I mean, I wouldn't be upset if they removed it from the game either I guess but yes, I understand why it is there.

Punches_Below_Belt wrote: »

It is ridiculously immersion breaking like the day-glo gummy mounts, the other apex reward mounts with over-the-top spawn animations and Las Vegas showgirl adventurers. Being the “meta” just makes arcanist beams that much more ubiquitous and encourages more and more of the dim to latch onto it. I hate this Mundus timeline.

I know it pays the bills, but some moderation would be welcome. This stuff should be limited to player housing where only the owner needs to look at it. In fact, my personal felling is that anything other than a horse or a camel mount, a dog or a cat pet should send the locals fleeing in terror and grouping to drive the “monsters” from their towns. But alas NPC’s don’t get to vote, or merit consideration from ZOS or the vast majority of the player base, “walking proudly in our winter coats, wearing smells from laboratories.”

There must be a whole team of artists who have been given instructions to focus solely on garish, Disneyesque/comic book creations that will sell crowns, and they are so far removed from the high fantasy/Tamriel milieu, they carry out there orders without a second thought.

I’d buy ESO the single player experience in a second to escape these abominations just to ride my chestnut mare to a fire at an inn and not have to walk through Times Square to do it.

I agree with some of what you said here (I do not want the single player experience and flashier mounts don't bother me that much.) Flashy mounts pay the bills? Okay, do it, I want ESO to be profitable. But if my Arc lazer nerf suggestion goes through, meta players will build other metas at no loss of profit, every single trial will not look like a Las Vegas light show, and Average Arc Lazer Delve Clear Enjoyers can still go on clearing delves to their hearts' content.

Onomog wrote: »

I would pay $$ to watch that stream, for real.

Me too!

I have yet to see an off meta comp clearing any HM from DSR onwards.

No, we asked why couldn't the devs balance each class for the role of tank, DD and healer and if those classes are assigned to teams, why is team A struggling and how can we help (this is the majority of what the players contributed to PTS). ZOS chose to dramatically change skills often, rather than provide stability and balance. PTS repeatedly provided feedback skewed towards balance. The devs ignored the feedback and chose the extreme in more cases than not.

Extreme - a damage dealing unkillable heal tank. yay

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Ezhh wrote: »

• You want to be wanted by any group that can actually clear harder content.
• You like to complete as many achievements as you can.
• You are any level of competitive and like to try reach big numbers.
• You like to learn about game mechanics and test builds to find what gives the best results.
• You like to feel efficient and powerful when playing.
• You want to feel like you are keeping up with and not holding back your friends/groups who run meta setups.
• You like the challenge of clearing the most difficult content.

I do, and I'm nowhere near meta
I do, currently on 63/73k
I am, my numbers are enough
I do, and I reach the best results - for me*
I do*
I do, and I don't hold anyone back, and I'm frequently the reason for a clear
I do, it's fun

* - The problem with the "meta" is that it's a spreadsheet calculation. It's the maximum potential - but efficiency is down to the players. That not only means understand the game mechanics (which are less and less these days and more bosses are just damage soaks) and the build, but also having a playstyle that works for the player and an experience that is engaging. If the meta is 100% potential, but the player isn't enjoying it, or doesn't like it, and are disengaged then efficiency will be less. Boredom breeds mistakes.

Now lets say a non-meta build (just an made up example) of a pure-class DK has a maximum potential of 81% but the player really enjoys it, they are fully engaged with the style and the lore and everything to do with gaming in an RPG meaning they are running at 100% efficiency.

If their efficiency on the meta is 80%. Which is the better choice?! The problem is RL's and players who wouldn't entertain the idea of a non-meta joining. They'd look at a dummy parse, that has little to do with actual combat performance, and demand the player specs the meta, without seeing how the player actually performs on their non-meta build.

To preface - I don't disagree with everything you're saying. A lot of it's correct and I let people run builds in trial groups that they personally perform well on regardless of the current meta. But I've seen the number of players who can keep up on anything other than Herald of the Tome fall massively.

Your 81% potential DK will be fine even for some trifectas, but let's allow log data for something like Unstoppable to speak for itself. The discrepancies in potential only start to become really meaningful at the top end, and while this might not apply to you, I've noticed a lot of people claiming that everything can be cleared on any build seem to think something like CR+3 or Sunspire HM qualifies as the "hardest difficulty".

