Can we please scrap Ashen Estus?

[Sage]

I've mainly been a pure caster in all souls games and wasn't a fan of the transition to a resource system to cast spells. It wouldn't be so bad however, if I wasn't required to sacrifice healing for said resource.

In Bloodborne, Arcane items cost Quicksilver Bullets to use. When you run out of bullets, you had to sacrifice Health to get more, which meant you had to spend Blood Vials to get that health back. You're juggling a lot of stuff. Thankfully there were lots of ways to utilise Arcane besides just the items, but it wasn't really viable to play purely with spells. A pure caster doesn't really fit with the quick flow of the game anyway so it's not as big of a deal.

DS3 is by far the worst offender because it forces you to allot Estus Flasks to either restore FP or Health. In addition to cutting your healing, both types of flasks are halved when you are a phantom (rounded down, also). So if you have 7 Ashen Estus and 8 Estus, you would have 3 Ashen and 4 Healing as a phantom. This is compared to the 7 Healing anyone who doesn't use Ashen Estus could have, and they probably deal more damage than you do because sorcery is extremely difficult to use compared to weapons in most cases, especially PvP.

And now this same system that punishes casters for no reason is back in Elden Ring and I feel like we are going to have the same problem. Leave the resource, but please add more means of restoring FP than sacrificing healing flasks to make pure casters viable. For example:

- Slow, passive FP regeneration
- FP-restoring items with long use times
- Scrap FP altogether and bring back spell uses (give the same treatment to weapon arts)

[WhiteLezard]

I like how Nioh 2 and Code Vein allow you to recharge "mana" by simply hitting enemies.
The Surge doesn't have spells but certain skills are recharged the same way.
But given how the Soulsborne playerbase loathes those games I don't see From Software using a system taken from them.

[Asterio]

I think it's a way to balance ranged attacks.
All forms of ranged have some limitations.

Bows do less damage than melee weapons and magic sacrifices health.
Since most threats are melee, It makes sense.

[Sage]

Origineel geplaatst door Asterio:

I think it's a way to balance ranged attacks.
All forms of ranged have some limitations.

Bows does less damage than melee weapons and magic sacrifices health.
Since most threats are melee, It makes sense.

This is an idealistic way of looking at it, but in practise it doesn't balance out this way. Sorcery has always had handicaps placed on it, but in recent games it has gotten weaker and had even more limitations placed on it.

Yes magic does a ton of damage in terms of numbers, but it's often very hard to land spells in the first place, and you are already sacrificing time and mobility to cast them. Emphasis on PvP here, but this also applies to some instances in PvE.

I don't think Health is a reasonable trade for FP. It should regenerate passively in some way, limiting how much you can cast in a single encounter without forcing you to sacrifice something as precious as healing just to deal damage.

[🎃MaximusBlastalot🎃]

I would rather they return to the almost dnd style spell slots of 1 but thats not going to happen.

Slow passive or gaining some on attack is a more elegant solution for arts as well but I doubt we will see it.

Origineel geplaatst door Sage:

Yes magic does a ton of damage in terms of numbers, but it's often very hard to land spells in the first place, and you are already sacrificing time and mobility to cast them. Emphasis on PvP here, but this also applies to some instances in PvE.

This is true of sorceries as a whole but not of "sorcieries" as a play style in pvp.

Playing Passively sorceries in ds3 sitting around with hmc and dart (particularly from crystal chime and a dark weapon/filanore) is incredibly difficult to deal with and near or on par with scar or warmancer.

The real disconnect in 3 is between sorceries that are actually useful in pve and being forced to use dart/hmc due to cast speed for pvp.

[Jinzo]

High risk high reward

[Haz ᵕ̈]

Do we have rings?
FP Regen ring would solve the issue if so.

[Endarion]

honestly with the insane damage spels and weapon arts did in the network test if they just gave passive FP regen they would just be broken

as it stands if they wanted to give passive fp regen they would need to nerf spells and arts damage, and at that point no one would use them

[Venator]

I also agree that magic flasks is boring. hopefully there are items that just passivly regen a decent amount of fp that you can be a full on spellsword, and fully allot estus to healing.

[Asterio]

Origineel geplaatst door Sage:

Origineel geplaatst door Asterio:

I think it's a way to balance ranged attacks.
All forms of ranged have some limitations.

Bows does less damage than melee weapons and magic sacrifices health.
Since most threats are melee, It makes sense.

This is an idealistic way of looking at it, but in practise it doesn't balance out this way. Sorcery has always had handicaps placed on it, but in recent games it has gotten weaker and had even more limitations placed on it.

Yes magic does a ton of damage in terms of numbers, but it's often very hard to land spells in the first place, and you are already sacrificing time and mobility to cast them. Emphasis on PvP here, but this also applies to some instances in PvE.

I don't think Health is a reasonable trade for FP. It should regenerate passively in some way, limiting how much you can cast in a single encounter without forcing you to sacrifice something as precious as healing just to deal damage.

From what we've seen, ER's magic is the most powerful in the series since Demon's Souls.
There's numerous arts and spells that are useful in PvP and magic just destroys PvE.
Mounted combat with magic is basically the only viable way to do it.

This is probably the game where we will see the least pure melee builds.
Most will be at least a hybrid with a few magics.

So yeah, there should be a big limitation, and healing is a good one.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Ashen at the cost of estus is a great design imo.

[Xengre]

It wasn't too bad in DS3.

