Sorcerer - Veteran Dungeons, Magicka Problems et al (oh yes, and the new repair cost reality...)

byrom101b16_ESO · February 2015

Having tested my copied main character recently, post 1.6.4 for some hours in Spellscar, Darkshade and Fungal Grotto veteran, then Darkshade normal mode, I have a few pertinent observations about the state of the Sorcerer, magicka costs, dungeon difficulty levels and the hidden nerf in gear durability.

The fact magicka build staff-wielding Sorcerer damage against single targets isn't realistically breaking above 9K without pets or the tank keeping the boss in one place for the convenience of liquid lightning is one thing. Few bosses do stay put and adds from bosses, and many have adds you might not want to aggro. Thusly, the numerous situations encountered in PvE where this occurs, highlights the fundamental limitations and partial invalidation of the concept that this spell is a viable DoT in PvE.

A 'fix' to Magicka Sorc dps which doesn't really work on over half the boss fights in dungeons isn't really a valid fix, is it?

I suggest you try some of your dungeons yourselves if you continue not to get this point. Change it to a targetable DoT with morphs for longer duration or splash damage...

The fiddly semi-uselessness of LL outside of aoe pulls was annoying, sure... but far worse was the state of the difficulty of the dungeons, the loot dropped in those dungeons and the frankly, lazy way in which bosses have been made more difficult simply by giving them a boat-load of extra health and making them hit with one-or-two-shot damage packets.

I GM'd a guild in and played WoW for 6 years, Age of Conan for 3 and GW2 for over a year. I am hardly an MMO virgin. So it was good to see increased need for aggro control (made needlessly more difficult by LL, but I've mentioned that...) and an increase in difficulty.

I welcome that in fact, it is something which is needed.

However, despite just under 30K magicaka, over 980 regeneration, Breton spell cost reduction, over 6% magicka cost reduction from Champion points and all vet 14 gear with Magicka on everything, not to mention 32 points in Magicka... I spent at least half of my fights with less than 20% magicka, and heard that damn clicky-noise telling me I was out of juice almost constantly.

I was using Vet 5 pots, Vet 5 food, and Mage Guild magicka regen. This is the first time this problem has raised it's ugly head since this game came out for me, so let's not have any ill-advised counter-arguments assuming that I don't know how to resource-manage in fights...

The root cause of the problem is this... with mobs and bosses having such large health pools, Sorcerers having inexplicably high magicka costs for their abilities (far higher than any other class for no reason anyone has ever bothered to explain to us), and the only fast magicaka-regen ability slaughtering our health pool, it seemed a choice all too often between spamming heavy staff attacks whilst out of magicka or having a trickle of magicka back and a greatkly increased chance of a quick death to some mob, boss or other due to self-harming. The last boss in Darkshade by way of illustration, hit me for a fast ranged attack for 23K in normal mode. No discernable animation, no red patch on the ground - just dead for having hit the regen key at the same instant it turned and fragged me.

Arbitrary to say the least...

Which reminds me - refashioning Light Armour out of tissue paper was a move designed to do what positive thing to the game precisely?... I'm so glad I spent Champion points to boost that up to no discernible effect whatsoever.

Then of course there's the loot. You have utterly thrown away any sensible progression curve with the drops.

Vet 12 non-set blues from bosses that Vet 14 legendary equipped characters had to work at to kill is just inexplicable. Well, maybe it is explicable, but I am yet to hear the logic behind it.

Perhaps you can enlighten me?

Why run the dungeons at all? We might as well solo Craglorn for chests if I want blue crafting upgrades. Then at least the monetary reward and repair bills might make financial sense.

Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!

You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!

I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.

It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!

Anyway - allow me to sum up.

1. Sorcerers abilities are unreasonably, uniquely and unworkably expensive and consequently magicka build sustain is a very serious problem indeed outside of 'free-dps' pets builds. These abilities need seriously reducing in cost and balancing with other class ability costs which are almost universally cheaper.

