Champion System Ability Review

ZOS_Wrobel

Calling all ESO forum posters! We are currently reviewing the Champion System bonuses and would love hear your feedback on them. Our goals for this review are:

• Ensure bonuses have a counter weight
• Improve infrequently selected bonuses
• Effectively communicate all bonuses so it’s easier to understand what they’re doing

Ensure every bonus has a counter weight:
For the Champion System, every offensive bonus should have a defensive counterpart and vice versa. For example: Offensive players can get increased spell penetration from Spell Erosion, while defensive players can get increased spell resistance from Spell Shield.

Improve infrequently selected bonuses:
Some of the Champion Point stars are much less popular than others. It’s not intended that all specs are equally useful, but they should be somewhat useful for some playstyle. Nourishing is a great example of a passive we are looking at in our review. It’s in the same constellation as Quick Recovery and gives a similar bonus of increased healing. However, Nourishing only works every 45 seconds when you can use a potion and Quick Recovery works all the time on all abilities, from both ally and self cast sources.

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
It’s unclear exactly how some Champion passives work just by reading their tooltips. For example, Spell Erosion and Piercing are looking at the attackers stats instead of the defenders so the number don't end up being what you may expect. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

We would love to hear what your top three changes would be to the Champion bonuses. Keep in mind the criteria above, and as always, please keep things constructive!

olsborg

More impactful passives, for specific builds. Examples: Regenerate stamina the first 2 seconds of initiating block, Dodge fatigue duration is reduced by 20%, Each time your magicka reaches 30% or lower your magicka regen is boosted by 10% for 10 seconds. You can roll dodge whilst being in stealth. Etc etc..

Something for all builds, Example: You can specc for defence vs magicka and elemental dmg, but not physical damage.

More interresting passives, see the first point.

Thank you for reading.

MissBizz

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
Blessed: Increases the effectiveness by any healing you initiate by [x]%.
Elfborn: Increases your Spell Critical damage and healing by [x]%.

I don't even know if I understand it correctly (so I think that fits into easier to understand category) but one CP star makes my healing stronger, and one CP passive give me spell crit AND stronger healers? (I imagine this only means my spell crit is higher.. which yeah, then my heals would then crit more.. but that's not reason to mention healing in elfborn IMO)

Darlgon

First off.. yah.. glad to hear you are looking at the CP mess created with the impending removal of VR.. Good to hear.

But, you know I am gonna have to Google Doc you for this, right @Wrobel . This.. wont be a fast knee-jerk response.

found1779

Improve infrequently selected bonuses: if these cps are not very popular it would be cool if there was cps related to werewolf or vampire I bet those would be more popular like a cp that would allow your werewolf timer a longer duration based on how many cps you have put into it increases your ww timer by so many seconds

HeroOfNone

1. There is a terrible lack of synergy between elemental damage and magical damage for stamina based players. Dragonknight abilities are based off fire, even with the stamina morphes, but elemental expert, which boosts elemental damage, is under the apprentice. On parity, the nightblade's stamina abilities are magical in nature, and boosted under thaumaturge
2. The armor increase from heavy armor makes sense for heavy armor, but not for medium or light armor. You may want to focus on reducing stamina or magicka related abilities instead.
3. Display champion bonus info under the tool tip, maybe make it a UI togglable. So when you see "debuff healing be 30 %" under that you'd have "with befoul: +33%, 63% total". For damage based abilities, this would help us see what champion passives are effecting it. So something thst is normally 1000 damage with 20% more damage could show as "does 1000 (+200, 1200 total) damage to enemies". Addons might be able to do this, but that wouldn't help console players.

Plan to have a large post with some more ideas by the end of the week for some more of this.

Nifty2g

Our biggest issue right now is that some abilities are scaling the wrong way, for an example Overload on a Stamina Sorcerer will scale better with Spell Erosion than precise strikes and so forth. Is that being addressed @wrobel ?

And as always, mitigate physical damage is needed the same way we have elemental defender and hardy

Side Note: With these changes are we seeing a CP Cap increase?

Joy_Division

Is this actually going to be a discussion?

