Cinbri wrote: »

Zinaroth wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Razorback174 wrote: »

I finally did it and unsubbed. And I've stuck around here since beta.

If only ZoS could listen to us "common folk" and not the elitist streamers and then cater to their every whim when it comes to changes.

I'm no game developer, not by a longshot, but I think I might just understand balancing. You do it incrementally, and small. Noticeable, but still making a difference. Instead we get hit with the most heavy-handed nerfs you could ever imagine.

Case in point: the stamina regen and blocking nerf. Anyone else remember that one with IC? I sure did when PUG tanks became nearly extinct.

I want to make it clear that I love my v16 templar healer dearly. It's the one class I've felt useful with, being able to keep everyone alive even though my damage was terrible. This update is only going to kill that role for me. What's left after that? Mediocre DPS? A tank with no survival skills at all?

I just can't understand the mentality of these massive, sweeping changes that throw the idea of "balance" to the wind.

Well, according to the interview today, the changes are to open things up and make things more fun/interesting. And conversations with guild leaders was mentioned in terms of which players were talked to. I'm sure popular streamers have input too but they weren't mentioned.

I don't know who they talked to regarding class balance in PvE but I can assure you that noone in Hodor was ever approached. Considering we're currently the best raiding guild in the world that seems like a loss for ZOS not to utilize that knowledge. Then again they have never had a good track record at being in contact with their EU player base. They only ever seem to take direct feedback from NA guilds. The only team we're in direct contact with is the dungeon and trials team, and that is only because they are awesome and come into our TS on a day off and sit there for 7 hours taking feedback. Otherwise there is no contact with ZOS eventhough we've offered to give feedback several times. Not going to lie, I am rather salty about the disparity between the attention the NA community is getting over the EU one.

That being said I do not plan to retire my Templar at all. Ssdly he sill continue to play as magicka most likely. However I have been investing more and more time on my NB and I expect that trend to continue.

I wanna add Wrobel words that you took as your signature "Some classes are just better than others..."
So now when your templar meets stamknight/magicka DK/magicka Sorc/stamblade/magicka Nightblade - you have100% right to call them FOTMers coz Wrobel himself confirmed that some classes are better than others. Except magicka templar/stamplar/stamsorc.

Actually Magicka Templar in PvE is most likely going to do the most DPS next patch, all the CP changes make it so our execute is incredibly strong combined with sweeps, wall of elements, dark flare, purifying light, vampires bane

However, I feel for all those PvPers out there, Templar was amazing during the first launch of Champion Points, since then it's been a buggy mess and now all these changes make it useless. Same for Stamplars too

What I'm annoyed at is how much PvPers have provided feedback in here, there is some amazing constructive posts going on and ZOS just choose to ignore it all, it's a joke honestly, taking this direction is what ends up ruining your player base and supportive player base. The class is clearly subpar in one aspect of the game, severely subpar at that, and the ZOS team chooses to not even acknowledge it and tell players to wait till next update till any changes. This is PTS, this is the testing and you're telling us now that our testings doesn't matter. Why even have a damn PTS for if no one takes any of the suggestions or feedback for that matter. Why even create all these topics? We all know by now ZOS really don't care and are focused on their own direction rather than listening to some of the amazing suggestions. Why do you think WoW does really well, they actually have people listening to their community and taking suggestions to attempt to make things balanced.

Just my thoughts on this matter honestly. I hope this direction the game is heading, and I hope soon they realise they shouldn't be following this guideline because honestly, the general opinion from players who play the game and have a sense of balance their voices should be heard and taken into account.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] 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.

There is STILL thought to believe a hidden Cool Down on Puncturing Sweep that has had no mention and no clarification if it has been fixed or not, all my questions have been ignored.

What happened to this? Why is there absolutely no mention of it? Did we receive a nerf or did we not

Lettigall wrote: »

I wish that @Wrobel post a video of him protecting the "house" with templar. Show us how your vision about class works outside Excel!

this is EXACTLY what needs to happen, you have a vision? show us!! I don't think I have ever seen a dev successfully show the community any class changes that they feel so passionate about. only video I ever seen was the IC group play with hard casting frags. show the implementation, don't be bob villa, be norm in a flannel shirt.

You think it was fun playing as a healer in pug groups or PvP before? Just wait now with the Breath of Life healing nerf. There is a reason why no one except the minority wants to play as a healer, and you just gave them another reason not to play...

Watching the latest ESO live was disheartening, aggravating and oddly enough also cathartic. It just proved what I've been thinking to be true. There is no longer any point to invest time or money into ESO. Templars are never going to be fixed.