2. The balance between the significantly increased difficulty and reward in group dungeons and veteran dungeons especially is practically non-existent. There is simply no reason to do them as they stand currently, and they need a root-and-branch overhaul before 1.6 goes live.

3. Veteran dungeon difficulty has been raised too high. Attainable health and stamina or magicka resource scores do not adequately prepare characters for the damage they will take. At the end of the day you have a game full of people who will be put off by having their characters made significantly weaker post-patch and old challenges placed beyond their reach. If you think people really want to grind their way through the same dungeons that they used to run competently to the extent you seem to want to force them with 1.6, you have another thing coming. This is made even more likely due to the underpowered trash loot issue.

4. Gear falls apart in combat by design. You seriously need to consider reversing this cheap and cynical move if you wish to keep players good will.

I've heard it said that a lot of these changes are due to an overly PvP-centric point of view on behalf of the developers. I've watched interviews that clearly show this conceptual bias. Your words people... not mine... You have also made it clear you've talked to 'guilds', and by this I take it you mean top PvP and Trial guilds. That is to say - a small, small percentage of your players base.

They might be happy playing for significant hours per day, cookie-cutting their way to success with 'only this build allowed for class x' and 'install macros or don't bother to sign up' approaches to the top end challenges of the game. That's their thing (used to be mine, and still is to a point), and they engineer their approach to maximise their effectiveness.

This does not however mean you should take their perspective as the only valid one to cater to. One only needs to look at the climb-down on animation cancelling to see that at the moment, it seems you are shifting the goalposts in game difficulty to suit top end players and not the majority of your player base, many of whom signed up with the promise of 'play the way you want to lay' ringing in their TESO-tuned ears.

I've already had a number of friends leave the game because they aren't as semi-hardcore as I am. They didn't feel the game catered for them.

They have recently been back on our guild Facebook page looking to come back. They aren't encouraged by any of the game forums, the interviews or my feedback thus-far on this game changing patch.

Personally I'd like to see them back.

Throw me a bone here would you?

Seraphyel · February 2015

Nice read.

Voltos · February 2015

Wonderful job, @byrom101b16_ESO.

@ZOS_GinaBruno, please forward this onto your Dev team with urgency. They need to read this.

SanderBuraas · February 2015

Nice. You touch on various issues with the Sorcerer class, most importantly the lack of good damage potential. We have been told that there are changes to Sorcerers coming up though, so it will be interesting to see if it is worth the wait.

Grao · February 2015

Interesting post @byrom101b16_ESO, I agree with most of the points you made.

As several of us mentioned, sorcerers are still under-performing in end game PvE. I haven't felt any issues relating to the class survivability that others have mentioned, but our DPS is clearly not the highest, actually, it is featuring among the lowest, specially for Magicka, non-pet builds.
Our class Utility was pretty much ruined; Negate is essentially useless for PvE and that change at least was definitely aimed at PvP without considering the consequence of the nerf to PvE sorcerers. Overload was also targeted and nerfed because of PvP, diminishing its usefulness for PvE.

I have to disagree on what you said about Zenimax consulting Guilds though and yes, I disagree because I am in one of the guilds they consulted with. Large guilds represent a considerable portion of the player base, the Dominion Guard alone has over 600 active members interested both in PvP and PvE, our imput is valuable and filtered from complains, suggestions and concerns of all our guildies.
Because we filter those concerns and organize them into documents, it makes a lot easier to get our point across to Zenimax and a lot easier for them to gather important data. Easier at least than combing through thousands of Forum posts every day. That said, I understand how you may feel excluded or unable to voice your opinions because you are not in one of the guilds they chose to speak to. All I can say to that is, ask your guild masters to try reaching out for that contact, ZoS is looking for input (how much of that input reverts into changes to the game, none of us really know).

Dracane · February 2015

Smepic wrote: »

Nice. You touch on various issues with the Sorcerer class, most importantly the lack of good damage potential. We have been told that there are changes to Sorcerers coming up though, so it will be interesting to see if it is worth the wait.