Or are we going to say stuff that has zero effect on game development like the last topic?

Anyway:

1. Some specs should not have to split between different trees. Sorcerers need thaumaturge and elemental to increase their damage. Stam builds only need mighty
2. Apprentice perks are bad and too situational. Vengeance? What magicka build blocks 3 spells? Foresight? I have to use a potion that has a 45 second cooldown?
3. Combine blade and heavy weapon expert from Apprentice tree (people should never have to invest in 2 stars what others get for 1) and make new passive that reduces the charge-up time for a heavy attack

CP5

Question I hope comes up in this discussion (not a change) why, in the Atronach tree, is it divided into staves, bows, then blunt/bladed? It helps melee builds by saying if you use only axes you can use all forms of melee trees, but it also restricts you to using only those types of weapons.

Ffastyl

The current Armor Focus stars under the Warrior constellations are a nice way to bring in character specialization, however there are the Piercing and Mighty stars under the Ritual constellation that increase physical penetration and physical damage. The cap for both is 25% while the cap for any of the armor specialization stars is 15%. There is also a lack of a "reduce physical damage by x%" star in all the constellations. While a loss in horizontal progression, the armor specialization stars should be replaced and/or buffed with an increase physical resistance up to 25% (to match Piercing), decrease physical damage by up to 25% (to match Mighty) and a third star relating to defense.

This third star could be "Increase damage blocked by (up to 15%)" or to encourage armor specialization where Undaunted encourages armor diversity, "Decrease damage taken by (up to 15%) when wearing 7 of the same armor type." One of these could replace Nourishing. Having a star that grants flat damage reduction while wearing only one type of armor will have no counter so it could tip the game balance in favor of defense once Mighty and Piercing have proper counters.

And, honestly, after the game has been increasingly offense focused since Update 6, switching to defense would be a refreshing change. On second thought, this would also increase TTK and players would spike their Damage stats even higher to compensate; which reminds me of the issue with Heavy Armor builds lacking in even remotely comparable offense to Light and Medium Armor. It is possible, I have gotten a 7/7 Heavy Armor build to a base 2k Weapon Damage (close to 3k with set procs and buffs), but when the Average Joe DPS has 3k Weapon Damage now... I am beginning to feel the gap. I have proposed ways to balance the DPS between armors by nerfing Medium Armor or buffing Heavy Armor and this next suggestion falls under buffing Heavy Armor: Of the two 'free' stars (one of the armor specialization stars and Nourishing), one could become an "Increase Weapon and Spell Damage by (up to 15%) of your Resistance/Max Health." Increasing Damage in correspondence with Max Health will give reason to invest in it however that will be a universal increase - all Armor types will benefit equally. By scaling the additional Damage off Resistance (average, lowest or highest) Heavy Armor will benefit the most by naturally having more Resistance than the other armor types.
...And after doing some math, a 2% or 3% cap is best balance wise. At the hard cap of 32500, 15% would grant 4875 Damage. 3% will grant 975 and 2% 650. The stipulations of wearing only one armor type could come into play here as well and make balancing for armor types easier (wear VR16 Legendary Reinforced armor of each type to find out the highest Resistance values for each).

The increase block mitigation sounds a lot easier to implement and balance now that I've thought through the alternate suggestions more. That still leaves one star blank though.

The issue with Nourishing is the power of top tier potions. Combined with the Medicinal Use passive (30% increased duration) most effects last for 47.6 seconds, longer than the 45 second cooldown on potions. Potions also have values of around 7k for restoring Health/Stamina/Magicka so while Nourishing might make an impact on that, 7k is already enough. Finding a potion based buff when top tier potions are already so powerful is a daunting task. The potions could be nerfed and Nourishing fill the gap to their former power but there will be player backlash to that solution.


