SkaiFaith wrote: »

Question: when people talk about nerfing Fatecarver, do they mean the base skill damage? Because if used without any crux I assure you I can barely tickle enemies in Veteran content.
I play solo with a build that uses Fatecarver without any crux. I don't think I am the only one using it this way, and this way it definitely ISN'T overpowered so... Why nerf the damage it does this way, which instead I would buff?
If anything, crux additive power should be less significant.
Just my two cents...

Fatecarver is made to be used with crux, so there is no point in looking how it behaves without. Every skills suck big time when you use them wrong. (though buffing the tooltip, as you say, and lower the crux added benefit is mostly fine with me)

And IMO, the damage is fine as is. The problem lies with the cleave.
A nerf is only needed in that regard. Like, beam only do 50% of damage on subsequent targets.
The high numbers on ST are fine on their own.

Or they can nerf the damage as a whole to bring it on par with classic AoE skills.


So, either the damage as a whole is reduced, but it retain full AoE power, or it stays the same and AoE power is diminished.

Meh decided idc enough to debate.

BasP wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Question: when people talk about nerfing Fatecarver, do they mean the base skill damage? Because if used without any crux I assure you I can barely tickle enemies in Veteran content.
I play solo with a build that uses Fatecarver without any crux. I don't think I am the only one using it this way, and this way it definitely ISN'T overpowered so... Why nerf the damage it does this way, which instead I would buff?
If anything, crux additive power should be less significant.
Just my two cents...

I believe Fatecarver without Crux does more DPS than a lot of spammables already, so the base damage definitely shouldn't be buffed in my opinion. Going by UESP's values:

• Biting Jabs/Puncturing Sweep: 7542 DPS (2514 every 0.3 seconds)
• Fatecarver (0 Crux): 7209 DPS (2403 every 0.3 seconds)
• Surprise Attack: 6561 DPS
• Molten Whip: 6352 DPS
• Swallow Soul: 5905 DPS
• Force Pulse: 5715 DPS (1905 per element)

A Crux-less Fatecarver might barely tickle enemies, as you say, but it still deals 22% more damage than Swallow Soul (and can hit up to 6 targets to boot). It's arguably already overpowered.

I have both Fatecarver and Sweeps slotted, and I use fatecarver only when enemies are far, as soon as they get close spam sweeps. Hence probably why in my eyes it's not OP.

Prionyx wrote: »

Lebensf0rm wrote: »

Fatecarver has already received the most significant nerf it needed with the change to banner's crux generation. What we need now are buffs to many of the other skill lines, particularly with respect to cleave.

It barely changes anything, fatecarver needs at least 5x of that nerf to be a balanced skill

It changes a lot, actually. The extra flail cast adds up to a lot of missed beam ticks over the course of a fight. And at this point, the game is being balanced around access to intense cleave from Fatecarver; nerfing its damage or capacity to cleave would only cause a lot of irritating regression across most PvE skill levels. The least painful solution for the players at this point is to provide opportunities for higher APM gameplay that can compete with or surpass Fatecarver. Increasing the crux cap so it takes longer to unleash a max Fatecarver might also be a solution, but without power gains elsewhere (and more ways to gain crux), that would also be a pointless nerf.

Daoin wrote: »

but you know though when some of us are not patting each other on the back complementing a parse well done and trifecta well played with my buddies and looking for things like a slight fatecarver nerf and are playing with other regular jo's we say fatecarver is fine

It doesn't matter what level of skill you have. The lowest effort build should never have the highest potential, it's just bad design. At the very highest level non beam builds are barely seeing the light of day, and only because the single target damage is so insanely high due to subclassing, that the teams can just skip almost all mechanics, turning previously AoE focused fights into a single target ones. All of this is just horrible design. For groups which are not skilled enough to skip all mechanics, the beam is pretty much the only viable option.