The question is: When ?

s7732425ub17_ESO · February 2015

I really hope the gear degradation increase is not actually happening. Players HATE repairing gear. I mean HATE. Gear repair is one of those systems that is very, very easy to do completely wrong. However, the current rate of gear degradation is fine. It's pretty cheap but still makes you pay if you die a whole lot or grind for long periods of time.

Don't mess with things that are not broken. The current repair system is actually very, very good, and there are no complaints. But if you mess with it, there WILL be complaints, LOTS of complaints.

Digiman · February 2015

@byrom101b16_ESO that's a joke right? Repair costs being that expensive? Is this just happening with Light armor or are other people in different types feeling the pinch?

Also very post, I think you hit the nail on the head quite well. The design team has not only dropped the ball on Sorcerers but kicked it into their faces. They really need to get their act together before they release this patch because Liquid Lighting is a complete and utter insult.

loki547 · February 2015

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

However, despite just under 30K magicaka, over 980 regeneration, Breton spell cost reduction, over 6% magicka cost reduction from Champion points and all vet 14 gear with Magicka on everything, not to mention 32 points in Magicka... I spent at least half of my fights with less than 20% magicka, and heard that damn clicky-noise telling me I was out of juice almost constantly.

I was using Vet 5 pots, Vet 5 food, and Mage Guild magicka regen. This is the first time this problem has raised it's ugly head since this game came out for me, so let's not have any ill-advised counter-arguments assuming that I don't know how to resource-manage in fights...

The root cause of the problem is this... with mobs and bosses having such large health pools, Sorcerers having inexplicably high magicka costs for their abilities (far higher than any other class for no reason anyone has ever bothered to explain to us), and the only fast magicaka-regen ability slaughtering our health pool, it seemed a choice all too often between spamming heavy staff attacks whilst out of magicka or having a trickle of magicka back and a greatkly increased chance of a quick death to some mob, boss or other due to self-harming. The last boss in Darkshade by way of illustration, hit me for a fast ranged attack for 23K in normal mode. No discernable animation, no red patch on the ground - just dead for having hit the regen key at the same instant it turned and fragged me.

Arbitrary to say the least...

Which reminds me - refashioning Light Armour out of tissue paper was a move designed to do what positive thing to the game precisely?... I'm so glad I spent Champion points to boost that up to no discernible effect whatsoever.

Then of course there's the loot. You have utterly thrown away any sensible progression curve with the drops.

Vet 12 non-set blues from bosses that Vet 14 legendary equipped characters had to work at to kill is just inexplicable. Well, maybe it is explicable, but I am yet to hear the logic behind it.

Perhaps you can enlighten me?

Why run the dungeons at all? We might as well solo Craglorn for chests if I want blue crafting upgrades. Then at least the monetary reward and repair bills might make financial sense.

Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!

You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!

I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.

It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!

Anyway - allow me to sum up.

1. Sorcerers abilities are unreasonably, uniquely and unworkably expensive and consequently magicka build sustain is a very serious problem indeed outside of 'free-dps' pets builds. These abilities need seriously reducing in cost and balancing with other class ability costs which are almost universally cheaper.

2. The balance between the significantly increased difficulty and reward in group dungeons and veteran dungeons especially is practically non-existent. There is simply no reason to do them as they stand currently, and they need a root-and-branch overhaul before 1.6 goes live.

3. Veteran dungeon difficulty has been raised too high. Attainable health and stamina or magicka resource scores do not adequately prepare characters for the damage they will take. At the end of the day you have a game full of people who will be put off by having their characters made significantly weaker post-patch and old challenges placed beyond their reach. If you think people really want to grind their way through the same dungeons that they used to run competently to the extent you seem to want to force them with 1.6, you have another thing coming. This is made even more likely due to the underpowered trash loot issue.

4. Gear falls apart in combat by design. You seriously need to consider reversing this cheap and cynical move if you wish to keep players good will.