I am out of time for now. I will return later with more food for thought.

hrothbern

3 general remarks:

1. At 100% availability of all 3600 CP points, the CP system does not increase build diversity anymore, but becomes only an amplifier of the already chosen build diversity of the Armor set etc. Believing that Build diversity, balanced by counters is great ! I would recommend that during the coming years we will never get 100% availability of all Champion Point but have a cap at around 50%. This means that new stars needs to be added continuously to keep up over 5-10 years the build diversity we have between now and the coming 1-2 years. The first star I would add is a star that mitigates Physical Damage (equivalent of Hardy) and increase as parallel action, the Physical Damage of of several Stamina abilities by way of DOT's. This to make Stamina builds more viable in Pledges and Trials.
2. During the first stage of the CP system, certainly between now and 1000 CP, there are dynamic inbalances in the CP system, that are in favor of doing DPS/self-HPS. For example: With a 600 CP budget, the offensive side can straight away invest 100 CP each in e.g. Thaumaturg & Elfborn, maxing DPS/self-HPS. A defensive build cannot counter that with the given stars at the same 600 CP budget. At higher available CP budget, defensive builds can recover countering CP effects. But this will take 1-2 years. Especially Tanking characters and Hybrids suffer from this dynamic "over time" inbalance. I have no quick solution for that. Whereby noted that the steepnes of the gradient of dimishing returns while investing in a given star mitigates this inbalance.
3. I would add some more quality of life stars. Not everybody is min-maxing for PVP or cutting edge Pledges/Trials. Treasure Hunter Passive is a nice example.

BTW I think this CP system as concept is really great !!!

Cinbri

Wrobel wrote: »

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
It’s unclear exactly how some Champion passives work just by reading their tooltips. For example, Befoul reads: “Increases the effectiveness of healing reduction abilities by 33%”. This bonus is actually additive, so a 30% debuff ends up being a 63% debuff when this passive is maxed. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

Really. Why than with 100 Befoul, Dark Flare from 30% reduction becoming 40%?

Ernest145

Replace thick skinned (reduce DOT damage) with reduce physical damage. There is no reason why DOTs should be reduced by hardy/elemental defender and also thick skinned.

Ernest145

Joy_Division wrote: »

Is this actually going to be a discussion?

Or are we going to say stuff that has zero effect on game development like the last topic?

Anyway:

1. Some specs should not have to split between different trees. Sorcerers need thaumaturge and elemental to increase their damage. Stam builds only need mighty
2. Apprentice perks are bad and too situational. Vengeance? What magicka build blocks 3 spells? Foresight? I have to use a potion that has a 45 second cooldown?
3. Combine blade and heavy weapon expert from Apprentice tree (people should never have to invest in 2 stars what others get for 1) and make new passive that reduces the charge-up time for a heavy attack

Ultimates (except dragon leap) different skills and passives (burning light, killers blade, poison injection, etc) scales with thaumaturge or elemental defender, so stamina builds still suffer from that issue.

Asmael

1) Fixing DoTs

Right now, I have my sights on the Damage over Time (DoT) reduction passive, which is another nail on the coffin for DoT builds, simply because you can already mitigate those with many different ways from CPs alone.

Not only DoTs...
- Deal barely more damage than direct attacks (Surprise attack, Wrecking blow...)
- Can be purged / cleansed (an extra loss of DPS)

But they are also mitigated so many times by CPs, it hurts, just check what happens with Burning Embers for instance:
- DoT reduction passive
- Elemental defender passive
- L/M/H armor focus
- Increased spell resistance
- Multiple procs from resilient passive
- Resistant passive (for crits)

Ok, how do you mitigate instant cast physical damage?
- L/M/H armor focus
- Resistant passive (for crits)

I'd say fixing this is a good start. Scrap the DoT reduction, and you may even consider an increase DoT damage passive (which would lead to DoT oriented builds quite possibly -> higher diversity).

2) The Shadow > Elusive passive

Reducing duration of CCs is a counter-synergy to reducing the cost of Dodge rolls / Break free, and between the two, the choice is quickly done: not using break free within 1 second is usually a death sentence when you have 2 or more people focusing you.

There are many few possible replacements: retaining stamina regeneration while blocking, increasing base movement speed (would probably too strong and I wouldn't recommend it), reducing detection radius...

3) Nourishing

This is bad for these reasons:
- Drastically low extra health returned
- Drastically long cooldowns

Solutions? Reduced cooldown for potions, or increased effects duration (invisibility detection, resource regen...) of potions.

