Gameplay Updates and Q&A with Eric Wrobel

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hello everyone!

On this Friday’s ESO Live Twitch show, we’ll be joined by Lead Combat Designer Eric Wrobel to discuss some of the ability and balance changes going into the Thieves Guild base game patch. This will include what’s been done so far, some upcoming changes we plan to make, and answering some of your questions live. First, we’d like to address a few popular topics we’ve seen over the past week from the PTS forums:

• Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.
• Magelight: We plan on making a few changes to this ability based on some feedback we’ve seen including reducing the radius of the reveal, and increasing the cost of the ability. Ultimately, we want it to be a little more difficult to find stealthed enemies unless you specifically use the Radiant Magelight morph, and want it to be more expensive to get the Major Empower buff from toggling Magelight.
• Meteor: This was the only Ultimate that you were previously able to reflect, so this change was simply bringing it in line with all other Ultimates. We also plan on making a slight reduction to the snare on the Ice Comet morph.
• Siphoning Attacks: We plan on increasing the resources provided by this ability in the next incremental patch.
• Leeching Strikes: Also in the next incremental patch, we plan on increasing the amount of health restored from this ability, based on your feedback.
• Alliance War Skill Line: Rich Lambert posted a very detailed response in this thread that we encourage you to check out, but in short, we based our changes on what we found to be the average amount of AP gained based on our data. That said, what’s currently on the PTS is lower than intended, and will be fixed in the next incremental patch.
• Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.

With all that said, please post any combat or itemization-related questions for Eric in this thread, and we’ll do our best to answer as many as we can on Friday’s show. Remember to check today’s PTS patch notes first as we included a few fixes in this most recent update.

Thanks, everyone, and we look forward to talking with you later this week!

Nighn_9

Does the 5 piece effect of torugs pact affect maelstrom arena weapons?

MissBizz

Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.

Oh.

I sincerely hope you did read the feedback given to you once everyone got their marbles together. I still don't understand needing to take away the third heal. Could have just toned down the heal to make it "less effective".

timidobserver

I just spotted another Templar nerf that most people aren't going to notice until the changes outlined above hit the pts.

Nikkor

1. Meteor should be strong, thank you.
2. I pve a lot and don't want alliance war ranks nearly as easy to get as in the current pts. Now on live when someone sees a legate it means something. Let's not take that away. It's part of the fun. Please and thank you on adjusting this.
3. Undaunted gear for purchase. I'm barely ok with this in the first place. It NEEDS to be MUCH more expensive. 600k ap or 200k gold. Anything less is unacceptable.
4. On an eso live we were told alliance war gear would scale to v16 with thieves guild. What gives!?

Paulington

Nikkor wrote: »

1. Meteor should be strong, thank you.
2. I pve a lot and don't want alliance war ranks nearly as easy to get as in the current pts. Now on live when someone sees a legate it means something. Let's not take that away. It's part of the fun. Please and thank you on adjusting this.
3. Undaunted gear for purchase. I'm barely ok with this in the first place. It NEEDS to be MUCH more expensive. 600k ap or 200k gold. Anything less is unacceptable.
4. On an eso live we were told alliance war gear would scale to v16 with thieves guild. What gives!?

Just so you know, PvP RANKS are unchanged, it still takes the same amount of AP to earn Legate on the PTS as it does on Live. All that has changed is the PvP SKILL line ranks.

Skorol007

@ZOS_GinaBruno there are basically 0 changes for stamina sorc and it is not even mentionned in your post. Are you guys really not doing anything for them?

Strider_Roshin

Can you change the light, medium, and heavy armor passives back to how they were originally? Because I fail to see why anyone should choose heavy armor over light at this point in time.

DinOwned

I'd also like if you addressed stam sorcs. Thank you.

Strider_Roshin

Any plans do make a physical damage morph to Death Stroke or Radial Sweep? Sure would be nice to have a decent hitting ultimate when I'm not on my DK.

Zinaroth

Still nothing here to help stamina templars. Also you need to make rune focus a true self buff. Allowing the secondary effects to follow for 8 seconds will not be enough. It is too much micro management keeping this up. Let Major Mending be something given when standing inside Purfying Ritual and make Rune Focus into a full 20 seconds self buff with Major Ward, Major Resolve and Minor Protection along with either Minor Mending or magicka regen depending on what morph you take. In no way shape or form will this be too strong for a class that is already struggling.

Quoting myself on my other thread "Stamina Templar Balancing Thread" for exposure.
Thread can be found here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/245360/stamina-templar-balancing-thread/p1
Make sure you unfold the quotations for proper context.

