Firstmep wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Flail isn't low damage though? ... And you're supposed to pick between Dread and Beam, that's the point.

Without the execute scaling, yes it's low damage on top of a slow cast and janky hitbox. Flail was my primary spammable on my pressure Arc, but above 50% hp it was better to spam Twin Slashes or restart your rotation altogether.

The design of splitting playstyles like that denies Arc builds half their offensive own kit. You run a pseudo bomber with the DW ult and the laser, or you run a proc vessel (either MDW/Vatesh or ranged procs on bow). It's already hard enough to fit everything an open world build wants on an Arc, good luck fitting marginal utility skills like Flail.

I think people are just looking at tooltips and think the Arcanist is this great damage dealer. Everyone else also gets indignant when ZOS's solution to balancing their class morphs is to nerf one such that you have to drop the way you have enjoyed playing to use the new morph. But when it's someone else's class, it's ZOS knows what they are doing, the skills that nobody has ever whined about dying to are actually really good, etc. Yet they still comment about how ZOS ruined their class.

I play Arcanist more than any other class (mostly because necro is garbage). The Flail nerf was needed. It did not need execute scaling on top of a great damage taken debuff, building crux, being able to cleave, healing the user, and immobilizing.

And despite what others have said, yes, the damage is still good on it. The damage is on par with your average single target spammable, which is crazy considering it's AoE and comes with all the effects it has.

In PvE, the execute scaling was negligible anyways because you're going to be Beaming rather than spamming execute since Beam was still more damage than Flail until around 10% health.

One doesn't need to play an Arcanist to know that while Arcanists are PvE DPS kings, since the first round of nerfs are nothing more than mid-tier offensively, with many of them using only one damage ability from their class. The potential on tooltips does not translate well into PvP. That has been shown through months of actual gameplay. Others have said so. It's why the class crutches hard on procs like Duel Wield Masters, vateshran, and Maarselok to put out the damage. The class kit did not need a nerf to its damage at all in PvP. It wasn;t a problem.

PvP is already full of tanks, stalemates, and proc sets. Because of philosophies like this. Well, the tooltips are strong and a skill just shouldn't do that many things, so applaud ZOS for nerfing the damage. Of course the necro is trash: ZOS gets plaudits when it approaches balance by nerfing things willy nilly, even when it's the other part of class kits that are strong and garners complaints. If it just bothersome on principle that Flail does that many things (even though all those things still mean crutching on proc sets), then remove the heal as that is a contributor to where the class is perhaps too strong.

Arcs that want to be something other than a troll tank (which there are far too many), are probably going to drop Flail because the class's kit already struggled with PvP damage. That decision will be made because of a nerf and the relative power of the other morph, which is totally contrary to ZoS's stated intentions. They will probably have to drop Camo Hunter to slot something to build crux, which means more reliance on proc sets since they can't crit anyway. And the cycle continues.

You say pvp are full of tanks, but zos just gave arcanist a way to spend Crux to deal meaningful burst, rather than spam runeward to stalemate.
I'd think that's a good change.