5 Pages of Feedback on 1.6 by Sigma Draconis [Update: Trial Videos]

pppontus

Introduction
Sigma Draconis is a community-based Daggerfall Covenant PvE Guild on the EU server. We have just under 500 members with a 20-day inactive policy, we have both social members and a lot of PVE endgame raiders, currently in possession of the all the top DC Trial times in EU.

This is a summary of the most important feedback that we and our members have in regards to the changes in 1.6, currently on the PTS.

Stamina (& resource) drains
At the moment on the PTS it seems like the cost is far too high for all types of defensive actions like roll dodge and blocking that consume stamina, leading to inability to block during situations where the game still makes blocking mandatory such as in large trash pulls during Veteran Dungeons.

The current meta on live is basically “always block when AOE:ing” and this comes down to the way that these large trash pulls work, because of the large amount of mobs and graphical effects there is no real way of telling what attacks are directed at who - and also no way for the tank to keep aggro of a large amount of mobs. This has previously been stated as an element of design i.e. Tanks are not supposed to aggro all mobs, but just the biggest threats. The problem this causes is that especially Light Armor users must block all attacks directed at them or they will die within seconds. This works on Live as expected by perma-blocking, which might not be ideal, but the damage is too high not to block it.

Suggested solutions to this problem is either to lower the amount of damage put out by mobs in large trash pulls, lower the amount of mobs in trash pulls or simply lower the rate of stamina consumption by blocking back to 1.5-levels.

In case this is a change made for PvP, which it seems like, a better idea is to change the Cyrodiil “buff” Battle Spirit to include a higher defensive resource cost much like it decreases damage taken now in 1.6. This would enable PvE to continue to function “normally” without affecting PvP balance.

Veteran Dungeons (trash mobs & adds damage levels)
This ties together with the previous point, but is also valid on it’s own. Currently the trash mobs in all Veteran Dungeons that we have tested are way harder than any of the boss fights. I have previously posted this video and will do so again as it illustrates both this point and the stamina cost very well (and as a bonus, it’s also quite hilarious): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_4I6IvbQCQ

Most of the (non-add) boss fights I’ve encountered so far seem to be fair in their level of difficulty, some things hit a little too hard for no apparent reason, but that might be because Light Armor is useless now.

Respec costs for Champion System
I have personally always liked having several specs on my characters, my Templar is a Healer and a Tank, my DK and Nightblade on 1.5 have both Tank & DPS specs. This is the case for many of the raiders in the Guild. We are really happy about the current 100g cost to respec Champion Points, as this still allows characters to have multiple setups.

I haven’t studied the Addon API in much detail, but I have seen there are some API references to the Champion System - and if there’s a way to provide APIs that will allow an addon to save configurations and spend points in the Champion System that would be extremely helpful for us.
Please do not make CS respecs a costly affair, and if it isn’t already available, please provide API access to the Champion System in a way that makes it possible to reconfigure our setup easily. If the cost for CS respecs go up, keep them reasonable, so that respeccing to take on another role is still viable for endgame players. 1K gold is a reasonable gold sink, 10K is a barrier that locks characters into a single role.

Trial gear nerfs & itemization
There is already an excellent thread on this subject here by f047ys3v3n. Thank you for that!

I will however still highlight the need to provide loot-based incentives for completing the hardest PVE-content. We all know that creating content like Sanctum Ophidia is a massive development effort and that we can’t expect to get a new piece of endgame content every two weeks, however this also means that the content needs to provide sufficient incentive through loot, achievements, etc. to be re-run and perfected over months time while waiting for new content.

In my own opinion the itemization has been rather lacking so far when it comes down to endgame content. Looking at AA and Hel Ra, the only really useful sets have been Aether, Two-Fanged Snake (jewelry esp.) and possibly the Destructive Mage or 3pc Ophidian. Even then, the 5pc bonus on Aether was never really used, and some of the bonuses on most sets are .. very lackluster.

This turned a corner when the new Sanctum Ophidia loot was released, the Infallible Aether and Vicious Ophidian were both really good sets. Not overpowered, but with bonuses that made sense and could slightly increase the DPS and/or sustainability in a unique way. Eternal Yokeda is not completely useless, it serves it’s use on the Serpent fight especially and as such is quite interesting. Items that help with the content they drop from is always a bonus as it makes it worthwhile to earn them so that you can continually perform better.

However, both Infallible Aether and Vicious Ophidian got a nerf in this patch, as evidenced by the post I linked earlier. Infallible Aether got it’s unique heavy attack bonus nerfed by 40%, and Vicious Ophidian had it’s weapon damage go from 22 > 170 while Hundigs Rage went from 29 to 299.

