It's only "hitting hard" because of Shattered Path Signet.

But it's fine to put a delay on the initial status application.

I like overpowered toys as much as the next player, but, yes, this skill has got to catch a planet-cracking nerf.

Its current status (heh) is completely stupid.

They could just give it the empower treatment and only apply status effects if battle spirit isn't active.

Orbital78 wrote: »

They could just give it the empower treatment and only apply status effects if battle spirit isn't active.

The reason why it does damage in the first place is because the game is in a state where skills have to do damage or they have no value or purpose.

If that skill didn't do damage, it then becomes pointless to slot vs. all the alternatives.

Let's look back at when ZOS made this change in the first place. Hybrid builds did not exist (well they did, I ran it anyway even without the weapon/spell changes which I don't think was the way to implement hybridization, butlet's not go 20-30 pages on that & leave it at that).

At the time, didn't stam builds rule damage output period? And also, all status effects didn't do damage did they? Only burning.

ZOS did this as a stop-gap solution for buffing destro staves without actually having to buff all of the destro staff skills properly. Why did they do it? I don't know. I'm not ZOS.

ZOS has repeatedly buffed and changed the goal of status effects overall, not that it's an issue with status effects themselves as it is this skill.

But the thing is, if the skill is nerfed everyone around the block knows that destruction staff no longer has a purpose to be slotted in PvP vs. Restoration staff / DW/ 2H.

Because destruction staff is yet again, a bad skill line. It needs a rework. Kind of like NB's Shadow line, -- you know what we all know what skill lines won't be slotted or used by now.

The skill has been an issue for certain "PvPers" since its change. And, really, I would welcome the change of removing the damage on it BUT ZOS would have to buff and rework the rest of destruction staff or the entire weapon is useless and no one will bother running it.

With scribing, subclassing, etc. available to cover the debuffs, who would seriously use a destruction staff vs. restoration and 2h/SnB/DW without this skill being in the state that it is?

Even with the skill, it's hard for me to bother slotting a destruction staff on a hybrid build that can balance mag and stam. I actually hate destruction staves because they are so useless in PvP and I rarely ever slot them because they're terrible. I only slot them when there's no other option.

And everyone knows destruction staff is bad. Have you even seen a dev team member slot it during PvP? No one seriously is using it unless they are using it as part of an overall build (gank, range) and even then maybe not if they didn't need to.

Destruction staves can have the power rotated out of that skill and moved into the actual active skill damage instead. But then, the same players complaining now would still complain. I know they will.

Imagine if they nerfed this skill and then put the power in reach and force pulse. Oh man, they'd free up a slot for a lot of builds.

Wrong approach that ruins it in PvE, especially for tanks and healers. As a tank, my entire build depends on this skill procing statuses on demand by allowing me to proc Baron Zaldrus for ultimate generation, and it being free or at least a low cost is also pivotal for support roles.
The first hit remains guaranteed, but it does not apply more afterwards over its duration. It should become dodgeable and receive a small magicka cost; like 1k+

That's where I would begin without once again making a skill useless for everyone because PvP got messed up by broken items.

Dracane wrote: »

Wrong approach that ruins it in PvE, especially for tanks and healers. As a tank, my entire build depends on this skill procing statuses on demand by allowing me to proc Baron Zaldrus for ultimate generation, and it being free or at least a low cost is also pivotal for support roles.
The first hit remains guaranteed, but it does not apply more afterwards over its duration. It should become dodgeable and receive a small magicka cost; like 1k+

That's where I would begin without once again making a skill useless for everyone because PvP got messed up by broken items.

I... don't really care about that because it's Gogiga-cheese in PvE as well.

Like any other sane person, I use it + Zaudrus in the Archive because you would be completely throwing not to. But I freely acknowledge that it is stupid and should not exist. Zaudrus certainly was not released anticipating doubling your ult-gen by casting a edge-case gimmick of a skill.

Make people earn their status effects the old-fashioned way not through cheesy auto-procs.

• Add a cost, decreases per rank.
• Reduce duration from 30s to 20s, but gain increased status effect chance while active.
• Swap 3x effects for 1x effect based on staff type, but every 5s, including on cast.
• Like Blockade, name changes based on staff type.

Example tooltip:
Something like this would solve a lot of problem it's had well before Signet. It's not only because it's free, it applies 7 negative effects for a whopping 30 seconds; Major Breach, Minor Maim, Minor Brittle, Minor Vuln, Chill, Burning, and Concussed.

To be a bit general, a base status effect deals about 1/6th of a ranged spammable, so applying 3 at the same time is already half, a modifier of 2x is enough to compete, Signet is giving close to 3x in conjunction with class/set bonuses. It's very easy to take the somewhat balanced damage at its core to obscene levels as we found previously with Infinite Archive with the Focussed Efforts Vision invalidating any other build path.

Ele Sus is so overloaded, it's competing with basic 20s dots for pure DPS despite being meant as a utility skill. Quick comparison with base stats to Reach within the same line:
TLDR: 8740 / 5639 = 1.55 x stronger, bigger gap if you use Reach with a Shock/Frost staff.