Ahsen estus was extremely efficient in terms of healing (prayers) and recovery/FP total. Even when split so you can avoid prayer healing and have some for health you still had enough between bonfires, especially since a truly pure spell caster shouldn't even be getting hit due to the near complete lack of ranged attacks in this franchise.

You could also use weapon effects to recovery FP (+fp on kill and/or the fp regen infusions), fp cost reduction rings, more efficient spells for some mobs that don't need bigger spells, etc. Alternatively, you could use some melee on easier mobs to cut down on fp demand.

I'm not saying I am against a change to how this is designed, but it wasn't actually bad in DS3. Magic is notoriously op in pve for a reason.

[Drkwatch]

I don't understand the logic of "I want my thing but I don't want to make compromises for it."
You are casting magic, the tradeoff for superior range is limited resources and lower melee related stats. Just like Dex builds trade off large solid blows for multiple smaller strikes.

Magic is already very powerful PvE where the tracking doesn't matter as much, you remove all downsides and what's the point of playing anything else?

[Sage]

Origineel geplaatst door Drkwatch:

I don't understand the logic of "I want my thing but I don't want to make compromises for it."
You are casting magic, the tradeoff for superior range is limited resources and lower melee related stats. Just like Dex builds trade off large solid blows for multiple smaller strikes.

Magic is already very powerful PvE where the tracking doesn't matter as much, you remove all downsides and what's the point of playing anything else?

That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I think Ashen Estus is bad by design. What I'm saying is that the limitations of magic should be per-encounter rather than per-rest, and that health is not a proportionate recourse to sacrifice. Bringing back spell uses (which were in both DS1 and 2) would even be preferable.

The magic can be balanced around a new resource system, it's trivial to argue about that part. Regardless of how powerful or weak magic is, it will always feel bad to trade healing for FP in my opinion.

[Sage]

It's like people just read the title and assume I want no limitations on magic.

Limitations are a part of magic's identity in a way. I just want different kinds of limitations that don't disproportionately weaken me at different stages of the game.

The split flasks system is an especially large problem in co-op/pvp because of how both flasks are halved and rounded down. In the early game you are significantly worse off, and funnily enough magic tends to be at its weakest in the early game as well. So not only are you getting shafted by your resources, you're working with spells that are inconsistent.

By the time you get to the late game you're forced to use all of your ring slots, a specific head piece, staff and dagger to get any decent damage on a pure caster.

The sacrifice must be proportionate to what you get back, and if I have to throw away healing flasks, I better get something damn good in return. I would rather be able to craft FP-restoring items and only be able to carry a small amount in my inventory at a time. These items would have a long cast time though, so they would be hard to use mid-encounter.

Bringing back spell uses seems like the best course of action to me. I never had an issue with it, and I liked that I could attune multiple of the same spell for additional uses. It had this D&D-style wizard feel to it, in that you would prepare your spells when you rested depending on what you might need for upcoming encounters.

[Xengre]

Origineel geplaatst door Sage:

Origineel geplaatst door Drkwatch:

I don't understand the logic of "I want my thing but I don't want to make compromises for it."
You are casting magic, the tradeoff for superior range is limited resources and lower melee related stats. Just like Dex builds trade off large solid blows for multiple smaller strikes.

Magic is already very powerful PvE where the tracking doesn't matter as much, you remove all downsides and what's the point of playing anything else?

That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I think Ashen Estus is bad by design. What I'm saying is that the limitations of magic should be per-encounter rather than per-rest, and that health is not a proportionate recourse to sacrifice. Bringing back spell uses (which were in both DS1 and 2) would even be preferable.

The magic can be balanced around a new resource system, it's trivial to argue about that part. Regardless of how powerful or weak magic is, it will always feel bad to trade healing for FP in my opinion.

You aren't trading it off though.

Ranged = less damage and thus less need for healing flasks due to the nature of sitting comfy at range, especially because this franchise has a severe lack of ranged threat for the most part.

In the event you did want to improve your ability to heal you can utilize regeneration or healing options which are actually more efficient thus someone with Ashen has significantly more healing potential than someone without, just with the trade off of casting healing spells being slower (most at least) and regeneration being the slowest but especially efficient.

In addition, asking for it to be per encounter would be a significant nerf compared to DS3's system which was actually excessive in resources for a caster. As mentioned before, there are additional ways to recover that FP via the right weapon/infusion, etc.

As for late game you are not forced to use the staff + head piece + dagger unless you are heavily sorcery based caster. There are other types that don't require any of those extra buffs, as that is unique to sorcery (for some odd reason). Those extra items, even for sorcery, are not required and merely help boost offense but uh... you aren't losing anything out by having them. You don't really have better alternatives to wear, anyways. The build/theory crafting in DS3 falls kind of flat for casters. I wouldn't say it is for "decent dmg", either, since the damage is actually ridiculously excessive when you are doing 1k-4k+ per cast with various types of spells and even if you did trade off a ring for some other ring you wont lose a ton of dmg unless for some reason you start dropping all of your rings off for other stuff(but why would you?).

I think, in reality, you might want to try actually testing healing spells in DS3 if you play again. 1 Ashen flask equaling 3-4 AoE full heals where a single flask might get you 600-700 HP is pretty imbalanced. Ashen clearly is superior.

I'd be all down for Dungeon Lord's spell system, though. Beats out this and Elder Scrolls by miles.