Tri-Focus Changes Per PTS Patch 39 Notes

Gambit001 · July 2023

Edit: thinking maybe this should have been posted under PTS instead, admin move if you feel appropriate.

—————————————————

So the latest PTS update states:
Tri Focus
Flame Staff: This passive now applies a Damage over Time equal to power of a standard Damage over Time effect, over 10/20 seconds with a fully charged Heavy Attack, rather than increasing the damage done of your fully charged Heavy Attacks by 6/12%
Ice Staff: Increased the damage shield granted by this passive to 16.5/33% of your Max Health, up from 12.5/25%.
Lightning Staff: This passive now only triggers on fully charged Heavy Attacks, rather than any tick of a Heavy Attack. Tri Focus
Flame Staff: This passive now applies a Damage over Time equal to power of a standard Damage over Time effect, over 10/20 seconds with a fully charged Heavy Attack, rather than increasing the damage done of your fully charged Heavy Attacks by 6/12%
Ice Staff: Increased the damage shield granted by this passive to 16.5/33% of your Max Health, up from 12.5/25%.
Lightning Staff: This passive now only triggers on fully charged Heavy Attacks, rather than any tick of a Heavy Attack.

—————————————

I’m not on the PTS and play on PS5, but I’m questioning what the actual effect of the lightning staff change implies.

Does this mean that the ticks AOE damage are simply removed overall? Or that AOE damage from those ticks isn’t applied until you’ve completed a fully charged heavy attack?

I really hope it’s the latter, as the former would be a major loss of damage for lightning staff users when it comes to AOE damage.

I fully understand if it’s not giving the AOE damage from the non-final ticks until the end, to force/ensure that you’re using a fully charged heavy attack to get the benefit of the passive, but if it’s simply eliminating the AOE damage from the non-final ticks, that’s a horrible change imo.

cursedabbey · July 2023

They better have fixed it doing pve splash damage on pvp targets

Gambit001 · July 2023

Yeah, I don’t recall seeing that as part of the notes, but I honestly don’t think that’s something they would change. If you’re in a PVP zone, members of other alliances are your enemy, just like mobs.

SandandStars · July 2023

cursedabbey wrote: »

They better have fixed it doing pve splash damage on pvp targets

If they didn’t call it out, it’s not getting touched.

I have yet to see any developer comment on whether this is a bug or intended, regardless of dozens of posts on issue.

Zodiarkslayer · July 2023

SandandStars wrote: »

cursedabbey wrote: »

They better have fixed it doing pve splash damage on pvp targets

If they didn’t call it out, it’s not getting touched.

I have yet to see any developer comment on whether this is a bug or intended, regardless of dozens of posts on issue.

I think it's accepted collateral damage by now.
Don't get me wrong, it sucks. But what are they gonna do about it? It's not even a real bug. Everything is working as designed. The condition under which this "bug" appears has not been anticipated during the initial design and testing.

In my opinon this booboo is impossible to resolve/remedy without excessive "damage" to other parts of the game.

Draxund · July 2023

Gambit001 wrote: »

Does this mean that the ticks AOE damage are simply removed overall? Or that AOE damage from those ticks isn’t applied until you’ve completed a fully charged heavy attack? I really hope it’s the latter, as the former would be a major loss of damage for lightning staff users when it comes to AOE damage.

Sadly, it's the former---a huge loss to AoE damage overall. On the PTS, the first few ticks no longer do any AoE damage and it is only the FINAL tick that gets AoE damage applied. There's several threads on the PTS discussion boards going into more detail, even with parses and videos. Essentially, lightning heavy attacks can no longer be relied upon to deliver the same AoE damage (most estimates seem to be around a 50% damage loss from live, on the AoE that is).

Gambit001 · July 2023

Draxund wrote: »

Gambit001 wrote: »

Does this mean that the ticks AOE damage are simply removed overall? Or that AOE damage from those ticks isn’t applied until you’ve completed a fully charged heavy attack? I really hope it’s the latter, as the former would be a major loss of damage for lightning staff users when it comes to AOE damage.

Sadly, it's the former---a huge loss to AoE damage overall. On the PTS, the first few ticks no longer do any AoE damage and it is only the FINAL tick that gets AoE damage applied. There's several threads on the PTS discussion boards going into more detail, even with parses and videos. Essentially, lightning heavy attacks can no longer be relied upon to deliver the same AoE damage (most estimates seem to be around a 50% damage loss from live, on the AoE that is).