I have no respect for Wrobel as a gamedesigner, and no faith in him being ever able to bring balance to the classes. Not when he obviously has no idea on what the current meta of the game is, what his design choices actually mean in play, and when everything he says so clearly misses the point.

Just take these two examples and stop to think about what he is saying:

"Magicka Detonation is an ability we added to the AVA skill lines to be really effective at trying to deal with huge groups of players. And this ability ended up being kinda more useful almost just for single players 'Cause of the way the damage scaled. So we adjusted the scaling so it's less useful when you hit a single guy. Doesn't do as much damage, but hitting additional targets now scales faster and faster when you are hitting more guys and it's got a higher maximum cap. So now you can end up increasing the damage by hundred percent instead of 25% if you hit the maximum number of targets with it."

Really, the usefulness of Magicka Det in 1v1 is the thing you decide to act on? That's the problem you see with this Zerg busting skill? That, and not the fact that it is the most common skill used by zergs themselves, and this update will just make it even more powerful for zergs.

Just think about that in actual play situation - so let's say you hit for 8k damage currently with Mag Det, -15% reduction means you will hit for 6.8k. It's still useful in 1v1 and there is still no incentive on not slotting it. And as for the zergs... that reduction is irrelevant. When 20+ strong herd of Mag Detonators runs past you and you eat 6-8 of those explosions, it is irrelevant that instead of 56k damage you now only take 47k damage on average. You will still melt. And when a 20 strong group runs over your group of 6 and your group eats 6 mag dets going on within two seconds of each other, everyone in your group is going to eat 80k damage instead o 60k. And no amount of BoL spam or shield stacking is gonna save your bacon then.

Even if everyone in your small group also slots Magicka Det, it makes no difference. You'd have to time it perfectly to get all of your dets go off before the pulses of Magikca Dets emanating from the zerg would kill you off. And even if you do manage that, and all 6 of your groups dets go off in time, there is still no guarantee you will manage to kill even one guy in the zerg due to AoE caps. They have the numbers to soak up all the hits your group would generate even with the increased damage. The zerg no doubt is running multiple barriers, and and has people spamming heals for the zerg.

Only protection is in numbers, and the more guys you have spamming Magicka Detonation the more likely your group will manage to have enough of them going off before your opponents group. Whoever spams the most dets is going to win.

Just increasing damage is not the answer! How about a simple clause to the skill that says: Magicka Detonation damage doesn't stack. Eating a Magicka Detonation makes you immune to further detonations for 4 seconds. That would prevent detonation zergs from simply running everything over in Cyro.

Another brilliant statement completely missing the point is his changes to Crystal Blast. It shows complete lack of understanding why people invariably choose Crystal Fragmetns over it:

"You can throw that into a a group of enemies who are charging at you and not, you know, not have to get hit by all of their ???(he used a word that I could not make out) AoEs that they are spamming."

That one had me laughing out loud, I mean, seriously? Adding 25% more splash damage to Crystal Blast is going to persuade Sorcs into giving up Fragments? Really? I mean REALLY!?!? That shows how out of touch he is with the meta, and a complete lack of understanding the inbuilt hit and run capabilities of the Sorc class. No Sorc is going to stand there hard casting Crystal Blast against a charging group of players. That would be utterly suicidal.

Even with the increased AoE damge of Blast, it's not going to prevent "a group of charging players" from spamming their AoEs and forcing you to eat them all, if you are stupid enough to stand there trying to get a spell with a cast time off. (Even if you do get it off and are not interrupted while casting it that is.) No, the Sorc will instead use his mobility and Bolt away, drop down some mines to tarry pursuers, and then use his insta proccing Fragments that CC, to pick off stragglers one at a time while spamming Hardened Ward for that Crystal Proc.

Increasing damage on this morph will not make it any more appealing to the Sorc player, not when Fragments offers such amazing synergy to the Sorc. Increasing damage in a game with high burst damage as is, is not going to solve anything. People look for synergy and utility. We only have 5 slots +1 Ultimate on each bar, so we need to slot skills that have multiple uses. Skills that aid in resource management through passives and offer real synergy in gameplay. We can't afford to waste slots on skills that are good for only one thing, and that's why no one will choose Blast over Fragments. Even with the increased damage.

I could keep doing this for almost everything he said in the show. But why waste my time doing that. Not like it's going to change anything. It's obvious he doesn't get it, nor read any of our feedback, or is going to be balancing the the game any day soon. Frankly, I think he should be fired and replaced with someone else. Someone who has an actual vision and understands the mechanics of this game.

