Please consider altering Tri-Focus change

Entaro · July 2023

Regarding Lightning staff heavy attack build, where the new PTS change makes Tri-focus cleave damage only happen on the final tick of the lightning heavy attack channel. I would ask the developers to consider altering this change. I understand if they feel the cleave was too powerful, but limiting the cleave damage event to only happen every ~2.2 seconds (the length of the lightning heavy attack channel) feels very bad in game. Especially solo, doing arenas, and such. Often times an enemy will die before any cleave damage can be done, making some encounters annoying where each enemy is killed 1 by 1 because there is no AoE damage happening. I'd ask you to think about reverting the change to allow all the ticks to do tri-focus damage, and simply instead reduce the % damage copied by tri-focus, from 50%/100% to something lower. Ultimately if the goal of the change is to reduce the amount of cleave damage provided by Tri-Focus, this would at least result in the actual gameplay feeling much better.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

heavy attacks take 2.1 seconds to complete

and in my opinion, if you were relying 100% on the trifocus cleave without any other AOE skills, thats more of a you problem

most trash mobs you can just spam unstable wall of elements and kill them, they dont need a fully buffed heavy attack (HA sets + empower) to kill

Traxxar · July 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

heavy attacks take 2.1 seconds to complete

and in my opinion, if you were relying 100% on the trifocus cleave without any other AOE skills, thats more of a you problem

most trash mobs you can just spam unstable wall of elements and kill them, they dont need a fully buffed heavy attack (HA sets + empower) to kill

Disagree with you Necrotech - Lightning staff AOE was very helpful in many fights where there isn't just a boss. And that is even with trials and dungeons but also important for solo play.

Beefstickbandit · July 2023

Please revert the Tr-focus change, It feels so bad to play with heavy attacks now. Everyone has done the Unstable Wall of Elements spam and no on in their right mind wants to go back to that, it's even worse.

jecks33 · July 2023

Unstable wall nerf incoming

Lalothen · July 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

and in my opinion, if you were relying 100% on the trifocus cleave without any other AOE skills, thats more of a you problem

most trash mobs you can just spam unstable wall of elements and kill them, they dont need a fully buffed heavy attack (HA sets + empower) to kill

This.

If you don't want to spam Unstable Wall you've got Shock Clench and Pulsar/Ele Ring from the destruction staff line, Silver Shards if you're running Unweaver with a stam spammable, and then whatever AoE DD skill may be offered by your class (Engulfing, Shalks, Blastbones, et al).

If you're running a sorc HA build then Mage's Wrath into a lightning HA is going to give you a chunky AoE pop regardless of whether the mob dies before the fully-charged hit.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

Traxxar wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

heavy attacks take 2.1 seconds to complete

and in my opinion, if you were relying 100% on the trifocus cleave without any other AOE skills, thats more of a you problem

most trash mobs you can just spam unstable wall of elements and kill them, they dont need a fully buffed heavy attack (HA sets + empower) to kill

Disagree with you Necrotech - Lightning staff AOE was very helpful in many fights where there isn't just a boss. And that is even with trials and dungeons but also important for solo play.

trials and dungeons are the only place that most trash mobs would likely survive a fully charged, fully buffed heavy attack, but in those situations you still would likely not only be using the heavy attack, you would still be using some other aoe dot skill along with that

if your talking about overland mobs, you could light attack them to death in a few hits if your running the heavy attack buff sets (since most of those also affect light attacks) and they do so little dmg its almost ignorable or use impulse 3 times to kill most or all of the mob

Katlefiya · July 2023

The big problem is the indirect nerf to critical surge healing.

Draxund · July 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

trials and dungeons are the only place that most trash mobs would likely survive a fully charged, fully buffed heavy attack, but in those situations you still would likely not only be using the heavy attack, you would still be using some other aoe dot skill along with that

Lalothen wrote: »

If you don't want to spam Unstable Wall you've got Shock Clench and Pulsar/Ele Ring from the destruction staff line, Silver Shards if you're running Unweaver with a stam spammable, and then whatever AoE DD skill may be offered by your class (Engulfing, Shalks, Blastbones, et al). If you're running a sorc HA build then Mage's Wrath into a lightning HA is going to give you a chunky AoE pop regardless of whether the mob dies before the fully-charged hit.

I have definitely felt the Trifocus nerf in the unique context for which I like to play the game, which is soloing challenging content. Right now, I'm working on soloing Vet DLC dungeons. I'm not trying to complain about the Trifocus change because I realize I'm doing niche stuff. However, I am trying to figure out ways to make up for this big AoE damage loss, which subsequently is hurting my survivability (either via Pale Order or other mechanisms that equate damage to better survival or recovery). I run HA lightning builds on Warden, DK, and Sorc for these solo attempts. So given your knowledge of the game, what would you suggest as the highest-damage AoE skills that I could use to compensate for this nerf?

acastanza_ESO · July 2023

The crazy part is that Arcanist's beam cleave was already substantially ahead of the cleave from trifocus, like, by a lot, because it's range is so much better. This nerf was entirely unjustified. What actually needed to happen was that Fatecarver needed reverse scaling so each additional enemy hit received less damage to bring it down to par but instead of the skill that needed to be nerfed getting nerfed we got this nonsense.