Buffing other builds as people have suggested is more difficult than it seems, because if they buff skills too generally, putting power into longer dots and such, it wont really solve the issue because the beam builds have access to the same DoTs as any other build. This leaves semi spammables and sets to be the only real solution, but because of the spreadsheet balance changes, I don't see this ever happening. For example, Blastbones damage would have to be at least doubled to compete against the beam, and that just doesn't align with the spreadsheets and I feel like it wouldn't be too welcome of a change for PvP either. Talons is in even worse state, to make that skill viable they would have to put an entire skill lines worth of passives there, because Draconic Power has tank passives, making it useless for DDs.

ZoS dug themselves a massive hole with how they implemented subclassing, and judging by their track record, I don't have high hopes that they can actually fix it. They have to find a way to reward skilful play without it requiring skipping of vast majority of mechanics.

Lebensf0rm wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

but you know though when some of us are not patting each other on the back complementing a parse well done and trifecta well played with my buddies and looking for things like a slight fatecarver nerf and are playing with other regular jo's we say fatecarver is fine

It doesn't matter what level of skill you have. The lowest effort build should never have the highest potential, it's just bad design. At the very highest level non beam builds are barely seeing the light of day, and only because the single target damage is so insanely high due to subclassing, that the teams can just skip almost all mechanics, turning previously AoE focused fights into a single target ones. All of this is just horrible design. For groups which are not skilled enough to skip all mechanics, the beam is pretty much the only viable option.

Buffing other builds as people have suggested is more difficult than it seems, because if they buff skills too generally, putting power into longer dots and such, it wont really solve the issue because the beam builds have access to the same DoTs as any other build. This leaves semi spammables and sets to be the only real solution, but because of the spreadsheet balance changes, I don't see this ever happening. For example, Blastbones damage would have to be at least doubled to compete against the beam, and that just doesn't align with the spreadsheets and I feel like it wouldn't be too welcome of a change for PvP either. Talons is in even worse state, to make that skill viable they would have to put an entire skill lines worth of passives there, because Draconic Power has tank passives, making it useless for DDs.

ZoS dug themselves a massive hole with how they implemented subclassing, and judging by their track record, I don't have high hopes that they can actually fix it. They have to find a way to reward skilful play without it requiring skipping of vast majority of mechanics.

It's true that something as low effort as Fatecarver's channel shouldn't have the best damage output in the game. However, I don't think adding buffs to other lines that don't serve as indirect buffs to Fatecarver builds is as hard as you make it out to be. Here are some rough ideas:

1. Searing Heat is basically a dead passive within Ardent Flame; it could easily be reworked into something that increases cleave from fire damage in a way that scales with the number or frequency of fire damage ticks, and therefore does not play nicely with Fatecarver and Flail. Use of Talons from Draconic Power could be encouraged by creating synergy between the new Searing Heat and a reworked Elder Dragon passive. Health recovery is a dead stat, so Elder Dragon is more or less useless. Why not make Elder Dragon an analogue of Storm Calling's Expert Mage that provides crit chance or damage based on the number of DK abilities slotted (or even active)? That might be somewhat exploitable by Fatecarver builds, but probably not as much as a higher-APM non-Fatecarver setup.

2. Storm Calling could get a passive akin to Burning Light that creates chain lightning arcs after accumulating stacks of physical or shock damage, neither of which can be built by Fatecarver itself.

3. Unnerf Cro's DoT passive and make active abilities from Grave Lord (i.e. Blastbones and Ricochet/Venom skull) cause DoTs to tick faster or duplicate somehow (this one might really mess with PvP and require a "to monsters" condition or something). Ricochet/Venom skull could jump more frequently and spread DoTs from one target to another when it does so.

I really do think Fatecarver is an issue, but I also still think the solution is creative, thematic, and fun buffs instead of upsetting nerfs.

I do agree that a massive nerf to the beam right now would be a mistake, because it's the only ability every group relies on and there aren't any real alternatives to fall back on.

I do like the ideas you mentioned and creative buffs like that would be one way to get out of this mess, but it there would have to be multiple good changes done to many skill lines/skills. For example the Searing Heat change you suggested would be a nice change and non beam builds might benefit more from it, but it would still be used on beam builds, so this would not be enough to help close the gap, though I know you didn't mean this as solution to the whole problem. I would definitely welcome the necro change as well, though again, necro is already good when paired with beam and this would make it even better. But yeah, many small changes from multiple directions could definitely work, there just would have to be A LOT of small changes like this to solve the issue and I just don't see ZoS pulling it off, though I would love to be proven wrong here.

