Almost every build be it in PvE or PvP has a spammable.
Be it whip for magdk, jabs for Templars or suprise attack for Nightblades or when looking at PvP:
Dizzying for stamdk, dizzying for stamden, dizzying for stamnecro, dizzying for stamsorc, jabs for stamplar and suprise attack for nightblades.
For the magicka side of things we have:
Strife for nbs, jabs for templars, whip for Dks, elemental weapon for Warden, elemental weapon for sorcs, elemental weapon for necro.
See a pattern?
Four stamina and three magicka specs are using the same spammable that's not from their class skill line.
Are they all using them because those skills are so strong?
No, not at all it's simply for the reason that they have no other viable option at their disposal.
Stamina DK has access to stone giant, more commonly referred to as "Poop fist or poop stomp"
A skill that doesn't know what it wants to be.
It swaps from being a small AoE to become a ranged ability that also has a clunky stun attached to it. Not only that it also has a longer casttime than all ultimates and it's surely no where near as powerful, to make matters worse it has a 300ms minimum traveltime, no matter how close you are to the target they have 0.3s time to avoid your skill after you've fired it.
Stamsorc has access to the newly added crystal weapon, a carbon copy of crushing weapon that has seen absolutely no useage in PvP ever because it has multiple issues.
The first one is, it'll take you 1 second before your spammable deals damage because your first light attack in a fight can't proc it and this 1 second delay will occur everytime you start using the skill again. Secondly you never know if your next light or heavy attack actually hits the target thanks to positioning being shifted to server so you can't rely on what you see on your client. In order to not lose any damage when you spam your spammable you have to use crystal weapon every gcd, if your light attack doesn't hit however it's bad luck for you, you just wasted a whole gcd dealing no damage and have wasted all your resources spent in that gcd. When looking at combat logs after pvp fights you'll realise that there's a huge gap between how many times you've casted crystal weapons and how many times you've actually hit them along with the time it took between casting it and landing the light attack to proc the damage.
stamina warden has access to birds which offer a mediocre bleed when hitting targets who are off balanced, this means the secondary effect is only working every 15 seconds for 7 seconds just to go back on cooldown again, meaning the secondary effect is active less than 33% of the time at best. Additionally the skill has the longest traveltime of any spammable or execute in the entire game. It takes an eternal 1.2 seconds for the skill to hit after you've pressed it, your enemy has more than 4 times longer time to react to your skill than the average human reaction time is. You have to rely on the enemy not paying any attention if you want to hit them with this skill.
stamina necromancer again a meele spec with access to a ranged spammable that has a 300ms minimum traveltime while also offering no debuff and it doesn't provide any meaningful secondary effect, additionally the skill is more expensive than meele skills, deals less damage and fails to proc it's 20% damage boost on the third cast after you've been hit by a guard's eclipse.
Why do all those stamina classes use dizzying swing then? Well because dizzy might have a 1 second delay before it deals damage but it makes up for that by offering the damage at the end of your gcd meaning you create a burst spike with the next gcd where you can use an instant ability like executioner to kill someone before they can heal back up again. Additionally the skill offers the immensely important feature of having a stun attached to an offensive skill even if this stun can only occur every 22 seconds. To make up for the long delay the skill also deals more damage than "instant" skills.
Does this mean dizzying swing is overperforming?
NO! it shows how ridiculously underpowered and weak the other skills are.
Stamina spammables have to be instant and by that i mean you press it and they deal damage instantly, no travel time, no cast time, no light attack needed, nothing just instant damage when you want it.
Now let's take a look why elemental weapon is so commonly used on sorc, warden and necromancers.
For sorcs it's not hard to see, the have no class spammable to begin with meaning they have to pick one which leaves eviscerate, force pulse and elemental weapon.
Eviscerate deals more damage and is cheaper but sorcs don't want to be right in the face of the enemy all the time.
Force pulse vs elemental weapon is an easy choice, elemental weapon causes Hp desyncs procs the same status effects and has a faster traveltime because on staff light attacks proc it in the same gcd as you cast the skill, opposed to what crushing weapon does with meele light attacks, and deals more damage while giving you access to the psijic passives.
Necromancer's and Warden's spammable issues have been talked about above already, why use slow skills with weak secondary effects when elemental weapon deals the same damage, provides better secondary effects and is much much faster?
Magicka class spammables are required to be more powerful when it comes to the debuff/ buff department because they are ranged and thus have a very penalizing minimum traveltime which makes hitting them much harder and the skills less reliable overall in PvP. The spammables also have to synergize much better with the class overall as magicka specs have a lot less skill lines to make up for their class's shortcomings which is why magnecro and warden are generally seen as pathetic offensive specs.
All those class spammables above have to be reworked to make the game better and more fun.
It's boring to use the same skills across multiple specs, but you have to because the classes simply don't come with a sufficient toolkit.
Here's an easy list how to make spammables good:
Stamina or magicka?
Be it whip for magdk, jabs for Templars or suprise attack for Nightblades or when looking at PvP:
Dizzying for stamdk, dizzying for stamden, dizzying for stamnecro, dizzying for stamsorc, jabs for stamplar and suprise attack for nightblades.
For the magicka side of things we have:
Strife for nbs, jabs for templars, whip for Dks, elemental weapon for Warden, elemental weapon for sorcs, elemental weapon for necro.
See a pattern?
Four stamina and three magicka specs are using the same spammable that's not from their class skill line.
Are they all using them because those skills are so strong?
No, not at all it's simply for the reason that they have no other viable option at their disposal.