Suggestion: Make set bonuses on endgame gear more valuable (not less), give slightly larger bonuses to crit , spell damage/weapon damage to these gear sets. Stop giving incentives like 5 more magicka on enchantments. We are not looking for stupidly overpowered gear, but something that provides an incentive and gives us a tiny boost.

Also you can see this to see exactly how bad crit is on sets now, which is in essence why the Trial sets are useless.

I am not really into PvP so I can’t comment on those sets, but the same should be applied there, PvP should also provide interesting itemization. Crafting too, but make crafting more interesting in the process. Release new 9 trait sets that have bonuses that are better than low trait sets, etc. Itemization needs to be an incentive for progression across the board.

Also remove all traces of Traits like Training, Charged, Sturdy, Exploration etc. from all types of dropped Veteran Gear. These traits serve little purpose apart from very specific situations and/or filling out the number of traits required in the time sink that is crafting in ESO.

Overall nerf in effectiveness (70 CP)
With the reservation that some of this may be directly or indirectly related to the difficulty of trash mobs and/or stamina drain, it simply feels like our characters are less powerful after 1.6 with the 70 Champion Points that we’ve been given. Dungeons are harder, taking down groups of mobs is much harder. This point is hard to judge fairly as it is directly affected by other factors such as mob armor/spell res getting buffed, gear getting nerfed, stam costs increasing but it is a potentially serious issue and there should be no expectation from ZOS that your customers will accept getting nerfed and forced to level up yet another character to get back to the same level of power that we used to have.

It is also affecting us in Trials, for me I am noticing my Stamina regen doesn’t cut it anymore (with the exact same sets, buffs, you name it) as on Live. On the exact copy of my character I can no longer sustain my offense even after putting a few points in both regen and cost reduction. This is a major issue, because we literally all got nerfed. Simply put, we all feel far less effective. This together with the raid gear nerf is just a slap in the face.

Trials
We’ve only tried AA so far, very unsuccessfully due to both issues of our own and the buffs/nerfs. I can however say that if your intention was to stop us from “stack and burn” this still works very well on the first boss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLqXeE1EZuo

However it does not seem to work at all on the 2nd boss due to the Negate nerf that dropped yesterday. (any null pain spawning after a Negate is dropped stays up, i.e. it's possible to continue casting into a Negate field).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX_JIV2THcM

This boss will now require a strategy, something we obviously didn't have.

PS. You can also see some of the stamina management issues here. DW used to be self-sustainable but is not, can be sustained through pots and Evil Hunter (only appropriate targets) but Bow and execute (Killers Blade) is not even remotely sustainable.

I’m not exactly sure what the intentions behind the nerf was, but it has completely stopped this tactic at least. Sadly that’s how far we got on the first attempt. I’ll say that it was very much mixed feelings on the “buffing” of AA and how things work now, on one hand it’s nice to have a bigger challenge .. on the other hand, when you couple this with how bad resource management currently is, and the fact that our gear and characters have become weaker.. it doesn’t feel very nice at all.

The intentions are all good, and maybe we’ll appreciate it at some point, but buffing a Trial that has no gear we want (we have it all 100x over + it’s useless now anyway) is sort of killing the motivation to even do it at the moment. We could spend some time and get the strategies down etc. but it’s just not fun when you struggle with Stamina, your character feels like a useless loaf of bread and there’s absolutely nothing worthwhile loot-wise.

XP, XP, XP
XP gain seems to be completely broken on the PTS currently, I am gaining next to no XP from doing things like Veteran Dungeons and Trials. Killing a boss gives ~1K XP, which means 400 of them to level up. I received about 30K for finishing a VR dungeon or 30K for finishing AA (not my numbers). This is completely off the mark as you can gain that at least 5x faster through questing at the moment. XP for doing hard content needs to increase by a large margin, or endgame players will find ourselves with 80CP when someone just questing casually has 300. I’m not saying we need to earn them faster, but equal. 30K XP for a half hour dungeon run, puts champion points at 13 hours per point. This is WITH enlightment.

Bow DPS
Bow was nerfed to *oblivion* in 1.6 on the PTS. Using the same gear setup my Focused Aim damage has went from 1058 -> 5574. That's a ratio of 1:5.2 which is lower than any modifier I have seen on any skill.

Bows are the only range option for Stamina users, and at it's current state you can barely break 7-8K dps with it while ranged Magicka builds (such as this) can hit 12K.

That is an enormous disparity and unfortunately means that Bow is not even a possible choice in 1.6.

Edit: Excellent thread on this subject by Alcast here.

Broken skills(?)
Radiant Oppression - is doing some insane damage (for reasons unknown) resulting in a magicka cost channel equivalent of the soul assault ultimate.
Wrecking Blow - is currently hitting people for >17K in PvP, this might be due to some bug or stacking weapon damage, but it’s not acceptable for a skill that can no longer (1.6.1) even be interrupted by Bash.