I've heard it said that a lot of these changes are due to an overly PvP-centric point of view on behalf of the developers. I've watched interviews that clearly show this conceptual bias. Your words people... not mine... You have also made it clear you've talked to 'guilds', and by this I take it you mean top PvP and Trial guilds. That is to say - a small, small percentage of your players base.

They might be happy playing for significant hours per day, cookie-cutting their way to success with 'only this build allowed for class x' and 'install macros or don't bother to sign up' approaches to the top end challenges of the game. That's their thing (used to be mine, and still is to a point), and they engineer their approach to maximise their effectiveness.

This does not however mean you should take their perspective as the only valid one to cater to. One only needs to look at the climb-down on animation cancelling to see that at the moment, it seems you are shifting the goalposts in game difficulty to suit top end players and not the majority of your player base, many of whom signed up with the promise of 'play the way you want to lay' ringing in their TESO-tuned ears.

I've already had a number of friends leave the game because they aren't as semi-hardcore as I am. They didn't feel the game catered for them.

They have recently been back on our guild Facebook page looking to come back. They aren't encouraged by any of the game forums, the interviews or my feedback thus-far on this game changing patch.

Personally I'd like to see them back.

Throw me a bone here would you?

980 magicka regen is very low for a full magicka sorc build. I'm around 1350-1450 magicka regen with Warlock and Seducer no jewelry glyphs or cp into magicka regen. I'm full magicka and this works fine for me and I'm in PvP 99% of the time which dare I say tests your resources much more than PvE.

Derra · February 2015

Dracane wrote: »

Smepic wrote: »

Nice. You touch on various issues with the Sorcerer class, most importantly the lack of good damage potential. We have been told that there are changes to Sorcerers coming up though, so it will be interesting to see if it is worth the wait.

The question is: When ?

Soon™

Vis · February 2015

With the tons of feedback we have given the devs over the past month, I look forward to seeing what they have in store for sorcs.

Grest analysis.

Seraphyel · February 2015

Vis wrote: »

With the tons of feedback we have given the devs over the past month, I look forward to seeing what they have in store for sorcs.

Grest analysis.

Don't expect anything great for 1.6 anymore.

Artemiisia · February 2015

u guys might as well give up on getting more boost to sorcs, with the saturday small patch to PTS, its bound to be released on live this upcoming week. They aint planning anymore skill changes and boosts/nerfs. Only small tweaks and fixes.

Sorcs are dead

Exstazik · February 2015

Artemiisia wrote: »

u guys might as well give up on getting more boost to sorcs, with the saturday small patch to PTS, its bound to be released on live this upcoming week. They aint planning anymore skill changes and boosts/nerfs. Only small tweaks and fixes.

Sorcs are dead

True.Seems some people from development team want to RIP the game.Why people not leave with massive amount?Because the game which can replace TESO will be out in september-october 2015....

Seraphyel · February 2015

Exstazik wrote: »

Because the game which can replace TESO will be out in september-october 2015....

And which game will that be?

Exstazik · February 2015

Seraphyel wrote: »

Exstazik wrote: »

Because the game which can replace TESO will be out in september-october 2015....

And which game will that be?

/w you.Can't post in thread due forum rules

Gyudan · February 2015

Can anyone confirm the increased degradation rates? I don't grind on Live, so I can't really compare.

olsborg · February 2015

Good read, alot of it the dev team need to take to heart and usher in changes, preferably before 1.6 hits live.

Tankqull · February 2015

loki547 wrote: »

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

However, despite just under 30K magicaka, over 980 regeneration, Breton spell cost reduction, over 6% magicka cost reduction from Champion points and all vet 14 gear with Magicka on everything, not to mention 32 points in Magicka... I spent at least half of my fights with less than 20% magicka, and heard that damn clicky-noise telling me I was out of juice almost constantly.

I was using Vet 5 pots, Vet 5 food, and Mage Guild magicka regen. This is the first time this problem has raised it's ugly head since this game came out for me, so let's not have any ill-advised counter-arguments assuming that I don't know how to resource-manage in fights...