The Talons/Draconic Power change would be nice in a vacuum, but it wouldn't be nearly enough to make the skill line usable. Right now every single competitive build is using Herald of the Tome (even non beam ones) and Assassination, because of the crit damage, penetration and crit chance these lines give (not to mention 11% damage done buff from flail and massive ult gen from Soul Harvest) are just way too good to give up. This leaves just one flex skill line. So either, they would have to massively nerf Herald of the Tome and Assassination, or they would have to buff multiple other skill lines to their level without buffing beam builds. They've already nerfed Assassination multiple times and none of the changes have made a difference in the pick rate, because they aren't addressing the reason why people pick it in the first place.

Or they could just revive Azureblight and that would be a quick, though lazy and boring way to fix this. We would just go back to relying on one single set to even keep up with the Arcanist beam and that wasn't very healthy game design either.

BananaBender wrote: »

Lebensf0rm wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

but you know though when some of us are not patting each other on the back complementing a parse well done and trifecta well played with my buddies and looking for things like a slight fatecarver nerf and are playing with other regular jo's we say fatecarver is fine

It doesn't matter what level of skill you have. The lowest effort build should never have the highest potential, it's just bad design. At the very highest level non beam builds are barely seeing the light of day, and only because the single target damage is so insanely high due to subclassing, that the teams can just skip almost all mechanics, turning previously AoE focused fights into a single target ones. All of this is just horrible design. For groups which are not skilled enough to skip all mechanics, the beam is pretty much the only viable option.

Buffing other builds as people have suggested is more difficult than it seems, because if they buff skills too generally, putting power into longer dots and such, it wont really solve the issue because the beam builds have access to the same DoTs as any other build. This leaves semi spammables and sets to be the only real solution, but because of the spreadsheet balance changes, I don't see this ever happening. For example, Blastbones damage would have to be at least doubled to compete against the beam, and that just doesn't align with the spreadsheets and I feel like it wouldn't be too welcome of a change for PvP either. Talons is in even worse state, to make that skill viable they would have to put an entire skill lines worth of passives there, because Draconic Power has tank passives, making it useless for DDs.

ZoS dug themselves a massive hole with how they implemented subclassing, and judging by their track record, I don't have high hopes that they can actually fix it. They have to find a way to reward skilful play without it requiring skipping of vast majority of mechanics.

It's true that something as low effort as Fatecarver's channel shouldn't have the best damage output in the game. However, I don't think adding buffs to other lines that don't serve as indirect buffs to Fatecarver builds is as hard as you make it out to be. Here are some rough ideas:

1. Searing Heat is basically a dead passive within Ardent Flame; it could easily be reworked into something that increases cleave from fire damage in a way that scales with the number or frequency of fire damage ticks, and therefore does not play nicely with Fatecarver and Flail. Use of Talons from Draconic Power could be encouraged by creating synergy between the new Searing Heat and a reworked Elder Dragon passive. Health recovery is a dead stat, so Elder Dragon is more or less useless. Why not make Elder Dragon an analogue of Storm Calling's Expert Mage that provides crit chance or damage based on the number of DK abilities slotted (or even active)? That might be somewhat exploitable by Fatecarver builds, but probably not as much as a higher-APM non-Fatecarver setup.

2. Storm Calling could get a passive akin to Burning Light that creates chain lightning arcs after accumulating stacks of physical or shock damage, neither of which can be built by Fatecarver itself.

3. Unnerf Cro's DoT passive and make active abilities from Grave Lord (i.e. Blastbones and Ricochet/Venom skull) cause DoTs to tick faster or duplicate somehow (this one might really mess with PvP and require a "to monsters" condition or something). Ricochet/Venom skull could jump more frequently and spread DoTs from one target to another when it does so.