Obviously Reach is kinda crap, but that's more to do with auxillary effects rather than its baseline tooltip which every 20s dot shares. It's at least better than Consuming Trap and Degen. Regardless, highlights how dumb Ele Sus is.

Also, using the same math, my version of 1 Status Effect every 5s would amount to 1850 for Chill/Concuss and 5040 for Burning over 20s, but only if under a best case scenaio without another source of burning. Would heavily reduce the negative effects to 3ish instead of 7, with a balanced cost for what is a utility skill, for a reasonable 20s, and a self buff that competes with Throwing Knife's 100% Status Effect buff to make D Staff more interesting to play with as a main weapon.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

• Add a cost, decreases per rank.
• Reduce duration from 30s to 20s, but gain increased status effect chance while active.
• Swap 3x effects for 1x effect based on staff type, but every 5s, including on cast.
• Like Blockade, name changes based on staff type.

Example tooltip:

Concussive Susceptibility IV
Target: Enemy
Range: 28m
Cost: 2430

Use your mastery over the elements to sap an enemy's defenses, empowering yourself with +100% status effect chance and afflicting them with Major Breach for 20 seconds, reducing their Physical and Spell Resistance by 5948. Every 4 seconds the enemy is afflicted with the Concussion status effect.

New effect
Applies a status effect based on your Staff type periodically and increase your chance to apply status effects while active, reduces cost as the ability ranks up.

Something like this would solve a lot of problem it's had well before Signet. It's not only because it's free, it applies 7 negative effects for a whopping 30 seconds; Major Breach, Minor Maim, Minor Brittle, Minor Vuln, Chill, Burning, and Concussed.

To be a bit general, a base status effect deals about 1/6th of a ranged spammable, so applying 3 at the same time is already half, a modifier of 2x is enough to compete, Signet is giving close to 3x in conjunction with class/set bonuses. It's very easy to take the somewhat balanced damage at its core to obscene levels as we found previously with Infinite Archive with the Focussed Efforts Vision invalidating any other build path.

Ele Sus is so overloaded, it's competing with basic 20s dots for pure DPS despite being meant as a utility skill. Quick comparison with base stats to Reach within the same line:

Ele Sus:
(336 (Burning x 3) + 370 (Chill) + 370 (Concuss)) x 5 over 30 seconds
= (1748) x 5
= 8740

Reach:
(336 (Burning x 3)) + 1161 Direct + 3470 over 20s
= 1008 + 1161 + 3470
= 5639

TLDR: 8740 / 5639 = 1.55 x stronger, bigger gap if you use Reach with a Shock/Frost staff.

Obviously Reach is kinda crap, but that's more to do with auxillary effects rather than its baseline tooltip which every 20s dot shares. It's at least better than Consuming Trap and Degen. Regardless, highlights how dumb Ele Sus is.

Also, using the same math, my version of 1 Status Effect every 5s would amount to 1850 for Chill/Concuss and 5040 for Burning over 20s, but only if under a best case scenaio without another source of burning. Would heavily reduce the negative effects to 3ish instead of 7, with a balanced cost for what is a utility skill, for a reasonable 20s, and a self buff that competes with Throwing Knife's 100% Status Effect buff to make D Staff more interesting to play with as a main weapon.

I like the premise of this idea (and have mentioned something similar in the past), however I would keep the resource cost below 2k and give it a more frequent tick rate (2 or 3 seconds) to be closer to twin slashes, especially if we are going to remove the extra status effect procs and tie them to the staff type.

If it's a status effect proc, you can't really do 2~3s because their modifiers are cracked as hell right now, eg. Signet, Arcanist, DK, Warden. It would outpace any and all 20s dots I can think of that scale much lower. I strongly believe it should lean into the utility side of things in a more balanced way instead of also trying to be a competitive DPS option. There is no reason it should be outpacing 20s dots that provide no utility.

I originally picked 4s as it also fit neatly into 20s, but when I did the math I found it still competed way too closesly with 20s dots by applying itself 6 times, at 5s, it procs 5 times and reduces how easy it is to keep that single effect up for 100% uptime, avoiding something like Concussed getting the perma +15% damage condition it has by being too consistent on its own. I'd even say 6s would be the most fair, but it just doesn't neatly fit in 20s.

Either way, a cheap utility skill with a status effect buff and reason to use specific staves vs a catch all free cast that covers everything could be interesting, but also balanced.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

In saying this, reach/clench should probably get reworks at the same time if ele sus goes this route since they have been unusable for a long time now (outside of frost specifically on frost warden DPS or tanks for taunt/brittle/shields)

Definitely, they're scraping bottom of the barrel. I hope they rework D Staff with Warden and Sorc so Frost/Shock staves make more sense for them, and in retrospect, DK.

They could do a lot of different things, but funny enough, if they just copied the Frost Reach effect with higher upfront damage on to Shock and Flame Reach, it'd be a banger option. You'd have Force Shock for a spammable that did all 3 elements still, but then you'd also have a dedicated element spammable that could potentially synergize much better. Frankly they could throw that higher damage back on to Clench like it used to be, and people probably still wouldn't use it over other popular options, but it would bring back that old Shock Clench playstyle we loved.