Toggle skills and skill slot inefficiency
This is one that hits Sorcs really hard especially, but has also become prevalent in more skills (Expert Hunter) providing necessary passive buffs. Basically, for every toggle skill you have on your bar, you eliminate a slot from both of your bars. A sorc skill bar in 1.6 might only have 2 useable slots per weapon if you have Inner Light, Winged Twilight and Bound Aegis. A solution could be to allow toggled skills to be toggled on one bar, and still stay on while switching bars. This would still make it a trade-off, but without removing 6 possible active skills.

Werewolf
In 1.5 Werewolves get a Stamina regen buff in human form, without suffering any weaknesses. This makes it so that gaining Werewolf with no intention to ever tranform, and/or spend any skill points, is still a buff. There should either be a larger gain together with the poison damage debuff apply in human form as well, or the Stamina regen should only extend to Werewolf form. As it is now, there is no reason to be a human in 1.5.

Justice system guards
Making the guards unkillable seems a bit too cheap, make them bosses with a million HP, for sure. Make them call for reinforcement and spawn even more guards, but if we want to assemble 12 people and wreck a guard we should be able to.. it would make the Justice system much more fun as an activity to take part in when you’ve got nothing better to do.

Can’t fill a trial and don’t want to go to PVP?

See how long you can last against the guards. Kill one, get attacked by 3 more, kill them and get 6.. etc. It would make the system go from “oh well, I’ll steal some recipes” good, to “oh my god” awesome. More bystanders could join the fight, and it would simply be an almost guaranteed good time.

If they remain invincible, why didn’t we just send one guard to kill The Serpent? Or Molag Bal?

Trials leaderboards
Looks like a great change, on this one I can’t do much more than congratulate you. When we first heard about the changes to a point based system this was pretty much exactly what we envisioned. Stops the incentive to break things through bypassing mobs, provides an incentive for hard modes while still keeping a focus on doing it fast and clean. I have yet to see the individual point bonuses in action but on paper it looks perfect.

Champion System .. WTF moment
So, there's a "passive" in the Champion System that gives you 12% spell/weapon crit when you have invested 30 points. Now, the Champion System was supposed to prevent large gaps between players and provide a slow long-term progression system.. this is not the way to do it.



What's bound to happen is you're going to have PUGs ask for people only with 90 CP, because you need it to get that passive. Every DPS in the game must have that passive. If you're sitting at 89 CP, you're going to be doing 6% less damage than if you had 90? Those are the kind of gaps that shouldn't be in a system like this.

My suggestion (which I think is the most important one that can be raised in regards to update 6):

Put the crit back on gear, remove this passive and if needed give a little more to the respective "active" stars instead.

This would prevent an enormous gap between different point levels, and provide that long-term progression system that doesn't separate players too much. I'm also sure this needs to be done with other passives, or the passive system needs to be scrapped altogether, because having it this way will do nothing but force a massive grind and make your effectiveness directly related to your CP.

I don't see any way that this can make it to live without causing very serious issues with game balance.

Conclusion
We all share the interest of this games continued success, and this feedback is provided 100% to enhance the game experience for everyone albeit with a large focus on endgame PvE, as that is our focus as a guild.

1.6 is a great opportunity to once and for all correct all the issues that have kept the game good rather than the best. Most of these things should be fairly straightforward but I (as well as many more of our members) will be happy to provide any further feedback and/or clarification here, in PM or on TS. If you need anything further from us, give me a shout and I’ll arrange it.


/ @pppontus
Officer of Sigma Draconis
http://sigmadraconisgaming.com

sabresandiego_ESO

Lots of skills are hitting for insane amounts in cyrodil right now. Biting jabs is probably the worst, one cast does upwards of 15k damage and permanently stuns you. If you try to break the stun, it puts you in a "break free" animation during which you eat a second biting jabs and are instantly killed.

Harleyquincey

I have just completed Wayrest Sewers Vet Mode as a Dragonknight Tank alongside fellow Sigmates and to be fair? The current situation is.. well, I think it's the death of each and every PuG out there. I am not ashamed to admit we had about seven wipes in that run, only a few of which due to surprise. But let's take an actual example, like the Bone Colossus mob. That thing is tankier than me - and even by far. Add to that massive ressource management issues (not stamina in my case though, thanks to shield-play enchantments) and a severe lack of DPS and what you end up with is.. a chore.

Doing that dungeon was neither fun, nor rewarding. It was a chore, it was annoying and it made me feel like a complete newbie. Several rounds of DSA vet are easier to tank than one of the bosses of Wayrest (the Ghost one, now insta-killing DPS even if they are positioned correctly).