Well holy crap, that’s just terrible!!! I hope someone @ZOS like @ZOS_GinaBruno sees this issue and hopefully there could be some fixes done to make it work more like the latter idea I had posited, otherwise it’s incredibly demoralizing and honestly just cruel to make this change at all.

NoSoup · July 2023

It sucks, its a huge loss to solo players (like myself) that enjoy doing the 4 man content by themselves. I don't think this is going to affect trials or 4 man groups that much as there's enough aoe damage to deal with trash mobs anyway. This specifically targets solo players and is pretty unwarrented. I'd be happy with the change if they brought in a set like the old plaguebreaker (or just reveresed plague breaker changes) to give solo players another option.

Oblivion_Protocol · July 2023

cursedabbey wrote: »

They better have fixed it doing pve splash damage on pvp targets

This probably is the fix for PvE splash damage to PvP targets. ZoS took away the vast majority of the splash damage, only allowing the final hit to tick. That measure reduces a lot of the damage being done to players in PvP.

So, much like the change to Plaguebreak, an ability /passive that was causing issues in PvP is nerfed into the ground for PvE players. This, despite having a system in place (Battle Spirit) that allows them to separate PvP and PvE effects.

StackonClown · August 2023

So again this change is fixing 'i died in PVP' ??

"This probably is the fix for PvE splash damage to PvP targets"

Marcus684 · August 2023

I'm a bit surprised that ZOS went this route to fix this issue. Seems like it would've been better to make sure that PvE splash damage is properly marked when it is applied to players so it becomes subject to Battle Spirit leveling.

Who knows, maybe they also decided that lighting staff HA damage had become too popular so decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone by nerfing it overall like this. They have a history of nerfing things solely on the basis of how popular it is.

Necrotech_Master · August 2023

Gambit001 wrote: »

Edit: thinking maybe this should have been posted under PTS instead, admin move if you feel appropriate.

—————————————————

So the latest PTS update states:
Tri Focus
Flame Staff: This passive now applies a Damage over Time equal to power of a standard Damage over Time effect, over 10/20 seconds with a fully charged Heavy Attack, rather than increasing the damage done of your fully charged Heavy Attacks by 6/12%
Ice Staff: Increased the damage shield granted by this passive to 16.5/33% of your Max Health, up from 12.5/25%.
Lightning Staff: This passive now only triggers on fully charged Heavy Attacks, rather than any tick of a Heavy Attack. Tri Focus
Flame Staff: This passive now applies a Damage over Time equal to power of a standard Damage over Time effect, over 10/20 seconds with a fully charged Heavy Attack, rather than increasing the damage done of your fully charged Heavy Attacks by 6/12%
Ice Staff: Increased the damage shield granted by this passive to 16.5/33% of your Max Health, up from 12.5/25%.
Lightning Staff: This passive now only triggers on fully charged Heavy Attacks, rather than any tick of a Heavy Attack.

—————————————

I’m not on the PTS and play on PS5, but I’m questioning what the actual effect of the lightning staff change implies.

Does this mean that the ticks AOE damage are simply removed overall? Or that AOE damage from those ticks isn’t applied until you’ve completed a fully charged heavy attack?

I really hope it’s the latter, as the former would be a major loss of damage for lightning staff users when it comes to AOE damage.

I fully understand if it’s not giving the AOE damage from the non-final ticks until the end, to force/ensure that you’re using a fully charged heavy attack to get the benefit of the passive, but if it’s simply eliminating the AOE damage from the non-final ticks, that’s a horrible change imo.

the ticks are there, but they dont splash dmg

and due to the change of the lightning staff buffing channel and direct dmg, you will actually see a slight dps increase on singly target fights

if your running a HA build, just make sure to focus on the strongest target to get all 3 ticks off, the final tick will still hit like a truck and still do full splash dmg

if your doing something like overland, just get a standard aoe spammable (even impulse is enough to wipe most overland mobs in like <4 uses)

CameraBeardThePirate · August 2023

StackonClown wrote: »

So again this change is fixing 'i died in PVP' ??

"This probably is the fix for PvE splash damage to PvP targets"

No, it's fixing "someone abused an exploit to kill me in PvP" as well as fixing the obscene power level that Tri-Focus gives to HA sets when used with Lightning Staff.

Stop making everything an "us" vs "them". Balance changes go both ways.