The root cause of the problem is this... with mobs and bosses having such large health pools, Sorcerers having inexplicably high magicka costs for their abilities (far higher than any other class for no reason anyone has ever bothered to explain to us), and the only fast magicaka-regen ability slaughtering our health pool, it seemed a choice all too often between spamming heavy staff attacks whilst out of magicka or having a trickle of magicka back and a greatkly increased chance of a quick death to some mob, boss or other due to self-harming. The last boss in Darkshade by way of illustration, hit me for a fast ranged attack for 23K in normal mode. No discernable animation, no red patch on the ground - just dead for having hit the regen key at the same instant it turned and fragged me.

Arbitrary to say the least...

Which reminds me - refashioning Light Armour out of tissue paper was a move designed to do what positive thing to the game precisely?... I'm so glad I spent Champion points to boost that up to no discernible effect whatsoever.

Then of course there's the loot. You have utterly thrown away any sensible progression curve with the drops.

Vet 12 non-set blues from bosses that Vet 14 legendary equipped characters had to work at to kill is just inexplicable. Well, maybe it is explicable, but I am yet to hear the logic behind it.

Perhaps you can enlighten me?

Why run the dungeons at all? We might as well solo Craglorn for chests if I want blue crafting upgrades. Then at least the monetary reward and repair bills might make financial sense.

Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!

You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!

I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.

It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!

Anyway - allow me to sum up.

1. Sorcerers abilities are unreasonably, uniquely and unworkably expensive and consequently magicka build sustain is a very serious problem indeed outside of 'free-dps' pets builds. These abilities need seriously reducing in cost and balancing with other class ability costs which are almost universally cheaper.

2. The balance between the significantly increased difficulty and reward in group dungeons and veteran dungeons especially is practically non-existent. There is simply no reason to do them as they stand currently, and they need a root-and-branch overhaul before 1.6 goes live.

3. Veteran dungeon difficulty has been raised too high. Attainable health and stamina or magicka resource scores do not adequately prepare characters for the damage they will take. At the end of the day you have a game full of people who will be put off by having their characters made significantly weaker post-patch and old challenges placed beyond their reach. If you think people really want to grind their way through the same dungeons that they used to run competently to the extent you seem to want to force them with 1.6, you have another thing coming. This is made even more likely due to the underpowered trash loot issue.

4. Gear falls apart in combat by design. You seriously need to consider reversing this cheap and cynical move if you wish to keep players good will.

I've heard it said that a lot of these changes are due to an overly PvP-centric point of view on behalf of the developers. I've watched interviews that clearly show this conceptual bias. Your words people... not mine... You have also made it clear you've talked to 'guilds', and by this I take it you mean top PvP and Trial guilds. That is to say - a small, small percentage of your players base.

They might be happy playing for significant hours per day, cookie-cutting their way to success with 'only this build allowed for class x' and 'install macros or don't bother to sign up' approaches to the top end challenges of the game. That's their thing (used to be mine, and still is to a point), and they engineer their approach to maximise their effectiveness.

This does not however mean you should take their perspective as the only valid one to cater to. One only needs to look at the climb-down on animation cancelling to see that at the moment, it seems you are shifting the goalposts in game difficulty to suit top end players and not the majority of your player base, many of whom signed up with the promise of 'play the way you want to lay' ringing in their TESO-tuned ears.

I've already had a number of friends leave the game because they aren't as semi-hardcore as I am. They didn't feel the game catered for them.

They have recently been back on our guild Facebook page looking to come back. They aren't encouraged by any of the game forums, the interviews or my feedback thus-far on this game changing patch.

Personally I'd like to see them back.

Throw me a bone here would you?