This is simply not how it should feel - CP isn't supposed to be a punishment is it? This is the second time now ESO is going the way of increasing difficulty significantly with a more than sloppy job (the last time it was simply slapping HP, Stamina and Magicka on mobs, aka "scaling"), this time it's downscaling players.

Imagine it this way:
Someone hands you a toy. You fall in love with that toy. Then someone comes along and breaks it. You spend some time to fix it and are enjoying it once more - and then someone comes and takes it away. This is how it feels and I'm usually not the guy to throw any tantrums. I'll just say: if this goes live the way it is, I doubt that PuGs will complete vet dungeons, I doubt that I'll enjoy being scaled down this much and forced to grind CP just in order to be back where I was before the patch hit.

I just don't get it, sorry. Why not invent - for example - nightmare versions of content that sort of requires (not factual, but from the performance) having spent quite some CP and leave the power level of players the way it was.

I don't want to be forced to grind CP just to be able to do something I already completed, like DSA vet. I want to enjoy each and every CP and feel a gradual difference and then be able to conquer even harder content.

VarilRau

This would be the perfect time to balance perfect the gear sets. Most are interesting and good and have their uses, but who ever decided to put those sturdy traits in them should be redracted.

I have made tons of full sets of seducer (3 traits), hundings rage (6 traits, will be nerfed), night mother (6 traits).

Andthen in the last year i have crafted two twice born star sets (9 traits, for testing) and one eyes of mara set (8 traits, actually got paid for this one).

It makes no sense that the BIS is almost the easiest to get. No-one wants the "high end sets".

Varil,
Sigma raider & crafter

angelyn

pppontus wrote: »

Overall nerf in effectiveness (70 CP)
With the reservation that some of this may be directly or indirectly related to the difficulty of trash mobs and/or stamina drain, it simply feels like our characters are less powerful after 1.6 with the 70 Champion Points that we’ve been given. Dungeons are harder, taking down groups of mobs is much harder. This point is hard to judge fairly as it is directly affected by other factors such as mob armor/spell res getting buffed, gear getting nerfed, stam costs increasing but it is a potentially serious issue and there should be no expectation from ZOS that your customers will accept getting nerfed and forced to level up yet another character to get back to the same level of power that we used to have.

It is also affecting us in Trials, for me I am noticing my Stamina regen doesn’t cut it anymore (with the exact same sets, buffs, you name it) as on Live. On the exact copy of my character I can no longer sustain my offense even after putting a few points in both regen and cost reduction. This is a major issue, because we literally all got nerfed. Simply put, we all feel far less effective. This together with the raid gear nerf is just a slap in the face.

@pppontus Agreed: As I pointed out in this thread- hardly anything levelled in a 1-10 manner. I've just found a trash mob with health that levelled in a 1:9 ratio, and my health levels in a 1: 7 ratio!

angelyn wrote: »

TLDR- My calculations on a lv 3 character. I'm not a mathematician so might not be 100%!This is only how the ratio seems to have scaled to me.

• Health scaled on 1:7 Ratio
• Magicka/Stamina scaled on 1:9 Ratio
• Health Regen scaled on 1:11.5 Ratio
• Magicka/Stamina Regen scaled on 1:11 Ratio
• Heavy/Medium Armour scaled on 1:4 Ratio
• Light Armour scaled on 1:2 Ratio
• Some mobs health scaled on a 1:7 Ratio
• Some mobs health scaled on a 1:9 Ratio

Why were all our stats nerfed? The champion points I have don't seem to make up the difference. How many hours will it take me to grind enough champion points to combat the nerf?

Berinima

angelyn wrote: »

Why were all our stats nerfed? The champion points I have don't seem to make up the difference. How many hours will it take me to grind enough champion points to combat the nerf?

What some people are assuming is that the idea behind the Champion System is to give people something to work on the next couple of years or so because there won't be a significant amount of new content anymore for this game. In order to put the system into place the game mechanic designers had to find some sort of sweet spot where it is a) insanely long but also b) gives some sort of impression of a meaningful advancement. If nothing would have been nerfed people would been either vastly overpowered in the end, one step would have been insanely long or the advancement from point to point would have been meaningless.

So. The system had to be stretched out, therefore it has 1200 levels. One level had to provide an advancement you can "feel" for your character. And nobody should be godlike in the end. In order to do all that, every stat in the game had to be nerfed.

People are assuming you would need around 200 points to be back on track again (but nobody can test that because there is no template for that). The cost for one point is 400k XP. In theory you can get one in an hour when you are enlightened (sort of rested XP) and when not you would need four hours. But this depends on your playstyle. Girding or doing daylies seem to work best, doing raids or PvP doubles to triples that time. Crafting does not provide any XP counting towards CPs. You can do the math.

