What is the point of Morphs?

TheBaronXIII · May 2024

What is the point of Morphs if all the ESO Devs are going to do is dedicate entire skill trees to specific functions?

My main I originally rolled with was a Warden. I always lean towards the more ranger / druid / nature type fighter classes. Fits me best. Over the years I've grown frustrated with the constant nerfs to a class that's always seemed a bit sub-par at harder endgame content. Granted I didn't start playing ESO until 2020. I've adapted my warden from being Stamina to utilizing frost. I prefer to play as DPS, although I will tank when they need arises. I've really started to like my Frost Warden quite a bit, especially for solo. I'd love to have two Wardens, one Stamina, One Magika cause I do enjoy variety.

But now the devs are threatening to strip the Frost DPS away and make the Frost Skill Line focused on Tanking? So what's the point of Morphs? Are there no creative directors or writers, or artists left at ZOS? This doesn't seem like a very good or creative solution to what ails the Warden class. It doesn't need a rework like this. It needs a slight, and I mean slight buff. Isn't this still an RPG?

Why not make Morphs a thing again. Each line could be one of two combinations: Stamina DPS/ Magika DPS. Tank/DPS. Heal/DPS. or Tank/Heal. Why not go this route? Make Morhs actually mean something and represent a choice. For the warden, Frost could be Magika DPS or Tanking. Each morph either is a full DPS skill or a more defensive one depending on what you choose. Wasn't that how it was originally envisioned? Just do a better and more thorough job. Maybe take some time to LISTEN to the community on what is wrong with Wardens. Please.

I feel like the devs don't listen. Like at all. It's been super frustrating since U39. I came back with high hopes that things were improving... but now they are gonna strip away the fun I have found playing a warden... AGAIN.

Solariken · May 2024

Morphs are a near-dead relic of the original combat system, lazily designed to give the illusion of depth and choice.

It should have been a spellcrafting-like system from the beginning, where you have base skills that you can alter/augment.

barney2525 · May 2024

Morphs for Templar keep the character alive without wasting an action casting/using a heal.

Healing while inflicting damage rocks.

Remathilis · May 2024

Morphs are the difference between having the skeleton that you summoned run at the enemy or to run at you.

Lazy_Voyager · May 2024

More than likely they'll say "it never conformed to Our Vision" like they did when ruining Tormentor.

SeaGtGruff · May 2024

Morphs let you choose between three versions of an ability-- no morph, morph 1, or morph 2. In some cases the differences may not seem very significant, but in other cases you might be able to change a Magicka-based ability into a Stamina-based one, or vice versa (which might seem irrelevant in light of hybridization, but it does still matter), or choose between targeting a heal at yourself or at other players in your group, etc.

Nerouyn · May 2024

For my and many other players' tastes, Wardens have long been hot garbage.

All of the power in a few abilities, and everything else really super situational and possibly never useful at all if you don't PvP.

The changes are good and heading in a good direction as far as I'm concerned.

DPS in or out of the frost line?

Truly couldn't care less in terms of this class but in terms of authenticity, in the single player games all 3 elements - frost, fire and shock are close to equally destructive, ignoring eg. frost effectively being semi nerfed in Skyrim with lots of understandably high frost resistances in a freezing cold country.

Personally I'd strip these 3 elemental lines from DKs, Sorcs and Wardens, give each another skill line, and make those 3 elemental lines available to everyone through eg. the Mage's Guild. Or something new in a new chapter.

OldStygian · May 2024

Ya I could get behind all class skill lines being really class specific in flavour and the elemental skill lines being made akin to weapon skills - open to any.

Re Morphs - they just short stemmed skill trees.

tgrippa · May 2024

$$$

moderatelyfatman · May 2024

Morphs feel pretty out of date, especially compared to the fancy branched skill trees that allow you to make a playstyle that really suits the individual.

I'm hoping that eventually scribing wil bring some greater set of options to class skills beyond the choice of just A or B.