So yeah, whatever - I can't bother with this crap anymore. I don't know about you guys, but I certainly will not be spending next month exploring Abah's Landing. I will instead be exploring Black Desert. Don't know if I that will become my main game since I haven't played it yet. There are some things that game has that I am not sure I like, but it seems promising enough to at least give it a go for a month or two. It certainly beats wasting my time living as a beggar in ESO. And who knows, maybe the pros there outweigh the cons and I can kiss this crap goodbye for good, cause the cons here definitely have grown larger than the pros. And thus, for now at least, ESO is moved on to the back burner. Maybe things will be different when update 11 or 12 arrives. Maybe then I will once more have a reason to play this game.

AfkNinja wrote: »

Ffastyl wrote: »

a genuine non-scaling defensive ability useful to all specialties.

Blinding Flashes......please?

Didn't you hear on the live stream? We're not allowed to have blinding flashes because the other classes don't 'feel good' when they can't hit us.

Wouldn't want my self defense to interrupt the murder party!

Hopefully not off watching any more Twitch streams of their favorite gank squads...

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

For example our bonuses to blocking/breaking blocks just aren't as good any more in a world where blocking is one of the worst mitigation methods out there. DK's deal with this problem as well. The problem is the gameplay doesn't deliver the way it should, and we Templars are relics of a much older system. We were never updated properly.

Remember that it was Wrobel who led the charge to make blocking stop stamina regen. It was supposed to make the game more `fun`. This is now the same justification for nerfing Templar healing.

Wrobel seems to think `fun` combat is a simple DPS check. But it is just making the game progressively worse. Combat is now less fun, and tanks and healers are becoming more scarce every day. He is actively making the game worse.

BalticBlues wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Templars are designed to stand tall
and not let people come into their house

Could you please supply the exact quote of what Wrobel said?

The particular excerpt you are requesting comes at the 01:14:13 mark in the video and transcribes as:

"I'm more about putting down areas of protection and I want to stand in these, and like this is, this is sort of like my house and if you come into my house it's gonna be bad for you" instead of "I'm really good at running away or whatever." So it helps distinguish the Templar from the other classes

That quote came in answer to a question about why Templars don't have better mobility/speed buffs, and the quotation marks indicate the perspective of an ideal Templar from Wrobel's perspective.

For all comments about Templars from the recent episode of ESO Live, except for the odd mention of a Templar ability here or there that was used an example for a different topic, a partial transcript of Wrobel's interview is provided below. The grammar is intact as spoken, though many extraneous "umms" and "uhhs" and murmurs of understanding or approval from the hosts have been omitted.

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Discussion of classes on ESO Live, Feb 12th 2016, focusing on Templar

Transcript begins at 00:25:22

Eric Wrobel: Next thing I wanna talk about is the classes in general and how they relate to each other and how that relationship has sort of changed over time. Initially when we were designing the classes and creating all the abilities our goal was just to make cool stuff. You know, like, just make a bunch of abilities, have some cool effects on 'em, like make so it's a good time casting the abilities, and call it a day, pretty much, right?

And I think we succeeded in doing that, right? Like the classes are a lot of fun. They can do a lot of of really cool things. But over time we've been moving towards making it so that every class can fulfill every role. And the reason we're doing that is it sorta supports more of an Elder Scrolls style game of "go anywhere and do anything". So we don't want you to be locked into "Oh I picked this class so that means I can only tank" or "I picked this class I have to be a healer", right?

Like we want ev--we want you to just--just pick a class because that's fun, right? Like, "I wanna breath fire", right? Or you know, "I wanna calla bunch of storms", right? And that's why you pick your class, and, and not for a specific thing you're going to be doing in the game. 'Cause you don't, you don't really know what thing, what part you're gonna like in our game, 'cause tanking in our game is different than in other games, healing is different than in other games:

Jessica Folsom: Or you may wanna switch it up and some point.

Eric Wrobel: Yep, absolutely.

So the changes with this update and updates in the future as well--we want to make it so that every class is able to fulfill every role, so that's like... For example, we gave Dragonknights some more things to make them better at fulfilling the healing role.

Jessica Folsom: And you'd still have to specialize into certain champion points, and class abilities, and passives if you wanted to specialize in a certain role but you'd have the ability to re-spec if you wanted to.

Eric Wrobel: Yep, absolutely.

Gina Bruno: So one of the recent changes that was put on the PTS build for Thieve's Guild was Breath of Life.

Eric Wrobel: Yes, we updated that.

Gina Bruno: And we know that has been a very hot topic. So did you want to kind of address that a little bit further from what we put on the forums?