Cogo

Yo! Mr @ZoS_PaulSage - Give these guys a call.

Khaer

Berinima wrote: »

The cost for one point is 400k XP. In theory you can get one in an hour when you are enlightened (sort of rested XP) and when not you would need four hours. But this depends on your playstyle. Girding or doing daylies seem to work best, doing raids or PvP doubles to triples that time. Crafting does not provide any XP counting towards CPs. You can do the math.

This was largely my experience as well, which is disappointing since we were assured they were trying to balance the XP gain across the various activities so we could "play the way we want" and still gain CPs.

I use quotations around that phrase because it has to be within reason, but when you get barely any XP from running dungeons, completing crafting writs, or killing mobs while farming materials the reality is that this will force everyone into a couple of activities, or grinding for CPs. Unless something changes with the current balance, it may feel very tedious to continue to gain CPs on a character that has already completed all of the quest content in the game.

Tavore1138

Good post - this new content is not only unbalanced inherently but also stupidly breaking existing skills & builds.

The more I test it the more I feel like the people designing this game are not only ignorant about how it is played but actively hostile to longer term players.

Part of me wants the game to survive the incompetence - another part of me wants it to fail simply because the devs destroying this game do not deserve paid employment.

Berinima

It's of course supposed to be "grinding" not "girding"... Stupid auto-correction! ^^

Yeah, it felt pretty tedious to me too. When I was really going for one CP, I was actually able to get one (also more like two hours than one but I am not the fastest grinder under Tamriel's sun). By doing the stuff I like my gain was unfortunately almost zero.

VarilRau

Maybe have the champion system give out max 5 champion points a day, in 2-3 hours of gameplay if enlightened. 5 hours when not. Or some sort of other number that is insanely high, but so that it makes you log in to the game on daily basis, and maybe even do something, but doesnt differentiate what you do.

Then people will not feel like "must grind cp untill i get that passive". At least i know how i will do it if it is 'grindable'.

pppontus

Light Armor
We all know it makes sense that LA users are the squishiest of the bunch, but in my opinion it was taken just a bit too far. Everyone wanted the "Light Armor tank"-meta gone, but these changes are simply going to force a new meta that all casters absolutely 100% must have 5L/2H which is no better at all. This is to avoid getting oneshot left and right in PVE, when you have encounters like Bogdan who hits 19k in one hit against LA. It's also going to make magicka users despised for Trials, much like stamina builds were for a long time. You will definitely see raids who only take 1 tank, 2 light armor healers and 9 stamina dps in medium armor.

Suggestion: Instead of making LA 25% of HA, tweak it a bit, somewhere 35-50% would be better. Considering MA is already 75%, stamina users have an acceptable armor rating, magicka users don't (unless they submit themselves to yet another stupid game-designed meta).

Gyudan

Nice feedback, +1 on almost everything.

I'm not sure about the overall nerf in effectiveness though. Before update 6 spell/weapon crit was the most effective stat to increase DPS and Heals. Now it's been nerfed by ~60℅ on armor/weapon sets. (making trial gear useless in the process, that part sucks)
By adjusting gear sets and skills it's possible to get more DPS/Heal output than before.

If I had to add 1 point:

Potions
The major/minor buffs make offensive (spell crit, spell power, weapon crit/LOLOL) potions much less effective. They're still good to recover stats of course but in group situations the buffs that they provide are already available most of the time, if not part of the player's own skill rotation.
Example: using critical surge or entropy for a major buff to spell damage makes the spell damage potion half useless.
I think that potion buffs should be separated from the current system, allowing them to stack with major buffs, especially with the cooldown increasing from 30 to 45 seconds. On live (1.5) every time I pop a crafted potion I know that I'm doing more damage than usual for a limited amount of time, which gives a small adrenaline rush, making fights more pleasant. On the PTS, potions seem very dull in comparison.

sebban

Great post and excellent feedback! I agree with everything in the first post.

Duccea

Very nice and detailed post, @ppontus, you did a good job expressing the concerns I have with 1.6 right now and I really hope that the feedback you provided is taken into consideration by the devs.

Berinima wrote: »

What some people are assuming is that the idea behind the Champion System is to give people something to work on the next couple of years or so because there won't be a significant amount of new content anymore for this game. In order to put the system into place the game mechanic designers had to find some sort of sweet spot where it is a) insanely long but also b) gives some sort of impression of a meaningful advancement. If nothing would have been nerfed people would been either vastly overpowered in the end, one step would have been insanely long or the advancement from point to point would have been meaningless.

So. The system had to be stretched out, therefore it has 1200 levels. One level had to provide an advancement you can "feel" for your character. And nobody should be godlike in the end. In order to do all that, every stat in the game had to be nerfed.