Zinaroth wrote: »

Disclaimer: This thread is aimed at Zenimax Online Studios and the developers in charge of class balancing. It will be focusing on the templar class with priority on stamina orientated builds, as those are currently suffering a lot. The thread will be very long, so please take your time reading it before responding to anything. I do not mean to neglect magicka orientated builds, but with the recent patch notes they seem like they will do just fine, I am however worried about how there wasn't a single change aimed specifically at stamina templars. I will try to adress this without hurting magicka templars. The thread will consist of three segments. In the first segment I will tag all the knowledgeable EU players I know play or know about staminat emplars to have them chime in, since this post was very much a collaberation where I also asked some of them for advice. I will also tag ZOS employees, and I will lay out my idea of what stamina templars should be capable of. In the second segment I will go through the patch note changes for templars one by one and comment on them. In the third segment I will summarize the good, the bad, and what wasn't touched on in the patch notes. In the fourth and last segment I will make my conclusion of what needs to happen further with the templar class in order for stamina templars to truely be good combatants on the play field in both PvE and PvP. Thank you for taking your time to read this thread and I hope if you're a fellow stamina player you will chime in and that if you're a ZOS employee you will atleast aknowledge the existance of this thread. Happy reading!

This a call to arms my fellow stamina templar brethren, now is our chance to sieze the opportunity and tell Zenimax what needs to happen with the stamina templars, and that it needs to happen before PTS is over! @Alcast @Mumyo @Husan @Morathras @Soris @BlackEar @Springt-Über-Zwerge @Joy_Division @AfkNinja @Cinbri @Jura23 @dodgehopper_ESO @SemiD4rkness @BalticBlues @AOECAPS @Essiaga

I also hope you developers and community managers chime in or at the very least aknowledge this thread, depending on who is the appropriate person for this entire thing! @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_BrianWheeler @Wrobel @ZOS_KNowak

The Stamina Templar - an ideology
For me I have always imagined my Templar as a paladin or crusader, a heavy front line warrior able to stand his ground and smite his enemies with holy light and fire while providing buffs to his fellow team mates. A holy variation of the DK more focused on buffing himself and his allies where the DK is more focusing on debuffing his enemies. The templar should not be a hit and run class, it should be a class that can somewhat stand his ground, while still being mobile, like the DK. He fights and dies with his sword in the hand. In order to be able to achieve this, there are several things that needs to happen in this game, with the templar balancing, and this is what I will try to adress in the next part, hope you're with me this far.

Before the PTS patch notes hit it was appearent that Templars, both magicka and stamina, have been suffering from DPS in competetive PvE that couldn't match with the other classes. This might not be very appearent in a normal dungeon run, but for us hardcore trialists, it is.
Templars have been suffering under bad passives, especially when it comes to rescource management, an in detail comparison will appear later in this thread.
Templars have suffered from bad survivability outside spamming heals, something that wasn't even a thing for Stamina Templars. The stamina version of the class that was supposed to be THE healing class had the worst self healing in the game, this was a major issue.
Templars had a lot of bugs, especially for Stamina Templars the bug that made Burning Light not proc on shields has made PvP very tough for us against Magicka NBs and Magicka Sorc.
We have suffered from mobility issues, but only as a side effect of not being able to stand our ground.
Furthermore stamina templars have suffered from a bad option of class abilities; typically in PvP a Stamplar would use Biting Jabs, Purifying Ritual and Restoring Focus. In PvE Repentance would be worth slotting aswell because there were a lot of dead bodies, but not in PvP. Then there's Piercing Javeling, which until now has been really questionable in its usage since Biting Jabs would hand out free CC immunity aswell.
Dawns Wrath was a completely useless skill tree with the exception for the 4% reduced cost passive, likewise the Restoring Light tree had three abilities worth using but none of the passives were worth slotting.
Furthermore none of the ultimates were really worth using. Nova had its uses as a zerg busting ultimate, but that was about it, you'd be better off with Meteor in all aspects of PvE. The Rite of Passage healing ultimate is completely and utterly useless, sure it works as a panic button but so does Breath of Life, only people lacking knowledge would use this in any content, and then there's the Radial Sweep ulti whos damage and range is so bad that it is rendered useless aswell, often replaced with Dawnbreaker.
So there we have it; stamina templars were in disarray, benefiting from 3-4 class abilities and the same amount of passives, with none of their ultis working, no proper movement, CC, or utility, nothing that was worth spending magicka on, with sub-par DPS in PvE and bad rescource management and survival, and the worst self healing in the game and an armor buff that lasted only 8 seconds since noone could stand still in a rune in PvP with a 5 m diameter.