--

If I see at least 1 of these changed, I'll call it a day.

mateoz

Thaumaturge and elemental expert are the first 2 that should be reworked. Poison damage for bow user should remain in the phy damage tree while the magic damage should be under magic damage tree.

There are in the Atronach tree too much choices into staves, bows, 1H sword, axe, mace ... consolidate. we use 2 weapons all the time wont spend CP on 2 stars.

Move treasure hunter to another tree

Xeven

1) Mighty needs a counter star.

2) Spell Erosion is underwhelming. There are a lot of options available for armor penetration and not so many for spell penetration. Spell Erosion needs a buff.

3) Food & Drinks are no longer affected by CP like they used to be.

Gilvoth

removed.

Shelgon

1. If you're going to create a physical damage mitigator for CP then we are going to need to increase the damage of some stamina abilities, or any abilities that scale off weapon damage and stamina, because right now, as @frozywozy stated in another thread, magicka builds are hitting just as hard as stamina builds right now even with points into hardy and elemental defender. If you guys add physical damage mitigator for CP then it will just be a nerf to stam builds.

2. I would love some variety in the CP system, don't really have any suggestions though as to what would be changed.

3. Yes, this would be great. Knowing how the CP effects your stats, damage/healing outputs, and mitigation would be extremely helpful, and would clear up a lot of confusion and constant testing, although that might be fun for some people...

Joy_Division

Ernest145 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Is this actually going to be a discussion?

Or are we going to say stuff that has zero effect on game development like the last topic?

Anyway:

1. Some specs should not have to split between different trees. Sorcerers need thaumaturge and elemental to increase their damage. Stam builds only need mighty
2. Apprentice perks are bad and too situational. Vengeance? What magicka build blocks 3 spells? Foresight? I have to use a potion that has a 45 second cooldown?
3. Combine blade and heavy weapon expert from Apprentice tree (people should never have to invest in 2 stars what others get for 1) and make new passive that reduces the charge-up time for a heavy attack

Ultimates (except dragon leap) different skills and passives (burning light, killers blade, poison injection, etc) scales with thaumaturge or elemental defender, so stamina builds still suffer from that issue.

I hear you. Don't understand why Killer's Blade and such do magic damage, though I think the fix for that would be to rework those specific abilities and come up with some more physical ultimates (I don't know why the weapon lines don't have them).

Xeven

4) Magic has to spec Thaum and Elemental while Stamina only has to spec Mighty.

Junkogen

Wrobel wrote: »

Calling all ESO forum posters! We are currently reviewing the Champion System bonuses and would love hear your feedback on them. Our goals for this review are:

• Ensure bonuses have a counter weight
• Improve infrequently selected bonuses
• Effectively communicate all bonuses so it’s easier to understand what they’re doing

Ensure every bonus has a counter weight:
For the Champion System, every offensive bonus should have a defensive counterpart and vice versa. For example: Offensive players can get increased spell penetration from Spell Erosion, while defensive players can get increased spell resistance from Spell Shield.

Improve infrequently selected bonuses:
Some of the Champion Point stars are much less popular than others. It’s not intended that all specs are equally useful, but they should be somewhat useful for some playstyle. Nourishing is a great example of a passive we are looking at in our review. It’s in the same constellation as Quick Recovery and gives a similar bonus of increased healing. However, Nourishing only works every 45 seconds when you can use a potion and Quick Recovery works all the time on all abilities, from both ally and self cast sources.

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
It’s unclear exactly how some Champion passives work just by reading their tooltips. For example, Befoul reads: “Increases the effectiveness of healing reduction abilities by 33%”. This bonus is actually additive, so a 30% debuff ends up being a 63% debuff when this passive is maxed. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

We would love to hear what your top three changes would be to the Champion bonuses. Keep in mind the criteria above, and as always, please keep things constructive!

I hate to go on a tangent, but the power of Sithis compels me.