I agree that there should be content that is challenging for those that have many CPs invested as well, but that shouldn't happen at the costs of everyone else's enjoyment of the game. I'm not a big fan of spending my playtime grinding, and I don't want to be forced to do that to get back where I used to be.
It would be different if there was ways to gain XP for champion points at a reasonable rate by doing other things, like dungeons, but so far, it doesn't seem like that is an option.
Hitting everyone with the nerfbat instead of coming up with a more distinguished solutin to the issue of vastly varying player power levels is the lazy way out, imho.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

pppontus wrote: »

5 Pages of Feedback on 1.6 by Sigma Draconis [EU DC]

Thanks for posting that. ZOS seem intent on ignoring the 'grunts', maybe they'll listen to folks in guild like yours and Hodor, who I've seen comments from as well: they failed at the second boss of AA IIRC.

Not sure if ZOS are still in bed with their friends in Entropy Rising, hopefully ER are saying the same things.

pppontus

Gyudan wrote: »

Nice feedback, +1 on almost everything.

I'm not sure about the overall nerf in effectiveness though. Before update 6 spell/weapon crit was the most effective stat to increase DPS and Heals. Now it's been nerfed by ~60℅ on armor/weapon sets. (making trial gear useless in the process, that part sucks)
By adjusting gear sets and skills it's possible to get more DPS/Heal output than before.

If I had to add 1 point:

Potions
The major/minor buffs make offensive (spell crit, spell power, weapon crit/LOLOL) potions much less effective. They're still good to recover stats of course but in group situations the buffs that they provide are already available most of the time, if not part of the player's own skill rotation.
Example: using critical surge or entropy for a major buff to spell damage makes the spell damage potion half useless.
I think that potion buffs should be separated from the current system, allowing them to stack with major buffs, especially with the cooldown increasing from 30 to 45 seconds. On live (1.5) every time I pop a crafted potion I know that I'm doing more damage than usual for a limited amount of time, which gives a small adrenaline rush, making fights more pleasant. On the PTS, potions seem very dull in comparison.

I do agree, in the numbers it is definitely possible to push further now. The decrease in effectiveness that I feel is mostly related to resource management, incoming damage and such things. In the end, when doing Trials or Vet Dungeons even though my numbers are high.. I just feel ineffective as I might just get one-shot by a random target mechanic or a trash mob.

Also 100% agree on potions. I'll pretty much always have a spell/weapon power & crit buff up anyways, making offensive potions useless for me. Except for LOLOL, but I haven't figured out what that buff does yet.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

pppontus wrote: »

5 Pages of Feedback on 1.6 by Sigma Draconis [EU DC]

Thanks for posting that. ZOS seem intent on ignoring the 'grunts', maybe they'll listen to folks in guild like yours and Hodor, who I've seen comments from as well: they failed at the second boss of AA IIRC.

Not sure if ZOS are still in bed with their friends in Entropy Rising, hopefully ER are saying the same things.

Thank you! That is my feeling as well, there has been a lot of good feedback going on here in the forums, but it's largely been spread out and buried in massive amounts of "other stuff" so I wanted to take the effort to collect and summarize all the (in our view) most important feedback to hopefully bring it to the devs attention.

Berinima wrote: »

angelyn wrote: »

Why were all our stats nerfed? The champion points I have don't seem to make up the difference. How many hours will it take me to grind enough champion points to combat the nerf?

What some people are assuming is that the idea behind the Champion System is to give people something to work on the next couple of years or so because there won't be a significant amount of new content anymore for this game. In order to put the system into place the game mechanic designers had to find some sort of sweet spot where it is a) insanely long but also b) gives some sort of impression of a meaningful advancement. If nothing would have been nerfed people would been either vastly overpowered in the end, one step would have been insanely long or the advancement from point to point would have been meaningless.

So. The system had to be stretched out, therefore it has 1200 levels. One level had to provide an advancement you can "feel" for your character. And nobody should be godlike in the end. In order to do all that, every stat in the game had to be nerfed.

People are assuming you would need around 200 points to be back on track again (but nobody can test that because there is no template for that). The cost for one point is 400k XP. In theory you can get one in an hour when you are enlightened (sort of rested XP) and when not you would need four hours. But this depends on your playstyle. Girding or doing daylies seem to work best, doing raids or PvP doubles to triples that time. Crafting does not provide any XP counting towards CPs. You can do the math.

You are probably completely correct, and we've all thought about this as well. I just don't think it's viable to introduce a progression system that takes existing character progression and forces you to re-earn it. It's a reasonable explanation to what has happened, just not why they decided that this was an acceptable path to walk down.