Eric Wrobel: Yes, absolutely.

Gina Bruno: Good!

Eric Wrobel: Nawww, next topic. I don't--naw, I'm good...

Gina Bruno: Next!

Eric Wrobel: Uhhhh, yeah. Breath of Life is an extremely powerful ability and it's a very--sort of one of these class-defining abilities, that like, "Oh yeah it's really cool to play Templar, cause I can cast this heal and it's--it's a super-strong, like huge heal value", right? You can cast it while you're moving, you can cast it instantly, but then also with Breath of Life it was healing three targets. So not only was it doing all these things but it was a huge single-target and a huge AoE heal. So you didn't need to combine it with any other ability really. Like, you just need that and you're good to go, don't worry about anything else.

Jessica Folsom: Kind of a single go to...

Eric Wrobel: Yeah, yeah. It's like your one-stop shop for healing needs. So what we did with this update is... we wanted you to have a little bit more breadth of ability usage if you wanted to be really dedicated to the healing role . So we started by making it so that their thirty percent healing bonus from their passives now gives them the Major Healing buff. So this means that now the--all the Restoration Staff abilities are also really good for Templar. 'Cause they all-all get that buff applied to them. And that, that thirty--that twenty five percent healing bonus, it applies to you now specifically instead of applying to your allies. So that means you just have to be standing in your area of protection and your allies don't have to anymore. So they can be running and going, and you know, you know...their hair's on fire...

Jessica Folsom: So you have DPS running all over the place...

Eric Wrobel: Yeah, you just need to make sure you're somewhere in that circle and you'll get that healing bonus applied. So, you'll, you'll end up be--be getting more heals out of your Breath of Lifes, you know, but against the, these smaller number of targets, so it makes it actually a little bit better as a single target nuke. Which is sort of the role we wanted to give for that. And then we have the Healing Ritual ability for the Templar which we improved as a really good AoE heal. And the cast time is now reduced, so it's easier to, to use that. 'Cause in general the burst damage happens really quickly, like you die really fast, right? So we wanted you to have time to hit and actually he-you know heal someone instead of like, "I hit the ability and I'm like waiting, and I'm waiting, and then they die before it goes off", right?

And in general, like, we'll definitely be evaluating this ability to see if it's sort of effective enough. It's definitely a really big heal and it heals a lot of people, so it is, is much better for healing a group than Rushed Ceremony but we wanna make sure that it's also still useful in a lot of situations. So we may end up in the future tweaking the radius so it's a little bit easier to hit allies if they're kind of running all over the place.

And, and then we are also, because the Restoration Staff is now usable as a Templar. You know, you could use Grand Healing as your AoE if wanted to to fulfill that role, either. So we kind of just wanted to give them more choices instead of being, like, "You're a Templar you have to only use Templar abilities."

Jessica Folsom: More tools in the toolbox.

Eric Wrobel: Yeah, absolutely.

Jessica Folsom: And it sounds like the change to Breath of Life was also, um, the goal was to add more diversity to different types of game play, different types of healing situations, fights that were maybe longer but sustained versus things that required burst heals, would, is that kind of what you were going for?

Eric Wrobel: Yeah, and also keep in mind we made these changes before we started doing the balance testing for this update. So, like, we tested trials, and we tested dungeons, and we tested PvP, with, with these values in mind, right? So it's not like, "Oh, we're just gonna like slip this in because this ability's kinda too good", right? Like the, the whole update we were planning on making this change, and we are, we are really happy with the vet now. This feels more like a single-target heal and you wanna use it in those burst situations.

Jessica Folsom: OK.

Gina Bruno: Right on.



****Omission of non-Templar discussion*****



Transcript resumes at 00:32:23

Eric Wrobel: We're going to go through every single ability, and every single morph, and make sure "Oh yeah, these are compelling morph choices", and you know, that, this is definitely an ability that I wanna cast, and that, you know, "I have an interesting set of abilities to use" instead of like, oh some things like Breath of Life where it's like "Oh I just use this one ability the whole time and like that's kind of boring."

Jessica Folsom: OK.

Eric Wrobel:So yeah.

Jessica Folsom: So a lot more parity between the magicka choices.

Eric Wrobel: Yeah. Yeah.



****Omission of non-Templar discussion*****



Transcript resumes at 00:51:31

Gina Bruno: Um, regarding--we're you gonna say something? I'm sorry.

Jessica Folsom: No, no, no, I like his answer.

Gina Bruno: Oh.

Eric Wrobel: Yes! I got a fan. It starts with one.

Gina Bruno: Um, regarding rapid re-removers--oh God...