You got it! Now you understand why the "Amphibious" Argonian racial passive is so bad, as well. You just explained it perfectly. It only works every 45 seconds while other passives work all the time. Now can you please put some of the effort you're putting into making the Champion Point system better into making the racial passives better, too? Please? I know no one likes begging, but this is me begging. Please? I now know that you understand Argonians' pain. You wrote it out yourself. Please, help us. Please?

Argonian passives are just as restricted and niche as that nourishing passive. Not only amphibious, but every one of their passives except the 6% health bonus is just as limited. The entire Argonian race and player base has the same exact problem as those underused champion point passives. The exact. Same. Problem.

Please do something about it.

Thank you.

Asmael

Junkogen wrote: »

Wrobel wrote: »

Calling all ESO forum posters! We are currently reviewing the Champion System bonuses and would love hear your feedback on them. Our goals for this review are:

• Ensure bonuses have a counter weight
• Improve infrequently selected bonuses
• Effectively communicate all bonuses so it’s easier to understand what they’re doing

Ensure every bonus has a counter weight:
For the Champion System, every offensive bonus should have a defensive counterpart and vice versa. For example: Offensive players can get increased spell penetration from Spell Erosion, while defensive players can get increased spell resistance from Spell Shield.

Improve infrequently selected bonuses:
Some of the Champion Point stars are much less popular than others. It’s not intended that all specs are equally useful, but they should be somewhat useful for some playstyle. Nourishing is a great example of a passive we are looking at in our review. It’s in the same constellation as Quick Recovery and gives a similar bonus of increased healing. However, Nourishing only works every 45 seconds when you can use a potion and Quick Recovery works all the time on all abilities, from both ally and self cast sources.

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
It’s unclear exactly how some Champion passives work just by reading their tooltips. For example, Befoul reads: “Increases the effectiveness of healing reduction abilities by 33%”. This bonus is actually additive, so a 30% debuff ends up being a 63% debuff when this passive is maxed. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

We would love to hear what your top three changes would be to the Champion bonuses. Keep in mind the criteria above, and as always, please keep things constructive!

I hate to go on a tangent, but the power of Sithis compels me.

You got it! Now you understand why the "Amphibious" Argonian racial passive is so bad, as well. You just explained it perfectly. It only works every 45 seconds while other passives work all the time. Now can you please put some of the effort you're putting into making the Champion Point system better into making the racial passives better, too? Please? I know no one likes begging, but this is me begging. Please? I now know that you understand Argonians' pain. You wrote it out yourself. Please, help us. Please?

Argonian passives are just as restricted and niche as that nourishing passive. Not only amphibious, but every one of their passives except the 6% health bonus is just as limited. The Argonian race has the same exact problem as those underused champion point passives. The exaxt. Same. Problem.

Please do something about it.

Thank you.

*hands handkerchief*

Because I already know the answer, and know you'll need it soon enough.

Ernest145

Joy_Division wrote: »

Ernest145 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Is this actually going to be a discussion?

Or are we going to say stuff that has zero effect on game development like the last topic?

Anyway:

1. Some specs should not have to split between different trees. Sorcerers need thaumaturge and elemental to increase their damage. Stam builds only need mighty
2. Apprentice perks are bad and too situational. Vengeance? What magicka build blocks 3 spells? Foresight? I have to use a potion that has a 45 second cooldown?
3. Combine blade and heavy weapon expert from Apprentice tree (people should never have to invest in 2 stars what others get for 1) and make new passive that reduces the charge-up time for a heavy attack

Ultimates (except dragon leap) different skills and passives (burning light, killers blade, poison injection, etc) scales with thaumaturge or elemental defender, so stamina builds still suffer from that issue.

I hear you. Don't understand why Killer's Blade and such do magic damage, though I think the fix for that would be to rework those specific abilities and come up with some more physical ultimates (I don't know why the weapon lines don't have them).

Yeah it would be neat for different ultimates without taking away from majicka builds but if more ultimates were to scale with physical damage I would pray a cp star to reduce physical damage comes, would really hate to see all stam builds have their own take flights.

Rune_Relic

@Wrobel

You cant expect people to make meaningful decisions without properly understanding how skills and passives work.
Hence your Point 2...largely depends on Point 3.
You need to be absolutely clear and concise on the formula for these passives (and all skills).