Before the patch notes hit I made a over over in the General Section of the forums called "What will happen to Templars with the patch? Place your bets!":
forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/244923/what-will-happen-to-templars-with-the-patch-place-your-bets/p1
This thread clearly shows the frustration the templar community and especially the stamina templar community was in.
But while the verdict on the patch notes have been hard over there I don't agree that it was all bad, there were a lot of good changes aswell, so let's get into the patch notes...

Thieves' Guild Templar Patch Notes

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Blazing Spear (Spear Shards morph): This morph now displays a hostile red telegraph if it is cast from enemy Templars.

Good for the enemy I guess. I would have preferred to see a change to this ability that would also benefit the Templar himself. Currently this ability has two purposes; spam it on several mobs as a means to do AoE damage as a magicka templar or to feed stamina to your group members. This ability currently holds no position in the arsenal of a stamina templar unless you play along another stamina player, in which case it will most likely be foregone for something else anyway. Have you considered granting the stamina return to both the guy who uses the synergy and the templar himself if he is stood within range of the synergy activation when it gets used? You would still need someone to synergise and it would benefit the templar himself aswell. This could be deemed overpowered but then the stamina return could be scaled down. Just trying to advocate a buff here that would move templars more towards sustainability for himself aswell rather than just being a buff and heal bot.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Focused Charge: This ability and its morphs are now more responsive, and will no longer cause you to become stuck in the charge animation.

I have not tested this myself but according to what I have seen and read this still has a major global cooldown, doesn't really touch stamina templars much so I won't go into too much detail with it here.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Piercing Javelin: Increased the range of this ability and its morphs to 28 meters from 20 meters.

Alright, good change in accordance with the ranged buff the other class CCs got. Still, as a stamina templar this is the only hard CC we get inside the class trees, whereas DKs have a really good arrange of CC abilities available, same with NBs and Sorcs. But a good change nevertheless, would however love to have some kind of AoE CC given to us, doesn't have to be hard CC either.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Puncturing Strikes: This ability and its morphs no longer knockback and apply crowd control immunity to the nearest enemy on the final hit; instead, they now snare that enemy by 70% for two seconds.

This has been a year under way and it is a very nice chance, I very much applaud this. We will now be able to hit more with this ability and make it viable in PvP again. I would very much have loved to see the snare proc on the first hit instead of the last hit though. I am surprised to see we didn't get the damage bonus back to 170% again as it was before 1.6. Currently it's at 140% and a main damage ability of both stamina and magicka templars in PvE. Templars are struggling a bit with the DPS as mentioned earlier so I think raising the damage on main target to 170% additional damage would be fair. This would amount to around a 10% increase of damage with this ability, so it is not like it would be a major buff in PvP either, but would help us catch up a bit in PvE.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Radial Sweep: Increased the radius of this ability and its morphs to 6 meters from 5 meters.

This is not enough. It will still be impossible to hit with, the range needs to be 8 or 9 meters if not more. Furthermore, the damage on this ability sucks! I know it has a defensive buff morph aswell, but it is simply not enough. You need to go tweak some more numbers on this one, it needs to be a viable alternative to Flawless Dawnbreaker, if not better since it is a class ultimate. It needs to do the same amount of damage or more, and please, make it physical damage.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Radiant Ward (Sun Shield morph): Increased the shield strength bonus from this morph’s shield to 6% per enemy hit from 5%.

Once again another lackluster change, what is this going to achieve? It will still be useless in PvP and in PvE it will be nothing more but an unwanted gimmicky survivability skill when fighting many opponents, in which case you're still better off healing yourself or killing stuff fast. You need to go back to the drawing board... Maybe it is a bad idea have Battle Fatigue affect abilities that scale off % health, just like Dragon Blood for the DK? This will simply not cut it.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Backlash: Increased the maximum damage limit for this ability and its morphs by 25%, but decreased their damage stored amount by 66%. In addition, this ability and its morphs can no longer be reflected.

So it stores damage slower but hits harder in the end or what? Not sure what this means, but I don't see anything in here that makes this ability worth using or even slotting again. Not for burst in PvP and not for DPS in PvE. Back to the drawing board. Maybe replace this ability with an AoE CC? Bring back a changed version of Blinding Flashes? Templars needs this a lot.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Eclipse:
[*]This ability and the Total Dark morph can now reflect ranged physical projectiles back to the enemy, in addition to spell projectiles.
[*]Revised the tooltips for this ability and the Total Dark morph to indicate that the area damage effect is separate from the self-reflect effect, and can be applied to a CC-immune target.
[*]Fixed an issue where this ability and the Total Dark morph could reflect snares from ground-placed ticking abilities, such as Caltrops or Ash Cloud, and cause you to move at extremely high speeds.