Eric Wrobel: See!? I told you!

Gina Bruno: Dammit! I did that earlier!

Rapid--

Eric Wrobel: She told me she didn't say that.

Gina Bruno: I didn't and now it's in my head!

Rapid maneuvers, for God's sake.

Eric Wrobel: I went four levels deep to plant that idea in your head.

Gina Bruno: You probably did. That's all I'm gonna be saying forever now.

Rapid maneuvers. Since healing is clearly--

Eric Wrobel: That's an ability in our game.

Gina Bruno: It is.

--is clearly a Templar survivabilty, this players believes they will undoubtedly heal someone else and remove their Rapids. Are you comfortable with this change affecting a Templar far more than say a Sorcerer who relies on self-shields instead of healing for survivability?

Eric Wrobel: Yeah that's, that's a really good detailed thought out question which is--

Gina Bruno: It was actually longer but I kind of cut it up a little bit...

Eric Wrobel: Kind of smashed it together.

Gina Bruno: Yeah I did I smashed it.

Eric Wrobel: Don't worry I got, I got the point. Yeah in, in general, that sort of goes to our philosophy of not wanting to homogenize the classes. And yeah, like they all play different and some classes are better in some situations and some classes are better than others. And sort of with that particular healing ability that sort of makes the Honor the Dead morph a little bit better, 'cause that, that morph only hits one target, right? So, you're more likely to just heal yourself with it. Especially if you're low health and running away, whereas with the other morph it's an AoE and it's gonna hit two different targets. So if you heal someone else with it, yeah it's, it's gonna take it off.

So yeah, like that-that's a really good point and yeah we're definitely OK with it, but yeah, like, that-that that's an example of like a really good detail of all these changes that we made that, you know, we didn't initially you know think of every single situation in which every single ability gets cast. And yeah, like, that's the one of the things were going to keep monitoring and taking a look at. But yeah, it's a good question.



****Omission of non-Templar discussion*****



Transcript resumes at 01:12:32

Eric Wrobel: Um, what was your other question that I was rude about earlier?

Gina Bruno: Oh that's OK! Um, if you have any intention on bringing back Blinding Flashes?

Eric Wrobel: Um, yeah that was definitely a super-powerful ability, which was... there were sort of multiple reasons why we took it out. Also we don't have really good feedback in our game for when you miss. Like, it just, it feels bad, 'cause you just like swing your weapon and you're like, "Well I didn't hit him, what happened?" And you're like "I'm pretty sure I was moused over him but it didn't hit him, so like I'm not sure. Like was there lag there? Was I not targeting him?" Like, it's kind just of confusing in a game with the kind of targeting system that we have.

And I think specifically what they're looking for is an ability that'll help with tanking as a Templar, right? So that-that's something we can definitely look into, like, you know, an ability that sort of still gives that type of function but sort of like works better within the confines of the game that we have.

Jessica Folsom: That makes sense.

OK, so we talked about Templars a bit earlier--

Eric Wrobel: Yeah, I remember that. It's a good time.

Jessica Folsom: --and one of the big things they seem to be asking about is mobility boosts, specifically for stamina Templars. Is that something that we're looking at?

Eric Wrobel: Yeah, and that sort of goes back to the, making every class feel different and feel unique. So yeah, Templars don't have that buff. And it's the Major Expedition buff, to be clear about that. And yeah, it's an awesome buff, it's, it's really powerful, but, that makes the Templar play very differently of "I'm more about putting down areas of protection and I want to stand in these, and like this is, this is sort of like my house and if you come into my house it's gonna be bad for you" instead of "I'm really good at running away or whatever." So it helps distinguish the Templar from the other classes but to... slightly, sort of... lower the disadvantage you get from not having that buff.

So what we've done with this update is that, Major Expedition, instead of giving you a forty percent movement buff, it gives you thirty percent, and sprinting now gives you a forty percent instead of a thirty percent, so we just sort of flip-flopped that. Because everyone has the sprint ability. And then it also means that the total maximum speed you can achieve is still the same, right? You can still get the 70% movement speed like before, so you won't be that slower.

And then it makes it--there's, there's some thing where you can get like reduced sprint cost and stuff like that--so we realize not everyone is going to be pouring tons and tons of points into that, right? But it makes it slightly better to have reduced sprint cost 'cause it's, it's more likely that you'll want to be sprinting in combat and it's actually a pretty useful thing to be doing. So that way Templar aren't quite as far down in terms of mobility battle and like how fast someone can catch them, or if they're running away how far they can get before someone catches them.

Jessica Folsom: OK.
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