Other than that my only requirement was Point 1 and a review of the stamina/magicka/health scaling with CP.
Not that its so critical with capped/banded CP coming into effect.

Gilvoth

didnt you guys say there is going to be a champion point free cryodiil campaign coming up next patch?
then this discussion and anything related to champion points is completely useless and void for those of us who pvp 24 / 7

zerosingularity

Thanks for another fine topic! Hopefully you can get some good info and ideas from the community.

I have more than the listed 3, but I do feel all 5 are relevant to the topic.

Champion skills that need work:

Warrior

Nourishing(Infrequent bonus) - As mentioned, this skill is fairly unpopular. Once suggestion I would have is if this also boosted the stamina and magicka return on potions as well. As this is a defensive passive, that is as far as I would go without redesigning it as a whole, since many potions are offensive in nature.

Heavy/Medium/Light Armor Focus(counter weight/infrequent bonus) - I think these are meant to be the counter to the Mighty passive (Physical Damage) but currently these feel lackluster at best. I know many would like this to be a % physical damage reduction while wearing the 5 pc (not % bonus to armor) but that might be a little powerful and would need a balance check in PvP AND PvE.

Mage

Arcane Well(clarity) - I never see this 120 point passive activate, so I do not know easily if it is working or not. If it is working correctly, a better telegraph to show it is working might be a good idea.

Serpent

Inspiration Boost(extra) - This 30 point passive is utterly worthless for many players, who have max crafting, and only somewhat helpful for alts leveling up crafting. A secondary effect like 5% exp gain or something minor might be a good idea.

Shadowstrike(infrequent bonus) - This 120 point passive requires the killing blow to be a heavy attack. That seems very underpowered for a 120 point passive in the tree that gets maxed last (reduce cost and increase recovery is usually more important). All attacks would be way to over powered, maybe have it be from single target (non charge) attacks only.

P.S. You are gonna need ALOT of coffee when you decide to dig through these posts.

s7732425ub17_ESO

The problem is that no one except tanks cares about damage reduction in this game. Light armor users focus entirely on DPS or healing buffs and use shields as their defense. Medium armor users focus entirely on DPS and use dodge roll as their defense. As a magicka DPS, would I spend 10 points to increase my damage reduction by some %? No, I'll always skip that star and put it in some + damage star. So you have a bunch of useless defensive stars that no one will ever put points into.

s7732425ub17_ESO

zerosingularity wrote: »

Heavy/Medium/Light Armor Focus(counter weight/infrequent bonus) - I think these are meant to be the counter to the Mighty passive (Physical Damage) but currently these feel lackluster at best. I know many would like this to be a % damage reduction while wearing the 5 pc (not % bonus to armor) but that might be a little powerful and would need a balance check in PvP AND PvE.

Arcane Well(clarity) - I never see this 120 point passive activate, so I do not know easily if it is working or not. If it is working correctly, a better telegraph to show it is working might be a good idea.

% damage reduction is the same thing as armor. Something that adds 3500 armor can simply be thought of as adding 5% DR.

Arcane Well = very quick and hard to see blue flash when a mob dies.

Soulac

Wrobel wrote: »

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
It’s unclear exactly how some Champion passives work just by reading their tooltips. For example, Befoul reads: “Increases the effectiveness of healing reduction abilities by 33%”. This bonus is actually additive, so a 30% debuff ends up being a 63% debuff when this passive is maxed. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

With 100pts into Befoul my reverberating bash / soul harvest tells me it reduces heals by 40 %. Either it´s an error in the tooltip or it´s not working as you described.

hrothbern

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

The problem is that no one except tanks cares about damage reduction in this game. Light armor users focus entirely on DPS or healing buffs and use shields as their defense. Medium armor users focus entirely on DPS and use dodge roll as their defense. As a magicka DPS, would I spend 10 points to increase my damage reduction by some %? No, I'll always skip that star and put it in some + damage star. So you have a bunch of useless defensive stars that no one will ever put points into.

When we have all 1200 CP available also DPS/HPS characters will start putting CP points in defensive stars.