If you take resource management for example, which was not a problem for any of my builds really, I always had enough resources just by supplementing using potions and skills like elemental drain. They couldn't have enticed me to pick 12% magicka cost reduction and/or extra regen as I wouldn't have needed it. Instead they chose to take my sustainability out by making the costs higher and enchantments worse, so that I am forced to progress through the Champion System to end up at the level of resource management that I used to have.

However, by doing this, you essentially make people weaker which is not likely to be accepted by many. It probably works well for casual PvE (normal dungeons, overland mobs) because it's still fairly easy content, but it doesn't work well for endgame (Vet Dungeons, DSA and Trials) where builds are truly put to the test. I can also imagine it works in PvP, considering everyone is currently at the same level anyway.

I just cannot imagine how a new player leveling up to VR14 and having 35 CP are going to attempt SO. Considering their statement was that all content was to retain it's "current difficulty" that should roughly be the case.


In addition, thanks to everyone for your support!

Etaniel

Very well put post. My concerns are more directed towards PvP, but i agree with everything you've said here about the PvE side of things. I hope the devs read this

pppontus

Updated the OP with some videos from our one and only AA attempt yesterday.

Showcasing some of the "issues" and concerns brought up in the OP, 1st boss is as easy as ever, only takes longer to kill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLqXeE1EZuo

2nd boss will need a new strategy as Negate Magic can no longer prevent the Nullifiers from spawning their thing on the group. If you want to see us run around like headless chickens in response to this..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX_JIV2THcM

I don't mind the buffs to these bosses per se, I have no doubt we will be able to clear AA as soon as we put some actual effort into it. The problem is rather: nerfed gear and having already completed it on normal & hm so many times.. what is the interest in actually putting that effort in?

Plus, it will most definitely stop less coordinated groups and pugs that have completed AA in the past. If your intentions were truly that anyone who could do it previously can do it now, I think you'll find quite a few who can't.

You can also see some of the stamina management issues in the videos, 1st one I couldn't drink any potions as apparently Panacea of Weapon Power is now "out of reach".. but where DW used to be self-sustained it is not anymore, and this with Vicious Ophidian and 10 CP in both Stam regen and Stam cost reduction.

In the 2nd one it is a bit more interesting, it can obviously be sustained with Evil Hunter and potions, but Evil Hunter can't be used on all bosses and still.. the fight is not at all long compared to Mantikora/Serpent.

You can also see that sustaining Bow and/or execute (Killers Blade) is absolutely impossible.

And as a conclusion, weapon swapping is as unreliable as it ever was. Every time I swapped to drop my Veil I would press "T (weapon swap) -> wait a few ms -> 4" to go back to rapid strikes, always caught focused aim.

niocwy

Good feedback. I hope they'll take a look and adjust things for the better.

ThunderCat

I am not as good with words as a lot of you here, nor am I good at being patient. But I will attempt to give my two cents.

My biggest concern right now is the difficulty of things. As it was been mentioned, we were promised that all content will retain it's difficulty as it would be unfair for one to not be able to complete what one was able to before the update. The toy analogy was spot on.

We found that that main issue of not killing the second boss was either low DPS or too high HP of the boss. While we usually managed to kill the boss after 1-2 stomps, now it takes around 10. Imagine Mantikora or Serpent fights taking 5 times longer. The Mantikora stomps will one shot us no matter how much damage reduction we stack after 5-6 stomps and the Serpent will start spawning 2 Mantikoras which will be impossible to kill.

Point I am making is that it now takes a lot longer to kill things which in turn leads to failure as most fights have an "enrage" timer.

Second thing I wanted to bring up is Ultimate regeneration. After a wipe on a boss, it is impossible to regain ultimate and have it ready for the fight. If you are fighting a boss that requires Novas / Veils close to the start of the fight, you risk not having it after a wipe. Which in turn causes another wipe (see #2 boss in AA).

To sum it up, I don't mind things being a bit harder and a tad challenging, but don't make it look like our characters have been nerfed. All of us in Sigma Draconis care about this game and PvE endgame content and it's the only thing keeping us around.

pppontus

Added:

Bow DPS
Bow was nerfed to *oblivion* in 1.6 on the PTS. Using the same gear setup my Focused Aim damage has went from 1058 -> 5574. That's a ratio of 1:5.2 which is lower than any modifier I have seen on any skill.

Bows are the only range option for Stamina users, and at it's current state you can barely break 7-8K dps with it while ranged Magicka builds (such as this) can hit 12K.

That is an enormous disparity and unfortunately means that Bow is not even a possible choice in 1.6.

Edit: Excellent thread on this subject by Alcast here.

TehMagnus

Awesome work guys!!!

On a personal note, AOEIng with whirlwind while blocking with my stamina DK will pull nice DPS but all this is eclipsed when I get an arrow in the face that one shots me or when my stamina drops to 0 after 4 or 5 whirlwinds, all this with max points spent on decrease stamina cost and decrease cost of blocking...