This ability will be just as useless before aslong as it can be CC broken, even if the damage still happens. It needs to get the DK treathment; meaning it needs to be a self buff instead of something applied to target. Now I am totally onboard with class diversity, and not giving all classes the same tools. But part of the reason DKs can survive a lot in PvP and stand their ground is because of their Dragon Scales reflect; giving templars something simular would not be a bad idea.
I propose changing this to a self buff that absorbs 4 projectiles instead of reflecting them like the DK. Upon absorbing the fourth projectile the templar will explode in a holy nova in a 10m radius dealing damage to targets within range in accordance to 30% of the projectile damage absorbed and healing friendlies for the same amount. This would go great in line with what the templar is and if it is a bit too strong or weak the number could be tweaked. Anyway this is just a suggestion I am sure someone else could brain storm something cooler, but it is tools like this that we stamina templars need. Something worth spending magicka on over and over again and that helps us survive outnumbered fights.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Enduring Rays:
[*]This passive ability now only increases the duration of the Sun Fire, Eclipse, and Nova abilities.
[*]Increased this passive ability’s bonus to 15/30% more duration at Ranks I/II from 10/20%.

So what you're basically saying is that Radiant Oppression/Radiant Glory are just afterthoughts and instead of changing this passive into something benefitting all abilities you're just removing it? How about making it reduce the channel time but remaining the same amount of ticks? Also; in an effort to make stamina templars more viable how about we get a stamina morph of this? Would certainly give us more tools at our disposal.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Nova:
[*]Reduced the effects and visual light intensity for this ability and its morphs.
[*]Increased the damage from the Supernova and Gravity Crush synergies by 16%.
[*]Increased the activation range for the Supernova and Gravity Crush synergies to 3.5 meters from 2.5 meters.

These are all good changes but I don't see them making Nova worth more than it already is. We will still require another target for the full potential of this ability (an recurring theme throughout the templar class; relying on other people to reach full potential and bad synergy with yourself), and I don't see it takeing over Meteor's position. So it remains a zerg buster ability, fair enough.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Radiant Destruction: Fixed an issue where the execute bonus damage from this ability would not apply if multiple Templars were channeling these abilities on the same target.

Good good, as mentioned above, a stamina morph would be nice.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Solar Flare: Increased the damage for this ability and the Dark Flare morph by 12%. The damage of the Solar Barrage morph remains unchanged.

Why buff Dark Flare but not change Solar Barrage? Solar Barrage is so bad it was never used, atleast some people used Dark Flare for the healing debuff. You need to rethink this change and most like buff Solar Barrage or make it into something else so it is worth using. Now Dark Flare will be more viable for damage, cool, but Solar Barrage will still remain unused for everyone.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Unstable Core (Eclipse morph): Increased the area damage when the effect ends by 50% and can be placed on an unlimited amount of targets, but it no longer reflects single target spells back to the enemy.

So it is basically a timed bomb when placed on the enemy? Interesting. Still currently on my DPS geared magicka templar it does 4500 damage, with this patch it will be 6750 damage, and then cut that in half for PvP. It isn't a lot of damage. I think you could've easily given it a 100% increase in damage. Also as I said above, this entire skills needs rework to buff yourself instead. But one morph could be a self reflect/absorb and the other this one, when you increase its damage.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Vampire’s Bane (Sun Fire morph): Increased the damage over time duration for this morph to 9 seconds from 7 seconds.

Interesting, might make it worth using in a DPS rotation. Doubt it, but we will see. Would you consider making the other morph stamina based? Gives stamina templars a decent class based DoT effect.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Breath of Life (Rushed Ceremony morph): This morph now only fires one additional secondary heal, previously two heals.

For many people this is a big no-go but I actually think it is a good change. I have long advocated for tuning down templars as healers to make room for other classes as healers, and in return boosting our self-sustainability. I see what you're trying to achieve here and I agree with the sentiment. But we're not quite there for stamina templars atleast, eventhough this change didn't affects us at all.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Cleansing Ritual:
[*]Increased the healing from the Purify synergy from this ability and its morphs by 12%.
[*]Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs could be used to cleanse projectiles that were mid-flight. It now matches the behavior of the Purge ability.

Too bad I can't purify incoming Meteors anymore but I understand the change.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Focused Healing: This passive ability now grants you the Major Mending buff while standing in your own Cleansing Ritual, Rune Focus, or Rite of Passage area effects and for up to 2/4 seconds after leaving them at Ranks I/II, instead of granting you 15/30% more healing to allies standing in your own Cleansing Ritual, Rune Focus, or Rite of Passage.