Brandark · July 2023

Inferno got a decent buff in 9.1.3. I like it. Wish ice staves got something, too.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

Draxund wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

trials and dungeons are the only place that most trash mobs would likely survive a fully charged, fully buffed heavy attack, but in those situations you still would likely not only be using the heavy attack, you would still be using some other aoe dot skill along with that

Lalothen wrote: »

If you don't want to spam Unstable Wall you've got Shock Clench and Pulsar/Ele Ring from the destruction staff line, Silver Shards if you're running Unweaver with a stam spammable, and then whatever AoE DD skill may be offered by your class (Engulfing, Shalks, Blastbones, et al). If you're running a sorc HA build then Mage's Wrath into a lightning HA is going to give you a chunky AoE pop regardless of whether the mob dies before the fully-charged hit.

I have definitely felt the Trifocus nerf in the unique context for which I like to play the game, which is soloing challenging content. Right now, I'm working on soloing Vet DLC dungeons. I'm not trying to complain about the Trifocus change because I realize I'm doing niche stuff. However, I am trying to figure out ways to make up for this big AoE damage loss, which subsequently is hurting my survivability (either via Pale Order or other mechanisms that equate damage to better survival or recovery). I run HA lightning builds on Warden, DK, and Sorc for these solo attempts. So given your knowledge of the game, what would you suggest as the highest-damage AoE skills that I could use to compensate for this nerf?

trying to run it on an oaken build is going to be difficult, you might want to look into doing a 2 bar HA build, but you would need some way to maintain empower (this is easily done on classes like DK or templar since they have long duration buffs for empower) to be able to run something like pale order

if your doing a 2 bar HA build, you could run a maelstrom destro on the back bar which would give you good dmg from unstable wall of elements, and give you more survivability skills

your case is a little bit different than the OP, since it is focusing on harder content (solo or grouped it would still make a difference), if your running solo vet content, im assuming you are also slotting caltrops for dmg + breach in order to get passed the enemy resists (which would also help with aoe dmg) and make that final lightning hit everything harder

BasP · July 2023

Draxund wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

trials and dungeons are the only place that most trash mobs would likely survive a fully charged, fully buffed heavy attack, but in those situations you still would likely not only be using the heavy attack, you would still be using some other aoe dot skill along with that

Lalothen wrote: »

If you don't want to spam Unstable Wall you've got Shock Clench and Pulsar/Ele Ring from the destruction staff line, Silver Shards if you're running Unweaver with a stam spammable, and then whatever AoE DD skill may be offered by your class (Engulfing, Shalks, Blastbones, et al). If you're running a sorc HA build then Mage's Wrath into a lightning HA is going to give you a chunky AoE pop regardless of whether the mob dies before the fully-charged hit.

I have definitely felt the Trifocus nerf in the unique context for which I like to play the game, which is soloing challenging content. Right now, I'm working on soloing Vet DLC dungeons. I'm not trying to complain about the Trifocus change because I realize I'm doing niche stuff. However, I am trying to figure out ways to make up for this big AoE damage loss, which subsequently is hurting my survivability (either via Pale Order or other mechanisms that equate damage to better survival or recovery). I run HA lightning builds on Warden, DK, and Sorc for these solo attempts. So given your knowledge of the game, what would you suggest as the highest-damage AoE skills that I could use to compensate for this nerf?

You could take a look at the Top skills per class in this handy spreadsheet from Skinnycheeks: Google Docs link.

Lalothen · August 2023

Draxund wrote: »

I run HA lightning builds on Warden, DK, and Sorc for these solo attempts. So given your knowledge of the game, what would you suggest as the highest-damage AoE skills that I could use to compensate for this nerf?

Beyond the spreadsheet that BasP linked above it's circumstantial really; the more mobs in a trash pack or adds in a boss fight, the more power you're going to get out of using something like Shock Pulsar as a semi-spammable between HAs when you're not reapplying any dots. That said, when I'm soloing I tend to run my mag HA builds wearing Unweaver using Silver Shards as both a ST & AoE spammable, with Crunchy Spider Skewer for enough stam recovery to sustain it.

It's also going to be a case of looking at sets and determining whether running two HA-buffing sets is actually the best option in certain situations. It may, for example, actually be better to sacrifice a 5-piece and front-bar vMA lightning for the chunky buff to Unstable Wall, compliment it with a full monster set, and cover the remaining two jewel slots (assuming either Oakensoul or Pale Order mythic is being used) with 2x trainee.