980 magicka regen is very low for a full magicka sorc build. I'm around 1350-1450 magicka regen with Warlock and Seducer no jewelry glyphs or cp into magicka regen. I'm full magicka and this works fine for me and I'm in PvP 99% of the time which dare I say tests your resources much more than PvE.

and no dmg on 10 of 11/12 equipment slots(+dmg on jewels is harshly nerfed in 1.6) without any dmg increasement is great for being a DD

byrom101b16_ESO · February 2015

I should have mentioned that I have 49.5% crit and 1626 spell damage (with Inner Light) - so haven't rigged myself for large Magicka Regen as damage is low enough already for Sorc and I wanted to at least not embarrass myself in comparison to other classes with my damage parses...

... I have a full Seducer Set and Warlock Jewelry in the bank, but why should I give up so much damage as to make me irrelevant in Trials just to have the Magicka to sustain?

I am running the same gear setup (in fact slightly better on the PTS switching from Soulshine to Vet Healer jewelry plus gloves) as before - why take my ability to keep using abilities away, even in the face of a significant spell cost reduction added on?

We should not be forced into such a Hobson's Choice.

Where is the reasoning behind this?

byrom101b16_ESO · February 2015

Grao wrote: »

Interesting post @byrom101b16_ESO, I agree with most of the points you made.

I have to disagree on what you said about Zenimax consulting Guilds though and yes, I disagree because I am in one of the guilds they consulted with. Large guilds represent a considerable portion of the player base, the Dominion Guard alone has over 600 active members interested both in PvP and PvE, our imput is valuable and filtered from complains, suggestions and concerns of all our guildies.
Because we filter those concerns and organize them into documents, it makes a lot easier to get our point across to Zenimax and a lot easier for them to gather important data. Easier at least than combing through thousands of Forum posts every day. That said, I understand how you may feel excluded or unable to voice your opinions because you are not in one of the guilds they chose to speak to. All I can say to that is, ask your guild masters to try reaching out for that contact, ZoS is looking for input (how much of that input reverts into changes to the game, none of us really know).

I take your point Grao. Thanks for setting the record straight on this.

I don't play as much as I would like, and being longer in the tooth than most these days I like my time online to be reliably fun and challenging. Serious Trial Guilds do tend to set the bar too high on times per week you need to be online, how you have to play and how you are supposed to tolerate being bumped for senior members even if you have confirmed bookings on trials etc.

Assessments of people's skill doesn't seem to come into it these days, a pity...

Clearly, this model of play no longer suits my RL, so I haven't made the switch to the likes of Hodor where a significant number of my ex-guildies have.

But of course that means I do have said contacts, and a number of others besides - and no-one in the less hardcore guilds is reporting any contact from Zenimax, hence my 'informed assumption'.

However, I accept that guilds such as yours may well be giving a more balanced appraisal, that's good news.

Let's hope it converts into something positive to deal with these very real issues.

byrom101b16_ESO · February 2015

Digiman wrote: »

@byrom101b16_ESO that's a joke right? Repair costs being that expensive? Is this just happening with Light armor or are other people in different types feeling the pinch?

Also very post, I think you hit the nail on the head quite well. The design team has not only dropped the ball on Sorcerers but kicked it into their faces. They really need to get their act together before they release this patch because Liquid Lighting is a complete and utter insult.

It was quite a shock to me, and is no joke.

Maybe it's only Light Armour, but it happened just as fast to my Valkyn Skoria head piece which is medium, so I don't think that's the case.

I pretty much know how fast the gear (pre 1.6) degrades and was wondering after such a short time why my survivability was suddenly in the toilet. Checked my gear and WOW - red all over!

Couldn't believe it... but that's what's happening at the moment.

Minack · February 2015

They're probably hoping higher repair bills encourage buying crown repair kits or subs.

AshTal · February 2015

I don't really do end game PvE but a PvP Sorc suffers from low damage, high cost and stupid pets which are just a drain on mana nothing else. I suspect the same is true for end game PvE.

OneEyedKing · February 2015

Minack wrote: »

They're probably hoping higher repair bills encourage buying crown repair kits or subs.

Or it could be a bug. That seems a lot more likely.

The question for the OP is: were you dying more often, due to changes in your build, or were you gaining enlightened XP? Maybe enlightened XP is incorrectly damaging armor at a higher rate.