Finally! It never made much sense that Stamina DKs had more self healing through their own Major Mending buff, when templars were supposed to be the class with the best self healing available. Very good change! One thing though; I think it should give you Major Mending aslong as you're AFFECTED by Cleansing Ritual or Rune Focus, reason for the different wording will appear below under the Focus changes.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Healing Ritual: Reduced the cast time for this ability and its morphs by 25%, and reduced the healing done by 25%.

This ability will still be useless. We don't really need this in our arsenal anyway, Healing Springs from Restoration Staff will always be a better option. Back to the drawing board, maybe give us some proper self buff or AoE CC tool instead?

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Radiant Aura (Restoring Aura morph): This morph now grants you and your allies the Major Intellect buff upon activation, as well as having an increased radius as a morph effect.

We still get Major Intellect from potions aswell and seeing as this won't stack it will still be just as useless as before. Back to the drawing board!

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Rite of Passage: In order to prevent visual issues or issues where the channel would end prematurely, this ability and its morphs can no longer be cast in mid-air.

Yeah, like... Are you kidding me? Most useless ultimate in the game and this is all you had for it? Only unknowledgeable players will ever slot this ultimate. It needs to change! I understand you want it to be some kind of healing or survivability, fair enough. How about changing it to healing yourself and targets around you and granting you all some rescources back, including yourself? This way it could become a sustain ultimate. Or it could be like a protective bubble making you immunte to all harmful effects for 5 seconds and granting rescources back? Something else than just a healing panic button. Breath of Life spam is currently more effective than this.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*]Restoring Focus (Rune Focus morph): This morph now grants you the Minor Protection buff, in addition to granting the Minor Vitality buff as a morph effect.
[*]Rune Focus: Revised the tooltips for this ability and its morphs to indicate that the Major Ward and Major Resolve buffs will stick to you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, while the morph effects of Channeled Focus and Restoring Focus require you to remain in the rune at all times.

Added bonus is always nice, not sure it was that needed but we will take it!
Now here comes the biggest problem; mobility.
Rune Focus is now a really really nice self buff; we get Major Ward, Major Resolve, Major Mending and Minor Protection along with either Minor Mending or magicka return depending on the morph.
One big issue though; we have to stay within the run!
Now this is not a problem in PvE, but in PvP we have to move around! We are now the only class without a mobility tool or a speed buff, since you just granted DKs Major Expidition on a Chain morph. That is okay, but you cannot force us to, on top of that, stand still in a rune. Sure the buff sticks for 8 seconds when we leave and the Major Mending for 4 seconds, but this is not good enough! Noone uses this in their main bar, that means we need to weapon swap every 5-6 seconds to reapply it or move back into the rune to reapply the effect. I understand you don't want the templars to be a class that is all over the place like NBs and Sorc, but you're forcing us to stay put or be very stationary! NBs get their armor buffs passively when using their main damage ability, DKs get a 20 second duration with secondary effects, and so do Sorcs!
For the love of everything Tamrielic ZOS, allow this self buff to stick ON us for 20 seconds aswell along with the self buffs that follow with them. It is a much needed change and compared to all the cool utility and self buffs via passives the other classes are getting this is an absolute must!
This is my single biggest concern right now, make it viable for us to move around!
Remove the requirement of standing inside a small ground placed circle, allow it to become a true self buff that sticks to our characters, thank you!

The good:
- Snare on Puncturing Strikes instead granting target free CC immunity

- Major Mending through our Purify and Rune

- Bug fixes with some major abilities that didn't affect stamina templars though

- Minor buffs like Minor Protection on Rune etc, nothing big though but still nice

The bad:
- Class ultimates need a second looks; especially the ones in the Aedric Spear and Restoring Light skill trees are still not up to scratch

- Eclipse needs a second look; it will still not be worth using in PvP simply because it can just be CC broken, give it the DK treatment

- Sun Shield will still be worthless, it needs to possible not be hit by Battle Fatigue

- No changes aimed particularly at making stamina more viable; would like to see more stamina morphs

What wasn't touched upon:
- Burning Light; hidden CD and lack of procs on shields and damage type
In this thread on page 5 at the bottom: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/234362/templar-issues-thread/p5
Gina posts the following: "Burning Light – The proc chance appears to be lower than 25% •There’s currently a half-second cooldown on this ability so when
using a fast attack, such as Puncturing Strikes, it will not proc twice in a row. Also note that we’ve balanced the DPS of these abilities with this in mind."
What happened to this? Was it forgotten? We still need clearenceon whether the CD was removed or not.
Burning Light will still not proc on shields, this is a major issue in both PvE and PvP since a large part of our damage comes from this passive, we need
clearence!
Also with this proc beinc such a big part of our damage I don't understand why it is only magick damage, in my opinion it should abide to the damage
type of the aedric spear ability used which it procs from, this would make stamina templars even more capable at DPS!