I really do think Fatecarver is an issue, but I also still think the solution is creative, thematic, and fun buffs instead of upsetting nerfs.

I do agree that a massive nerf to the beam right now would be a mistake, because it's the only ability every group relies on and there aren't any real alternatives to fall back on.

I do like the ideas you mentioned and creative buffs like that would be one way to get out of this mess, but it there would have to be multiple good changes done to many skill lines/skills. For example the Searing Heat change you suggested would be a nice change and non beam builds might benefit more from it, but it would still be used on beam builds, so this would not be enough to help close the gap, though I know you didn't mean this as solution to the whole problem. I would definitely welcome the necro change as well, though again, necro is already good when paired with beam and this would make it even better. But yeah, many small changes from multiple directions could definitely work, there just would have to be A LOT of small changes like this to solve the issue and I just do see ZoS pulling it off, though I would love to be proven wrong here.

The Talons/Draconic Power change would be nice in a vacuum, but it wouldn't be nearly enough to make the skill line usable. Right now every single competitive build is using Herald of the Tome (even non beam ones) and Assassination, because of the crit damage, penetration and crit chance these lines give (not to mention 11% damage done buff from flail and massive ult gen from Soul Harvest) are just way too good to give up. This leaves just one flex skill line. So either, they would have to massively nerf Herald of the Tome and Assassination, or they would have to buff multiple other skill lines to their level without buffing beam builds. They've already nerfed Assassination multiple times and none of the changes have made a difference in the pick rate, because they aren't addressing the reason why people pick it in the first place.

Or they could just revive Azureblight and that would be a quick, though lazy and boring way to fix this. We would just go back to relying on one single set to even keep up with the Arcanist beam and that wasn't very healthy game design either.

I get that Azure fatigue was its own thing, but I'd also take it back in a heartbeat at this point, if only for DDs to feel like they're playing the game again. It's also true that the massive buffs from passives and Abyssal Ink are keeping HotT around as a pick even when not relying on Fatecarver. Spreading some of those same stats to different lines might not be the most creative solution, but it's probably something ZOS will have to look at at this point.

I think there's even more untapped potential for Draconic Power and even Shadow as hybrid support/damage lines if ZOS is willing to make some morphs drastically different from each other, though. Perhaps Volatile Armor could become closer to Hurricane and function as a damage skill that just happens to provide Major Resolve. With Coag outperforming GDB in group content anyway, perhaps GDB could be sacrificed in favor of something that does damage somehow, and Inahle's morphs could be buffed (I'd probably leave Scales/Plate alone tbf). I certainly don't have perfect solutions, but I think these are the sort of discussions ZOS and the community need to have to keep the game fresh, fun, and healthy; Fatecarver can't serve as the bedrock of a "30-year game".

easy solution, stop using it ! because its not overpowered in everyones hands. but sure yes it lets people talk louder but in the end arcanists are still joining groups and making the exact same difference with beam than any other class i see playing other skills, sometimes no differece at all. and sure theres nothing wrong with stocking up on cheese every now and again but it does not mean absolutely everyone nibbles at it, for example i have not even got to logging in on my sorc since subclassing but you can be 100% sure you wont be seeing any beam or necro skills being added in the future to his skill sets. we were told clearly at subclassing that extreme power options would now be available to satisfy peoples power fantasies or just simply play as you want with a completely down to earth build ! but from what i have seen even without beam and becoming half necro my sorc is still going to fit into groups just fine. and to me its just plain wierd thats its totally cool to post vids of CR+3 clears in crazy times like 1 minute using no portals even before arcanist was born yet plenty people still progging it with arcs without a clear yet, just things like that yes it was pretty neat and cool but so are arcanists
whatever will happen with it lets just hope its soon and fast so we can get on gaming in a straight line again for a while

