Lightning Staff Tri-Focus (Imperial City/Cyrodiil Topic)

Markytous · January 18

I have reported this many times in the past and I'm just going to try again since we are seeing some FANTASTIC feedback from everybody so far this PTS cycle. I will provide a video to showcase this as well below.

For some time now, the Tri-Focus Passive on Lighting Staffs Heavy Attacks will splash off of PvE targets in PVP settings to enemy players, dishing out absurd damage (Empower is applied because it is chained from a mob and thus bypasses Battle Spirit). This is obviously an exploit and I've heard many reasonings defending it on technicalities. In the wake of seeing the Imperial City get the much needed queue-exploit get the spotlight from the team (thank you so much for fixing this!), I want to present this Lightning Staff Heavy Attack Passive issue as well. This particular exploit makes PVPing in the Imperial City very divisive as, wouldn't you know it, most players use Lightning Staffs in the environment because they are aware of this exploit. Just like the queue-exploit in Imperial City, this Lightning Staff exploit has been abused for years and makes a large pain-point for fairness in the gameplay in said content (to a lesser extent it also can happen in Cyrodiil against guards).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMgJJ3lDGs

Shoutout to Gloomfrost for providing footage of this occurring! I have never experienced it happening to me in Cyrodiil so the video was informative to myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6CrV6umo_8

Shoutout to Rob Sanders uploading Imperial City footage of this phenomenon.

Please do not bother these uploaders! The way I see it, these are valuable documentation on the state of the game. Uploaders or chatters here-in don't need any suspensions or investigations. The videos are extremely helpful for showcasing the issue and I'm thankful. Don't hurt these uploaders, please! They're helping us find a solution for this. Thanks for your time and I hope we can get this to the team to take a look.

tsaescishoeshiner · January 18

I don't think PTS forum is best for this, but I'd add that I legitimately use a lightning staff Oakensoul build for IC for other reasons, and this mechanic makes me worried about getting reported/flamed/actioned for an unintended side effect of my preferred build. So I hope they adjust it so players don't get the unintended extra damage from Empower anymore.

Necrotech_Master · January 18

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I don't think PTS forum is best for this, but I'd add that I legitimately use a lightning staff Oakensoul build for IC for other reasons, and this mechanic makes me worried about getting reported/flamed/actioned for an unintended side effect of my preferred build. So I hope they adjust it so players don't get the unintended extra damage from Empower anymore.

i think that was partially why they semi nerfed the trifocus for lightning to only apply on the final hit instead of all hits (as well as nerfing the high aoe dmg that oakensoul builds would do too)

i dont think they have a good way to handle the splash dmg honestly, because its counted as a separate effect and something like battle spirit applying to it would doubly nerf the dmg if you were attacking a player target to begin with (if it applied through battle spirit, you get half dmg from the initial hit on a player, and then the splash dmg would also get halved)

one way they could make it work, but would overall be a nerf for anyone who uses that kind of stuff is disallow all "only against monster" effects if your in a pvp zone period, this wouldnt change anything for pvp directly, but would be a big problem for people who were trying to kill npcs in a pvp zone (such as IC mobs, or guards in cyro)

CameraBeardThePirate · January 18

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I don't think PTS forum is best for this, but I'd add that I legitimately use a lightning staff Oakensoul build for IC for other reasons, and this mechanic makes me worried about getting reported/flamed/actioned for an unintended side effect of my preferred build. So I hope they adjust it so players don't get the unintended extra damage from Empower anymore.

i think that was partially why they semi nerfed the trifocus for lightning to only apply on the final hit instead of all hits (as well as nerfing the high aoe dmg that oakensoul builds would do too)

i dont think they have a good way to handle the splash dmg honestly, because its counted as a separate effect and something like battle spirit applying to it would doubly nerf the dmg if you were attacking a player target to begin with (if it applied through battle spirit, you get half dmg from the initial hit on a player, and then the splash dmg would also get halved)

one way they could make it work, but would overall be a nerf for anyone who uses that kind of stuff is disallow all "only against monster" effects if your in a pvp zone period, this wouldnt change anything for pvp directly, but would be a big problem for people who were trying to kill npcs in a pvp zone (such as IC mobs, or guards in cyro)

I mean I don't think having battle spirit apply to tri focus would really be that big of a deal.

Yes, you'd be double dipping, but so what? Lightning Staff heavy attack builds aren't really effective in PvP anyways for a variety of reasons, and nerfing the aoe of those builds wouldnt really move them in effectiveness at all. You'd still be primarily using them with pets and Knight Slayer, and most of your damage would still be coming from procs.

ESO_player123 · January 18

As long as it's not affecting the PvE side of thing any further they can do whatever. The latest nerf to trifocus for lightning was unpleasant enough.

TheMrPancake · 4:17AM

Yes please fix this so that the tri-focus is correctly lowered when splashing to nearby players. Quite frustrating to die to a single 50k tick with the only counterplay being stay away from npcs.

ZhuJiuyin · 4:27AM

Add a new condition to Trifocus: when both the user and the target receiving area-of-effect damage have Battle Spirit, the area damage is halved.

Thus, in PvE environments, Trifocus will maintain its original damage because the player does not have Battle Spirit. In PvP environments, the damage dealt to monsters remains unchanged, but the damage dealt to players is halved.

edward_frigidhands · 1:07PM

Markytous wrote: »

I have reported this many times in the past and I'm just going to try again since we are seeing some FANTASTIC feedback from everybody so far this PTS cycle. I will provide a video to showcase this as well below.

For some time now, the Tri-Focus Passive on Lighting Staffs Heavy Attacks will splash off of PvE targets in PVP settings to enemy players, dishing out absurd damage (Empower is applied because it is chained from a mob and thus bypasses Battle Spirit). This is obviously an exploit and I've heard many reasonings defending it on technicalities. In the wake of seeing the Imperial City get the much needed queue-exploit get the spotlight from the team (thank you so much for fixing this!), I want to present this Lightning Staff Heavy Attack Passive issue as well. This particular exploit makes PVPing in the Imperial City very divisive as, wouldn't you know it, most players use Lightning Staffs in the environment because they are aware of this exploit. Just like the queue-exploit in Imperial City, this Lightning Staff exploit has been abused for years and makes a large pain-point for fairness in the gameplay in said content (to a lesser extent it also can happen in Cyrodiil against guards).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMgJJ3lDGs

Shoutout to Gloomfrost for providing footage of this occurring! I have never experienced it happening to me in Cyrodiil so the video was informative to myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6CrV6umo_8

Shoutout to Rob Sanders uploading Imperial City footage of this phenomenon.

Please do not bother these uploaders! The way I see it, these are valuable documentation on the state of the game. Uploaders or chatters here-in don't need any suspensions or investigations. The videos are extremely helpful for showcasing the issue and I'm thankful. Don't hurt these uploaders, please! They're helping us find a solution for this. Thanks for your time and I hope we can get this to the team to take a look.

I was under the impression this had been addressed.