- Puncturing Stikes; damage and morphs
As templars and especially stamina templars are currently struggling to keep up in PvE and this is our main damage ability it should be reverted back to 170%
additional damage on main target instead of 140%. That is approxemately a 10% increase in damage and won't make a world of difference in PvP, but it will in
PvE. I understand this ability does the most damage in the game per ability, but it is also a channel, so it needs to hit hard!
There is a lot of discrepancy between the morphs of this ability. The magicka version has a major health return morph which is absolutely awesome while the
stamine version gives extra crit. While the crit is really nice wouldn't it also be fair if the stamina version returned a bit of health? Where the magicka version
gives 40% health back maybe the stamina version could give 20%? This would certainly help stamina templars a lot in PvE content where staying alive while also
dealing damage can be a bit tough and would make a lot of sense considering we're a self healing class. In comparison the Surprise Attack from NBs also do A
LOT of things for them so I don't think this is a totally unfair change.

- Major Spell/Weapon Power
Templars are now the only class that get neither of those where other classes gets served them for nothing, is this intended or an oversight? I am fine with this
if you implement some of the other buffs suggested here but thought it was worth mentioning.

- Mobility; Rune Focus
Besides not getting Major Spell/Weapon Damage buffs Templars are now also the only class without any kind of movement option in either speed buffs or
movement utility. That is understandable, but you need to make Rune Focus a 100% self buffs to not lock Templars down in a certain position completely, we
need to be allowed to move around, and preferably all the self buffs that comes with Rune Focus should stick on us when moving around aswell. You cannot be
serious if you want us to weapon swap and renew a buff every 8 second with the current way PvP is being played, and yes I know it can be placed on main bar
aswell, but we all know that self buffs have no room on your damage bar, it would not be advantageous.

- Rescource Management; active abilities and passive abilities
Before I get too much into this, since it is a rather big deal I would like to do a class comparison of the tools available for each class to manage HIS OWN
rescources and maintain them, both through passives and active abilities. For the sake of simplicity I have excluded anything that has to do with health and
health regen since here we're more concerned about stamina and magicka.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Dragonknight:
7x ultimate cost magicka/stamina restored
2% stamina return when activating Earthen Heart ability
Draw Essence - restores magicka per enemy hit

Nightblade:
1848 magicka over 6 seconds when killing target with class execute
15% increased stamina/magicka recovery
8% increased magicka with Siphoning ability slotted
Siphonin Attacks - Restore 1k magicka and stamina on each basic attack and 10% chance of restoring 2k magicka and stamina per basic ability hit

Sorcerer:
5% reduced magicka/stamina cost
15% reduced ultimate cost
10% increased magicka recovery
20% increased stamina recovery with Daedric Summoning ability slotted
10% increased magicka regeneration with Restoring Twillight slotted (Minor Intellect)
5% max magicka/stamina with Bound Armor slotted
Dark Exchange - change stamina into health/magicka or magicka into health/stamina

Templar:
4% reduced magicka/stamina/ultimate cost
10% increased magicka/stamina regeneration (Minor Intellect and Minor Endurance)
Repentance - sucks health/stamina out of corpses
Channeled Focus - 120 magicka every 0.5 seconds
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

It quickly becomes very appearent that Nigblades and Sorcerers have the best deals.
Sorcerers have the best passives for sustaining magicka/stamina, on the other hand their active ability is not worth using.
Nightblades have som good passives for sustaining aswell, but their active ability is what really makes them the kings of managing rescources at the moment.
On top of this both classes have really awesome damage passives, but I won't go into detail on those here since we are talking about sustain.
Next we have the Dragonknights, these are a little tricky to judge because their passives aren't straight up bonuses, but when first a Dragonknight get going with some great ultimate generation they will be popping ultimates fairly often, and most times it will be like popping a tri-stat potion. It is hard to put a number on, but they are easily up to scratch when it comes to managing rescources, atleast on par with the Sorcerer. Their activated ability isn't worth it really but thought I should mention it anyway.
Then we have the Templar; 4% reduced cost is what they could amount to... Unless you play magicka in which you have Channeled Focus which is a really good ability aswell - but once again you need to stand still. Repentance gives us Minor Intellect and Endurance when slotted - here it is worth nothing that it is not just a 10% increase, so it won't stack with other minor buffs of the same kind. Anyway Repentance is good in PvE, but you wouldn't have it on main bar so you would never benefit from this, and in PvP it's the same story, only it is debatable whether you should slot it at all. On top of all this Templars have the highest base cost abilities in the game.