Erlex

For the record I tested Radiant Oppression on stream, and it scales exactly the same as reverse slash. the 40% dmg when high magicka, or base damage above 50% could be high, but the execute scaling is exactly the same as other skills.

Winnower

i couldn't agree more. zos needs to seriously listen to what is being said here.

TehMagnus

angelyn wrote: »

How many hours will it take me to grind enough champion points to combat the nerf?[/b]

About 3-4 months at current pace.

pppontus

Erlex wrote: »

For the record I tested Radiant Oppression on stream, and it scales exactly the same as reverse slash. the 40% dmg when high magicka, or base damage above 50% could be high, but the execute scaling is exactly the same as other skills.

Thanks for clearing that up, I'll change it to "reason unknown.

TehMagnus wrote: »

Awesome work guys!!!

On a personal note, AOEIng with whirlwind while blocking with my stamina DK will pull nice DPS but all this is eclipsed when I get an arrow in the face that one shots me or when my stamina drops to 0 after 4 or 5 whirlwinds, all this with max points spent on decrease stamina cost and decrease cost of blocking...

Thanks! And yes, I wouldn't stand a chance on AOEing at all if it wasn't for Siphoning Attacks.. and if other Stamina builds are supposed to be viable they need to be able to attack for more than 3 seconds.

Lava_Croft

As someone who plays only PvP, this has been a rather informative post. Thank you!

Maverick827

Werewolf
In 1.5 Werewolves get a Stamina regen buff in human form, without suffering any weaknesses. This makes it so that gaining Werewolf with no intention to ever tranform, and/or spend any skill points, is still a buff. There should either be a larger gain together with the poison damage debuff apply in human form as well, or the Stamina regen should only extend to Werewolf form. As it is now, there is no reason to be a human in 1.5.

I agree that it's unfair if there is no reason to be Human anymore, but at the same time, the 15% Stamina regen buff is the only benefit a tank can get from the "World" category of abilities now that the ultimate generation was removed from Blood Rage, which is also unfair.

I'd rather not see this removed unless something is added back to Werewolf (stamina gain on hit?) or an entirely new tank-specific "world" skill is added (Werebear, strains of Vampirism not weak to fire, etc.).

pppontus

Maverick827 wrote: »

Werewolf
In 1.5 Werewolves get a Stamina regen buff in human form, without suffering any weaknesses. This makes it so that gaining Werewolf with no intention to ever tranform, and/or spend any skill points, is still a buff. There should either be a larger gain together with the poison damage debuff apply in human form as well, or the Stamina regen should only extend to Werewolf form. As it is now, there is no reason to be a human in 1.5.

I agree that it's unfair if there is no reason to be Human anymore, but at the same time, the 15% Stamina regen buff is the only benefit a tank can get from the "World" category of abilities now that the ultimate generation was removed from Blood Rage, which is also unfair.

I'd rather not see this removed unless something is added back to Werewolf (stamina gain on hit?) or an entirely new tank-specific "world" skill is added (Werebear, strains of Vampirism not weak to fire, etc.).

I mean it can stay, in my opinion, as long as they take a hit to something that would make you think twice about it. Reduced magicka regen? I don't know specifically, but you get my point already.

Maverick827

pppontus wrote: »

Maverick827 wrote: »

Werewolf
In 1.5 Werewolves get a Stamina regen buff in human form, without suffering any weaknesses. This makes it so that gaining Werewolf with no intention to ever tranform, and/or spend any skill points, is still a buff. There should either be a larger gain together with the poison damage debuff apply in human form as well, or the Stamina regen should only extend to Werewolf form. As it is now, there is no reason to be a human in 1.5.

I agree that it's unfair if there is no reason to be Human anymore, but at the same time, the 15% Stamina regen buff is the only benefit a tank can get from the "World" category of abilities now that the ultimate generation was removed from Blood Rage, which is also unfair.

I'd rather not see this removed unless something is added back to Werewolf (stamina gain on hit?) or an entirely new tank-specific "world" skill is added (Werebear, strains of Vampirism not weak to fire, etc.).

I mean it can stay, in my opinion, as long as they take a hit to something that would make you think twice about it. Reduced magicka regen? I don't know specifically, but you get my point already.

I think the only negative a tank can accept is a damage debuff, but that obviously doesn't fit well with Werewolf. I think an entirely new World skill line for tanks (built around trading offense for defense) is the only great solution, but until then, I'd rather not take any more nerfs, especially with the Stamina drought we're seeing on the PTS.

So everyone has to be a Werewolf for a little while to be competitive. Everyone had to be a Vampire to be competitive for a while as well. I don't mind.