Lumenn wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

easy solution, stop using it ! because its not overpowered in everyones hands. but sure yes it lets people talk louder but in the end arcanists are still joining groups and making the exact same difference with beam than any other class i see playing other skills, sometimes no differece at all. and sure theres nothing wrong with stocking up on cheese every now and again but it does not mean absolutely everyone nibbles at it, for example i have not even got to logging in on my sorc since subclassing but you can be 100% sure you wont be seeing any beam or necro skills being added in the future to his skill sets. we were told clearly at subclassing that extreme power options would now be available to satisfy peoples power fantasies or just simply play as you want with a completely down to earth build ! but from what i have seen even without beam and becoming half necro my sorc is still going to fit into groups just fine. and to me its just plain wierd thats its totally cool to post vids of CR+3 clears in crazy times like 1 minute using no portals even before arcanist was born yet plenty people still progging it with arcs without a clear yet, just things like that yes it was pretty neat and cool but so are arcanists
whatever will happen with it lets just hope its soon and fast so we can get on gaming in a straight line again for a while

This. It gets old when any other form of dps even comes close(not surpassing, just close) to weaving/AC and it's page after page of nerf calling. Yes, I've read all the arguments over the years, mostly it's "that thing over there that doesn't affect me is too easy and they need to spend hours in front of a dummy like I did". Sets, skills, even whole playstyle(ww at one time. HA sorcs, etc) I can wiggle my fingers just fine, it just isn't a huge matter of pride that I think it should be the ONLY way. A good weave beats everything, but even if it didn't? Let people play their way. Things get nerfed enough as it is but we're always begging Zos to smack us some more. Doesn't make sense.

But good weaving doesn't do more damage right now, that's the whole point why people are upset currently. You have to do twice the work and get half the reward if you aren't beaming in AoE fights, which is most of the fights in the game. "That thing over there that doesn't affect me" does affect me, because if you care about your performance, you have exactly two builds you can play right now, because they are so far ahead of everything else. I get that not everyone cares about performance, but if that's the case, why wouldn't you be okay if things were actually balanced? You can enjoy beaming and I think it should stay as a lower performing, but still valid option, not as the best in slot for 99% of content for the vast majority of groups.

Lumenn wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Lumenn wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

easy solution, stop using it ! because its not overpowered in everyones hands. but sure yes it lets people talk louder but in the end arcanists are still joining groups and making the exact same difference with beam than any other class i see playing other skills, sometimes no differece at all. and sure theres nothing wrong with stocking up on cheese every now and again but it does not mean absolutely everyone nibbles at it, for example i have not even got to logging in on my sorc since subclassing but you can be 100% sure you wont be seeing any beam or necro skills being added in the future to his skill sets. we were told clearly at subclassing that extreme power options would now be available to satisfy peoples power fantasies or just simply play as you want with a completely down to earth build ! but from what i have seen even without beam and becoming half necro my sorc is still going to fit into groups just fine. and to me its just plain wierd thats its totally cool to post vids of CR+3 clears in crazy times like 1 minute using no portals even before arcanist was born yet plenty people still progging it with arcs without a clear yet, just things like that yes it was pretty neat and cool but so are arcanists
whatever will happen with it lets just hope its soon and fast so we can get on gaming in a straight line again for a while

This. It gets old when any other form of dps even comes close(not surpassing, just close) to weaving/AC and it's page after page of nerf calling. Yes, I've read all the arguments over the years, mostly it's "that thing over there that doesn't affect me is too easy and they need to spend hours in front of a dummy like I did". Sets, skills, even whole playstyle(ww at one time. HA sorcs, etc) I can wiggle my fingers just fine, it just isn't a huge matter of pride that I think it should be the ONLY way. A good weave beats everything, but even if it didn't? Let people play their way. Things get nerfed enough as it is but we're always begging Zos to smack us some more. Doesn't make sense.

But good weaving doesn't do more damage right now, that's the whole point why people are upset currently. You have to do twice the work and get half the reward if you aren't beaming in AoE fights, which is most of the fights in the game. "That thing over there that doesn't affect me" does affect me, because if you care about your performance, you have exactly two builds you can play right now, because they are so far ahead of everything else. I get that not everyone cares about performance, but if that's the case, why wouldn't you be okay if things were actually balanced? You can enjoy beaming and I think it should stay as a lower performing, but still valid option, not as the best in slot for 99% of content for the vast majority of groups.