So the verdict is that if you play stamina once again rolling Templar is the worst choise when it comes to managing rescources, something needs to be done about this ZOS!

I would propose getting rid of the Master Ritualist passive in the Restoring Light tree; currently it is a resurrection passive and completely useless for the Templar and his allies outside stacking it with Kagrenac armor and almost instantly ressing people, which is also an issue. Change this passive into some stamina and magicka return or whatever, just something to get us up to scratch!

I also seriously propose changing the behaviour from Repentance to maybe be usable on living targets instead or aswell and just add less rescources or something.

Templars and especially stamina templars needs some help in this area, please get on it!

In regards to damage passives across all four classes that is a bit harder to judge but to me it seems fairly balanced in terms of passives, if you also take into account the class abilities.

The Final Verdict and Conclusion

This is kind of a TL;DR version but in order to understand these conclusions you have to read the rest of the post, so if you haven't, please do!

In order for Stamina Templar to truely be worth playing again you need to do the following, at the very MINIMUM, in addition to the changes you already made:

- Puncturing Strikes and its morphs back to 170% additional damage on main target
- Fix Burning Light hidden cooldown and the proccing on shields
- Further buffs to class ultimates; see suggestions above!
- Better rescource manage (stamina/magicka) through passives; see suggestions above!
- Make Eclipse a self buff that absorbs/reflects instead of a targeted effect; see suggestion above!
- Sun Shield should not be affected by Battle Fatigue and possible recieve more buffs
- See if you can add more stamina morphs; other classes have them; see suggestions above!
- Make sure you make Rune Focus and morphs self buffs instead of ground targeted effects, do not lock us down into one position; see suggestion above!

I hope the people I tagged and possibly others will chime in for their feedback on stamina templars now, and if you have any remarks to what I have written feel free to give them now. I must ask people to refrain from quoting the entire thing, because that will be very annoying for ZOS if/when they see this post.

To ZOS I would like to extend my thanks for making this game, despite all my QQ I am having a lot of fun and I am very passionate about my class so I hope you will atleast aknowledge this thread and tell me here and hopefully take of my suggestions in make the appropriate changes before PTS is over.

To all the people I have discussed this with over the last day since patch notes hit and before that, including some of the people I quoted at the top of the page, I just want to say thanks for the discussions and I hope you will chime in and let ZOS know what needs to be done.

Thank you everyone for reading!

Niaver

ZOS again ignore HA armor issues and Tanks issues in general. Good game, well played.

GTech_1

Are there any plans to buff, or change, the Blood Altar ability in the Undaunted skill line?

Frawr

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] Meteor: This was the only Ultimate that you were previously able to reflect, so this change was simply bringing it in line with all other Ultimates. We also plan on making a slight reduction to the snare on the Ice Comet morph.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel

I am not sure that you fully appreciate the impact of 'bringing it in line with other ultimates'. It is going to be the go to ultimate in pvp. every player is going to spam this because insta aoe bang + ultimate back from casting it = spam spam spam.

this is not good for pvp.

If you insist on removing the reflectability then please consider making it ground-based (like lots of other ultimates - see Standard, Nova, Atronarch, Dawnbreaker) so as to balance the skill as well as balancing the spreadsheet.

Also, it's not the only reflectable ult. The other projectile ult is overload light attacks which you can also reflect. This is a reasonable tradeoff for 1 class considering the massive damage of these ults.

Please reconsider.

Everything in the game needs to have some sort of counter, otherwise (surprise surprise) it becomes the FOTM skill.

GTech_1

Templar:
Focused Charge:
With all of the issues with this ability, can we get that awesome Trinimac priest leap ability instead?

Bashev

@ZOS_GinaBruno
Can @wrobel also talk about AoE caps and why he doesnt want to remove them? We at least should know what are his arguments about their existence now after there is no more dynamic ultimate generation system.

Also it will be nice to hear his ideas about heavy armor passives and what he thinks about the new PvP sets that he introduced in TG.

Jura23

I'm not gonna watch. Somebody pls ask Eric if they have plans to do something with vast majority of Ultimates being magicka dmg.

Maotti

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.

See Zenimax, this is your problem!

You guys think it's too OP so you changes it and really don't care about what your players think about it nor the feedback.

Soris

@ZOS_GinaBruno here some very basic feedback to make both stamina and magicka templar better.

1) Better Blazing Shield and Radiant Ward. This both done with buffing its base strength OR removing battle spirit effect from it OR giving more heath to players.
2) Radiant Aura needs to stack with potions.
3) Truly mobile Rune Focus OR increased radius as the same amount as Purifying Ritual.
4) Some sort of aoe cc.

Thevampirenight

Could you guys make it where a blood alter could also be a feeding source for vampires please!

