I know I'm not the only person who's tired of the Beam meta for over two years. Necrom, with Arcanist class, was released in 2023. So the Beam meta has been the main thing for over 2 years. About time we make a major change for that, no?

Well, I gathered some data from the PC NA live server to compare Pragmatic Fatecarver, the most used morph of Fatecarver, to 8 other spammables.

The build I used for the test is in this image:


I have NO blue champion points on, as well only having the one spammable skill on the skill bar. I am on a sorcerer, but I overwrote the Stormcalling skill line that has the 5% extra shock damage with the Subclass line.

Here's the 9 skills, including Pragmatic Fatecarver, I used to compare. I know they're not all leveled to rank 4:


I've used 3 melee spammables, 4 ranged spammables, and the Wield Soul scribed skill, as it's technically made to work like a spammable but with less damage due to it, well, being a scribed skill, to compare to Pragmatic Fatecarver.

Pragmatic Fatecarver lasts 4 seconds, with a tick of damage every 0.3 seconds. That's 12 ticks of damage over 4 seconds. Therefore, I did each spammable at x4 to match the duration, with the Global Skill Cooldown being 1 second. I did NOT take light attack weaving as Pragmatic Fateweaver does not allow for weaving when casting it.

So the calculations are as follows, using the damage numbers from the skills I screen-shotted before:

Pragmatic Fatecarver: 2245x12=26,940 damage over 4 seconds WITHOUT 3 crux
With 3 crux consumed, it has an additional 99% damage done. 26,940+(26,940x0.99)=53,610 damage over 4 seconds

Melee Skills:
Concealed Weapon: 6526x4=26104 damage over 4 seconds
Wrecking Blow: 7074x4=28188 over 4 seconds
Bloodthirsty: (1741x4)x4=28176 damage over 4 seconds

Ranged Skills:
Writhing Runeblades: (1798x3)x4=21576 over 4 seconds
Focused Aim: 6139x4=24556 over 4 seconds
Crushing Shock: (1779x3)x4=21348 over 4 seconds
Elemental Weapon: 5514x4=22056 over 4 seconds

Scribed Skill:
Shocking Soul: 5338x4=21352 over 4 seconds

The melee spammable skills in general do more damage than the ranged skills, which is common with ESO spammable damage skills. More risk, more reward.

A huge glaring issue with Pragmatic Fatecarver, a ranged ability, has roughly the same damage as the melee skills. That makes using other ranged skills way less appealing. On top of that, the damage skyrockets to 53,610 damage over 4 seconds with 3 crux consumed, which is what pretty much all Beam users do with their builds to get the most out of it. Not to mention the very used Velothi Ur Mage's Amulet that increases damage done to monsters by another 15% but decreases Light and heavy attack damage by 99%, which they don't have to do while casting Fartcarver. Also the Champion Point slottable stars that increases damage done as well.

A ranged skill that does more than double the damage of 4 melee spammable skills with NO light attack weaving needed to possibly match the same damage, as well as having a free Damage Shield with interrupt immunity on top of it seems a bit too much, no?

The Arcanist Fatecarver beam is an important part of the Arcanist class, but with Subclassing out now, it's been outperforming every other DPS build out there, as well as not needing the same amount of skill that spammable+light attack weaving builds need. As well as the free survivability of Pragmatic Fatecarver's damage shield.

Heavy attack builds with Oakensoul a couple years ago were doing the same sort of thing, lacking the required skill for weaving builds, having amazing sustain, and great survivability were harshly nerfed to not match the skill-based DPS builds' damage.

However, Beam builds have essentially not been greatly nerfed enough to bring them down to not overperform skill-based builds, which NEEDS to happen.

I personally have a few suggestions for nerfs, especially based on the data I collected:

1. Reduce the damage bonus for each crux consumed on Fatecarver from 33% to somewhere around 20%, slightly more or less
2. To add to 1, reduce the base damage more
3. Not have Pragmatic Fatecarver have the damage shield WITH the same damage as Exhausting Fatecarver. Free survivability with great damage should not be a thing for only Beam builds, if no other class can have that
4. Have Fatecarver have damage falloff the farther away the player is from the enemy
5. Have each enemy in the beam reduce its effectiveness in damage, to combat the skill's strength as an AOE spammable as well

What I would very much personally prefer to happen: Raise the floor of DPS builds and raise the damage of all Spammable abilties to match the power of Fatecarver. Even with sublclassing, Beam builds still outperform other builds by a huge margin with little skill to play them.


It's been over TWO YEARS since this DPS meta took hold. Time to change it.