Snit · February 2015

OneEyedKing wrote: »

Maybe enlightened XP is incorrectly damaging armor at a higher rate.

That makes a lot of sense.

madangrypally · February 2015

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!

You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!

I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.

It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!

A few things that is likely happening.
1: ZoS increased normal degradation by 5-10% because they added Champion Passive Merchant Favor. Its possible that this change is bugged and causing much higher increased degradation then intended. We all know how fallible ZoS is.
2: Enlightenment may be causing gear to degrade 4 times faster then intended. This would be considered a bug IMO and the mechanic behind the degradation in general.

I do not think ZoS will intentionally increase degradation by 400%. ZoS is known for buggy updates and a buggy game in general. This is likely one to add to the long list of poor design.

Tankqull · February 2015

madangrypally wrote: »

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

Which brings me to your 'hidden' across the board mega-nerf!

You've at least quadrupled the rate of degradation of gear in combat!!!

I can't think of a more transparently cynical way to 'encourage' players to spend coins in your shop for repair crates. As a player who no longer ranks among the 'no-lifers', may I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the need to sub to buy repair crates, just to keep my gear from falling to bits 'by design'. It took all of 20 minutes of aoe pulls in the Spellscar for me to have ZERO durability in all seven slots and be biting on a 2K repair bill.

It's a damn cheap trick you seriously need to consider reversing, and fast!

A few things that is likely happening.
1: ZoS increased normal degradation by 5-10% because they added Champion Passive Merchant Favor. Its possible that this change is bugged and causing much higher increased degradation then intended. We all know how fallible ZoS is.
2: Enlightenment may be causing gear to degrade 4 times faster then intended. This would be considered a bug IMO and the mechanic behind the degradation in general.

I do not think ZoS will intentionally increase degradation by 400%. ZoS is known for buggy updates and a buggy game in general. This is likely one to add to the long list of poor design.

i would point to this as degradation is connected to xp gained - 4x the xp results in 4xfaster degradation.

Valnas · February 2015

if you are running a build with literally no regen and reduction, why are you surprised your out of resources ? rock that ele drain + mix in shock heavies if you want to regen and run no regen.

byrom101b16_ESO · February 2015

Valnas wrote: »

if you are running a build with literally no regen and reduction, why are you surprised your out of resources ? rock that ele drain + mix in shock heavies if you want to regen and run no regen.

I do have regen.

My point is - my 1.5 gear and build does me fine. Gear, build and rotations... there is zero problem.

Come the PTS... and the same character actually with more regen thrown in with a small gear change has less than half the sustain, if that.

Also - I have 27.7% magicka cost reduction on this character, so I don't know where you get your idea that I don't have any.

In any case - my point is perfectly clear. Magicka abilities on Sorcerers are far too expensive.

We shouldn't have to sacrifice fundamentally needed bonuses to dps, which is already poor, to have sustain, and on the flipside we shouldn't have to tolerate very poor sustain to achieve barely adequate dps.

Choice in character builds - especially ones kitted out with top end gear should be about where you want to be most effective, not where you think you need to be merely adequate choosing between two things you really should have both of as a baseline.

I don't see the other classes having to significantly rob Peter to pay Paul, their abilities are cheaper, equally or more effective at dealing dps, and they are less reliant on Light Armour for survivability where they equip it.

Finally I am talking about PvE - and the constant talk from designers about PvP and Sorcerer changes needs to change to tackle this far larger part of the game as well.

These are facts - not speculation , and not some play-style mistake on my part.

They are issues that need to be rectified before 1.6 becomes live.

byrom101b16_ESO · February 2015

Snit wrote: »

OneEyedKing wrote: »

Maybe enlightened XP is incorrectly damaging armor at a higher rate.

That makes a lot of sense.

I hope this is the case, but having seen such a move before in AoC, I guess I can admit to being cynical about it.

That's not to say I'm wrong, but we shall see...

At the end of the day, whether it was deliberate or an accident, it needs to be put back to how it is now on live.