Targuris

I would like to know why there is not an additional buff such as heavy attack damage to the igneous weapon morph. This makes the morph less appealing for Stam DKs. I would like atleast 20% heavy attack damage added to the morph. This would benefit stam Dk build variety. I think it would be great for dw and s&b Dk.

darkstar2084

you are probably watching streams of elite grps and v16 templates. How is the bol too strong on live with low veteran rank pug pve groups with very bad dps. in dungeons like Darkshade caverns engine guardian?, Valkyn Skoria city of ash? COH Nerien’eth or Elden Hollow Bogdan

Joy_Division

As much as I might not agree with certain changes, I do appreciate the communication as to why these changes were made. I can respect "agree to disagree" if I know where the other party is coming from.

Will write some questions later.

Komma

Skorol007 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno there are basically 0 changes for stamina sorc and it is not even mentionned in your post. Are you guys really not doing anything for them?

Maybe because stam sorc is fine where it is. The issue may be more with stam than any class issues.

Bfish22090

@FENGRUSH
How about stamina sorcerers?

timidobserver

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.

Thanks for the honesty in admitting out who caused the nerf. At least the Templar community can see straight from ZOS who is getting them nerfed. They can clearly understand whose feedback is more important(the massive detailed threads posted by regular players or the word of a few streamers.) Basically, you've said here that streamers are the reason for this knee-jerk nerf being given a higher priority than properly fixing focused charge which has been bugged for years.

I would honestly be okay with the nerf if the changes you gave us were good enough to balance out the nerf.

Elsonso

timidobserver wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.

Thanks for the honesty in admitting out who caused the nerf. At least the Templar community can see straight from ZOS who is getting them nerfed. They can clearly understand whose feedback is more important(the massive detailed threads posted by regular players or the word of a few streamers.) Basically, you've said here that streamers are the reason for this knee-jerk nerf being given a higher priority than properly fixing focused charge which has been bugged for years.

I would honestly be okay with the nerf if the changes you gave us were good enough to balance out the nerf.

I think they mean they have been watching PTS live streams to see how the changes have impacted Templars.

timidobserver

lordrichter wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.

Thanks for the honesty in admitting out who caused the nerf. At least the Templar community can see straight from ZOS who is getting them nerfed. They can clearly understand whose feedback is more important(the massive detailed threads posted by regular players or the word of a few streamers.) Basically, you've said here that streamers are the reason for this knee-jerk nerf being given a higher priority than properly fixing focused charge which has been bugged for years.

I would honestly be okay with the nerf if the changes you gave us were good enough to balance out the nerf.

I think they mean they have been watching PTS live streams to see how the changes have impacted Templars.

I don't think streams should play a significant role in this at all with so much feedback given from non-streamers players all over the forums.

Zheg

The fact that your logic behind BoL mentions watching Templars be successful on livestreams healing with ritual demonstrates how absurdly out of touch with reality you are. Please, name a single person streaming successful group healing in pvp using ritual. One.

No heavy armor changes mentioned, why not? Do you think they're ok?

On the rapid maneuvers nerf, since healing is clearly a Templars survivability, and they will undoubtedly heal someone else and remove their rapids, are you comfortable with this nerf affecting a Templar far more than say, a sorc, who relies on self shields instead of healing for survivability, and who can just streak while still rooted?

With all of the insane damage numbers on pts and hp pools remaining the same, people relying on heals (Templar) will face greater survivability issues than someone relying on shields. Is this also intentional for the meta? Need moar shield stacking?

Enodoc

Questions for @Wrobel, taken from this thread (which seems to be being avoided like the plague):

Wrobel has said before that they are investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players. And I have three direct questions that I hope he would answer:

• How is that investigation into more effective damage of large groups going?
• What is the rationale behind the 6 people damage falloff cap?
• What is the rationale behind the 60 people hard cap?

xSINx

@ZOS_GinaBruno, Eric Wrobel
There a lot of questions like this in other topics, but there is no answer on it, so i repeat:
1. The most terrible decision about NB and stamina class as well its not about Dark cloack nerf, its about refuse from stamina regen in stealth while moving. Its realy buried NB as class. What are you thinking about it ?
2. Why theere are so much stamina nerf, one of them is "reduce physical damage" in CP constellation, Its not equal as giving us "increase damage dealt to shields" in another constellation.
3. There are so many magika abilities and mechanics are boosted, why you cant give as simple physical damage instead magic damage in some ults and 5ppc set bonuses.
All wanted, i think, heard your opinion about this tnings and decisions in that way.
Thanks in advance.


PS: Its first time i had leave the post there for more than 1,5 years experience of ESO. I guess you understand what it means