Stamina DK has access to stone giant, more commonly referred to as "Poop fist or poop stomp"
A skill that doesn't know what it wants to be.
It swaps from being a small AoE to become a ranged ability that also has a clunky stun attached to it. Not only that it also has a longer casttime than all ultimates and it's surely no where near as powerful, to make matters worse it has a 300ms minimum traveltime, no matter how close you are to the target they have 0.3s time to avoid your skill after you've fired it.
Stamsorc has access to the newly added crystal weapon, a carbon copy of crushing weapon that has seen absolutely no useage in PvP ever because it has multiple issues.
The first one is, it'll take you 1 second before your spammable deals damage because your first light attack in a fight can't proc it and this 1 second delay will occur everytime you start using the skill again. Secondly you never know if your next light or heavy attack actually hits the target thanks to positioning being shifted to server so you can't rely on what you see on your client. In order to not lose any damage when you spam your spammable you have to use crystal weapon every gcd, if your light attack doesn't hit however it's bad luck for you, you just wasted a whole gcd dealing no damage and have wasted all your resources spent in that gcd. When looking at combat logs after pvp fights you'll realise that there's a huge gap between how many times you've casted crystal weapons and how many times you've actually hit them along with the time it took between casting it and landing the light attack to proc the damage.
stamina warden has access to birds which offer a mediocre bleed when hitting targets who are off balanced, this means the secondary effect is only working every 15 seconds for 7 seconds just to go back on cooldown again, meaning the secondary effect is active less than 33% of the time at best. Additionally the skill has the longest traveltime of any spammable or execute in the entire game. It takes an eternal 1.2 seconds for the skill to hit after you've pressed it, your enemy has more than 4 times longer time to react to your skill than the average human reaction time is. You have to rely on the enemy not paying any attention if you want to hit them with this skill.
stamina necromancer again a meele spec with access to a ranged spammable that has a 300ms minimum traveltime while also offering no debuff and it doesn't provide any meaningful secondary effect, additionally the skill is more expensive than meele skills, deals less damage and fails to proc it's 20% damage boost on the third cast after you've been hit by a guard's eclipse.
Why do all those stamina classes use dizzying swing then? Well because dizzy might have a 1 second delay before it deals damage but it makes up for that by offering the damage at the end of your gcd meaning you create a burst spike with the next gcd where you can use an instant ability like executioner to kill someone before they can heal back up again. Additionally the skill offers the immensely important feature of having a stun attached to an offensive skill even if this stun can only occur every 22 seconds. To make up for the long delay the skill also deals more damage than "instant" skills.
Does this mean dizzying swing is overperforming?
NO! it shows how ridiculously underpowered and weak the other skills are.
Stamina spammables have to be instant and by that i mean you press it and they deal damage instantly, no travel time, no cast time, no light attack needed, nothing just instant damage when you want it.
Now let's take a look why elemental weapon is so commonly used on sorc, warden and necromancers.
For sorcs it's not hard to see, the have no class spammable to begin with meaning they have to pick one which leaves eviscerate, force pulse and elemental weapon.
Eviscerate deals more damage and is cheaper but sorcs don't want to be right in the face of the enemy all the time.
Force pulse vs elemental weapon is an easy choice, elemental weapon causes Hp desyncs procs the same status effects and has a faster traveltime because on staff light attacks proc it in the same gcd as you cast the skill, opposed to what crushing weapon does with meele light attacks, and deals more damage while giving you access to the psijic passives.
Necromancer's and Warden's spammable issues have been talked about above already, why use slow skills with weak secondary effects when elemental weapon deals the same damage, provides better secondary effects and is much much faster?
Magicka class spammables are required to be more powerful when it comes to the debuff/ buff department because they are ranged and thus have a very penalizing minimum traveltime which makes hitting them much harder and the skills less reliable overall in PvP. The spammables also have to synergize much better with the class overall as magicka specs have a lot less skill lines to make up for their class's shortcomings which is why magnecro and warden are generally seen as pathetic offensive specs.
All those class spammables above have to be reworked to make the game better and more fun.
It's boring to use the same skills across multiple specs, but you have to because the classes simply don't come with a sufficient toolkit.
Here's an easy list how to make spammables good:
Stamina or magicka?
whatever is needed but keep in mind they don't have to be exactly similar. There can be a meele stamina morph and a ranged magicka morph.
Ranged or meele
Both possible for magicka but has to be complemented by the class's toolkit but minimum traveltime has to be 200ms max.
For stam it's a rhetoric question because every ranged stam build will spam snipe till the world ends
Channel, casttime or instant
For stam it's a rhetoric question because every ranged stam build will spam snipe till the world ends
instant is the way to go.
Channeled and casttime only with powerful debuffs and more damage to make up for the delay and risk
Buffs and debuffs?
Channeled and casttime only with powerful debuffs and more damage to make up for the delay and risk
Yes spammables can't just deal damage or no one uses them. Debuffs and buffs have to complement the class
Spammables are too similar across classes?
the combat flow of a class isn't dictated by the spammable it's how the whole toolkit works together.
It's not bad if all class spammables had the same blueprint that got changed to fit the class
Maybe keep the current spammables?
It's not bad if all class spammables had the same blueprint that got changed to fit the class
Hell no make the game fun to play and not make people feel miserable everytime they use their damn class spammable
After that we went to Wayrest and then to Eldenroot (Grahtwood), where we have been for several months. Right now we are jumping around, you can often find us in Vivec. If we are not there we are in Rawl'kha, Wayrest, Eldenroot, Belkarth or Mournhold. Please check my latest comment to find out where our current trader is located!