BXR_Lonestar · May 2024

morphs were an important part of the game when there was such a thing as a "mag spec'd" character and a "stam spec'd" character, and the build for each of them were wildly different. You would pick a different morph based on what would work best for your setup (mag or stam). Thanks to hybridization, the meta builds for each spec have been sandwiched together, and now every DPS character runs the same 5-6 sets. When it comes to morphs, most people just pick the one that has the most utility or deals the most damage.

IMO, hybridization has not really been a good change to the game as it has lessened build variety at the top end of gameplay, and everyone is looking for the same pieces of armor now.

I personally would prefer to go back to the days where mag characters had completely different setups and utilized completely different builds when compared to stam characters. That actually created gameplay variety IMO, as it was like night and day playing a mag character, and then switching to a stam character.

furiouslog · May 2024

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

morphs were an important part of the game when there was such a thing as a "mag spec'd" character and a "stam spec'd" character, and the build for each of them were wildly different. You would pick a different morph based on what would work best for your setup (mag or stam). Thanks to hybridization, the meta builds for each spec have been sandwiched together, and now every DPS character runs the same 5-6 sets. When it comes to morphs, most people just pick the one that has the most utility or deals the most damage.

IMO, hybridization has not really been a good change to the game as it has lessened build variety at the top end of gameplay, and everyone is looking for the same pieces of armor now.

I personally would prefer to go back to the days where mag characters had completely different setups and utilized completely different builds when compared to stam characters. That actually created gameplay variety IMO, as it was like night and day playing a mag character, and then switching to a stam character.

Isn't this variety what the scribing system is going to bring to the game, now? I think that's the intention, at least.

ZoeliTintanie · May 2024

Scribing shouldn't be the band-aid that fixes placeholder-class skills & abilities as well as mechanics that are outdated even in Lord of the Rings Online, let alone in ESO.

Just look at Ice Fortress on the Warden, it's a 100% placeholder skill people forgot to improve because they're busy playing DK/Arc/NB.

I love Wardens but man, the class is so obviously not played as much as the other 3 mentioned above by the people who do class balancing.

People say Necro is bad and unloved by devs but if you actually look at Warden, that class looks thrown together for 1 dps build, 1 tank build and 1 healer build for 5 years ago.

Compare it to Arcanist/DK and even Templar, I mean really, analyze the class abilities, passives etc and it's undeniable, majority of the kit is placeholder that was never returned to (possibly because of dev-team changes and oversights)

ghastley · May 2024

For scribing to have an impact, the existing system of differentiation has to be downgraded.

Desiato · May 2024

I feel your pain. I've had many PVP play styles I've really enjoyed completely removed from the game from the constant refactoring of classes.

I don't think giving each class a skill line for damage, healing and tanking has made the game better. The result has mainly been homogenization and reduced balance, especially from a PVP POV.

Anumaril · May 2024

Morphs don't really mean much these days except deciding whether you want to play a stamina or magicka build. Gone are the days of having an actual choice when it comes time to morph your skills.

As I understand it vanilla classes are affected by this somewhat less, but as a necromancer (a post-launch class) that's basically all our morphs do, and it's depressing.

Nerouyn · May 2024

Anumaril wrote: »

Morphs don't really mean much these days except deciding whether you want to play a stamina or magicka build. Gone are the days of having an actual choice when it comes time to morph your skills.

I think they're slowly fixing this and moving towards all abilities scaling off the highest damage stat, like many arcanist abilities.

LeHarrt91 · May 2024

I feel your pain with the Warden and its morphs, alot of them feel like they are the same skill but a different colour/ damage type. Netch is the same skill the only difference is one restores mag and the other stam, for lotus one increases duration and the other heals an additional target, otherwise its the same skill with the same buff. Also a few passives need to be updated like Bond with Nature and Icy Aura.

As much as i love my Frost Warden i do feel that other warden builds need some attention, and to not feel pigeonholed into frost damage/ frost staff.

I have always thought that the warden was partly designed with Battlegrounds in mind since they came out in the same patch, and its time for some more updates to the class.

ClowdyAllDay · May 2024

choices