremely sub-optimal now, and their only remaining utility outside of PVP is on the backbar to get fire on your wall of elements.

So the much-vaunted, purported goal of "build variety" is that every PVE kiddo is going to have to switch to other front-bar weapons because flame staves are useless in the front bar outside of PVP. So now:

My magicka dragonknight will be dual-wielding on his front bar, which at least fits with the effective range of his front-bar class abilities. Can't complain here.
My magicka templar will be switching to a front bar lightning staff because it directly buffs dots and channeled abilities, which helps his 5 or so dots and his channeled spammable. I think the target of the lightning staff changes was the arcanist, but it helps the templar, too.
My magicka nightblade will be switching to BOWS becasue she has very few dots and almost no channeled abilities. Lightning staff is useless to her and flame staff is useless, too. I'm a magic bow gal, but at least it kind of meshes with her crazy rogue vibe. I'll miss my staff. :-/
My magicka sorcerer... I don't even know what to do with her. Her spammable was force pulse. She has so few dots and channeled spells that I can't see a point in a lightning staff, and a bow... I guess I can slot elemental weapon from the psijic guild and get stuck using that with a bow until I proc crystal fragments? It sounds like pure and utter garbage.
My new magicka arcanist is lightning staff on the front bar all the way. The changes to lightning staff seem to have the arcanist class thoroughly and completely in mind. They're a perfect couple.

So yeah, ZOS fundamentally changed the utility of arguably the most popular PVE staff type (outside of lightning staff HA builds), making it the worst-in-slot choice for front-bar PVE damage. The "build variety" this promotes is forcing me to switch my characters from 1 weapon type across their collective front-bars (inferno staff) to 3 (dual wield, lightning staff, and bow). I guess that was the goal all along?

Bleh. I would never go down this route to encourage switching front-bar weapons up, but I'm not a game developer. I don't value forcing people into using B, C, or D by driving the value of A into the dirt. I wouldn't try to get you to buy chicken nuggets or fish fillets by switching all my beef patties to cricket-and-bean patties. I'd try seasoning the chicken nuggets differently or tweaking the fish fillet breading recipe. Make them more tempting without resorting to turning my Big Mac into a nightmare of twitching legs and gas-inducing frijoles. Guess I'm crazy. I already knew that, though. :-P

Edit addition:

Well, jeezy petes... Thank you Tyrant Tim for pointing this out:

This actually makes lightning staves perfect for my sorcerer, useful for my magicka nightblade, and my dragonknight (who majored in dots at college) can still use inferno staves if the mood strikes him... though I like him dual-wield now, so he's staying that way. I don't have to go magic-bows. Hurrah.

Tyrant_Tim · July 2023

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

Well, jeezy petes... Thank you Tyrant Tim for pointing this out:

This actually makes lightning staves perfect for my sorcerer, useful for my magicka nightblade, and my dragonknight (who majored in dots at college) can still use inferno staves if the mood strikes him... though I like him dual-wield now, so he's staying that way. I don't have to go magic-bows. Hurrah.

No problem! After seeing the changes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Inferno Staff make it as a great backbar weapon in PvE, as you usually have no spammables on that bar.

Ingel_Riday · July 2023

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

No problem! After seeing the changes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Inferno Staff make it as a great backbar weapon in PvE, as you usually have no spammables on that bar.

Yeah, I think you're 100% right. Truth be told, v9.1.2 addressed all my concerns. I'm good now, haha. I'm sure the changes will have to be monitored for any crazy pvp implications, but as a predominantly pve kiddo... v9.1.2 is sensible to me, saves me from having to turn my nightblade into an archer and my sorcerer into god-only-knows-what, and I have no objections, no qualms, and no issues.

I feel bad for the HA builds that relied on the pre-update 39 version of lightning staves for clearing trash-mobs, but we'll see how that goes. I don't have any HA builds of my own, so I can't speak to them.

Tyrant_Tim · July 2023

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

No problem! After seeing the changes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Inferno Staff make it as a great backbar weapon in PvE, as you usually have no spammables on that bar.

Yeah, I think you're 100% right. Truth be told, v9.1.2 addressed all my concerns. I'm good now, haha. I'm sure the changes will have to be monitored for any crazy pvp implications, but as a predominantly pve kiddo... v9.1.2 is sensible to me, saves me from having to turn my nightblade into an archer and my sorcerer into god-only-knows-what, and I have no objections, no qualms, and no issues.

I feel bad for the HA builds that relied on the pre-update 39 version of lightning staves for clearing trash-mobs, but we'll see how that goes. I don't have any HA builds of my own, so I can't speak to them.

This is the first time in awhile that I’m actually excited to get back on and theory-craft for PvE.

It’s always incredible when more playstyles are lifted up to be competitive in games.

kalunte · July 2023

i still dont get why bows have to become less efficient long range while being more efficient at melee/medium range.. unless they manage to raise the crit chance bonus to actually match a flat 6% dmg which could be tricky..

i mean for pvp with an average 40% crit chance and considering an average of 150% crit bonus (including impen and bonus modifiers) it would take 12%¨crit chance to reach an overall 5% dmg bonus that you get at melee, simply to be on par with it. right now the buff at range is 6% crit, not 12.
in pve on the other hand, considering an average 70% crit chance and reaching the maximum crit dmg bonus you would get 8% overall dmg increase with 12% crit bonus which would make sense to go range with a ranged weapon. still, right now the bonus is 6% crit chance, so yeah that's 4% overall dmg.

Bow are also going to be less efficient than staves because none will be able to min/max it => go full dot with an inferno staff you get up to 12% dmg increase, full channel and direct with a shock staff you get up to 12% dmg, take a bow you get a max of 5% whatever you do AND have to care about range not to get even less.

i get that nobody cares because it's bow tho..

a buff to bow bonuses (about 7/8% dmg and 2times that %age as crit chances at range should do the job maths wise.) would be fair

Jazraena · July 2023

I think people mostly don't care because Bows are getting a boost regardless and are focused on the staff mess rn.

And bows parse higher than staves on the PTS right now.

kalunte · July 2023

Jazraena wrote: »

I think people mostly don't care because Bows are getting a boost regardless and are focused on the staff mess rn.

And bows parse higher than staves on the PTS right now.

can you show me how is what you're saying true? any math or video or whatever so that i understand where i'm wrong