Ah. AoE you may have a point. I'll have to do more research as I've yet to see a beamer out parse top single target weave. But let's say it does. Let's say beam owns AoE AND single target instead of WEAVING being the only way ALLOWED to own BOTH. I spent hours with each build, learning my rotations to learn a skill like most of us who's been here for any time, but if someone can do the same w/o weaving I honestly don't see the point in asking to cripple their playstyle so that I can stay ahead. Top end needs new blood more than it needs a 20 second "lead" on clear times.

As I said earlier you can sub "beam" with "HA sorcs" and the thread is very.... deja Vu.

The problem is not that beam own AoE. The problem is that beam is twice as strong as the next best thing, AoE-wise. And I mean it : twice as strong.

I saw AoE long, sustained Dps of 300k . I know burst DPS can go higher, but here, it is, I repeat a long, sustained DPS.
No other build comes close.

If you add to that the fact that the beam is also very competitive in single target (not the best, sure, but close enough to the best that it does not matter)

I do not care if beam owns AoE, as you say. But it souldn't be twice as strong as the next best thing. That's completely overperforming.

BananaBender wrote: »

Lumenn wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

easy solution, stop using it ! because its not overpowered in everyones hands. but sure yes it lets people talk louder but in the end arcanists are still joining groups and making the exact same difference with beam than any other class i see playing other skills, sometimes no differece at all. and sure theres nothing wrong with stocking up on cheese every now and again but it does not mean absolutely everyone nibbles at it, for example i have not even got to logging in on my sorc since subclassing but you can be 100% sure you wont be seeing any beam or necro skills being added in the future to his skill sets. we were told clearly at subclassing that extreme power options would now be available to satisfy peoples power fantasies or just simply play as you want with a completely down to earth build ! but from what i have seen even without beam and becoming half necro my sorc is still going to fit into groups just fine. and to me its just plain wierd thats its totally cool to post vids of CR+3 clears in crazy times like 1 minute using no portals even before arcanist was born yet plenty people still progging it with arcs without a clear yet, just things like that yes it was pretty neat and cool but so are arcanists
whatever will happen with it lets just hope its soon and fast so we can get on gaming in a straight line again for a while

This. It gets old when any other form of dps even comes close(not surpassing, just close) to weaving/AC and it's page after page of nerf calling. Yes, I've read all the arguments over the years, mostly it's "that thing over there that doesn't affect me is too easy and they need to spend hours in front of a dummy like I did". Sets, skills, even whole playstyle(ww at one time. HA sorcs, etc) I can wiggle my fingers just fine, it just isn't a huge matter of pride that I think it should be the ONLY way. A good weave beats everything, but even if it didn't? Let people play their way. Things get nerfed enough as it is but we're always begging Zos to smack us some more. Doesn't make sense.

But good weaving doesn't do more damage right now, that's the whole point why people are upset currently. You have to do twice the work and get half the reward if you aren't beaming in AoE fights, which is most of the fights in the game. "That thing over there that doesn't affect me" does affect me, because if you care about your performance, you have exactly two builds you can play right now, because they are so far ahead of everything else. I get that not everyone cares about performance, but if that's the case, why wouldn't you be okay if things were actually balanced? You can enjoy beaming and I think it should stay as a lower performing, but still valid option, not as the best in slot for 99% of content for the vast majority of groups.

i care alot about my performance in groups thats why i never light attack weave, never use meta sets or restrict myself to the most popular skills, and it has never failed me yet and if there was ever a rule of thumb i had while playing eso to survive it was those, now most of the time i find myself reminding myself when i am on a dd that well if the tank and healer go first the death was not down to my performance, which ironically makes me a better tank and healer wearing the most upto date sets and builds i can my hands on

Design-wise the beam should be strong and impactful, but maybe it should be used less frequently in a rotation. It looks like something that should really drain the caster. Maybe a ramping resource cost to encourage a longer filler period and a slightly more sustain oriented stat split would already achieve the necessary effect, without gutting the ability.