So for the current patch, I can't even find a single Xoryn HM clear for a warden DD. There are 3 sorcs and 12 NBs who cleared in the role, while meanwhile the first page of Arcs has over 100 DDs doing over 100k while clearing that fight. Only 5 of the NBs and 1 of the sorcs made those numbers. Plars, DKs and Cros all show fewer than 10 clears in this range as well. This is before we factor in subclassing. Many of those non-arcs doing over 100k quite likely had Herald of the Tome as a subclassed line. (I only checked the sorc - the sorc was beaming). I also did a quick scan of Falgraven HM, since KA is much more friendly to non-beamers, and while the numbers are a bit better, it's still very much leaning toward arcs.

There will be players who personally perform better on non-beam builds than beam builds (I'm one of them), but out of those players it seems only a very small subset can keep up with their groups, unless the group is casual to mid-level at highest, or they are disproportionally more skilled as a player than their group. There are a couple of exceptions, but the biggest is Rune Blade builds and again they are Herald of the Tome.

Does this really add up to healthy gamebalance?

I know gamebalance isn't easy and that something will always pull ahead of everything else, but it should be possible to get to a state where the gap isn't so big and more people can play the classes/playstyles they genuinely enjoy at the level they want to play. I know of a lot of people who would be hugely reassured if the devs seemed to care about this more.

It does really seem like the combat team’s #1 goal is “every player should be able to get into vet content,” but their method is to just make the simplest build into the most powerful, assuming that people who worked hard to get their full weaving NB to HM level will stay with that setup while others blow past its power level.

I can’t believe that Oakensoul was designed to be the “accessibility build.” If it were, it wouldn’t’ve been gated behind Antiquities; it would have been available from the get go. I feel like once they released it and people said that it was good because of their disability/situation/etc., that then they latched onto it for that purpose. However, Arcanist was definitely designed to be the low-APM-high-damage accessibility build from the start. Unfortunately, you needed to start a new character to use it… but not anymore.

I do find the “how did Subclassing change your playstyle” thread a bit telling in the specific questions they’re looking for answers from:

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

• Did your ability to play and/or complete certain types of game content improve after the launch of Update 46?
• If so, prior to the launch of Update 46, what was your character build?
• What did you change to your character build when Update 46 launched that allowed you to play or complete content that you had trouble with before?
• What game content was it?

True, they want any and all feedback. But if these are the exact questions the Combat team’s is asking verbatim, it’s telling us that

• They’re fully expecting a “yes” from the first question.
• They expect that players will have added something to their build via subclassing to allow them to play or complete content that they struggled with before.

By extrapolation, we can assume “the content” is vet level stuff, and they likely assume the thing players added was the main skill from their designated Accessibility Class so that any character can have that setup. The Combat Team essentially is looking for confirmation that players added Fatecarver to their favorite character and could now do vet dungeons and trials. And even reading through the thread, we see that, while yes there are players for whom that is the case, there are a lot of players who are not thinking along those lines.

I have a feeling the team was not expecting the number of players who did not like Subclassing for one reason or another, and they definitely didn’t expect players in the mid-level to stick with their parent Class builds and find their ability to do content has backslid. The team was not anticipating players being more interested in how their character looked and felt than getting through vet content, nor were they anticipating the players who were at the top end jumping on an easier build which did so much more damage (since they could already do the content) and therefore being more exclusionary in their group making.

There is not an easy answer here. At this point, anything ZOS does to try to address any problem will screw over a different group. Do they try to rein in the insane power creep? Then the players who are using it as an accessibility build are shoved back out. Do they buff pureclasses? Then the players who build a for-fun Subclassed build are left with trash. Do they nerf individual lines? Pureclasses slide even further into nothingness.

And let’s face it: 2025 also brought nothing new in terms of combat (for Subclassing is just making old stuff available to everyone). But that’s not sustainable - eventually they’ll want to add new Grimoires or new skill lines or new Classes. But will they want to do so with the balance in the state it is? Will they take the time they need to fix balance before adding anything new? Will the playerbase survive waiting that long? Or will they even care and just add in whatever and let the chips fall where they may?

I’ll admit it: I want a new Class more than anything else. I’m at the point with ESO where if I don’t get a new way to play a new character, there’s really not much to do here anymore - it’s not like the lazily-written stories have much replay value and Account-Wide Achievements has made it so trying to redo hard modes and trifectas on my alts doesn’t give me any dopamine hit for doing so. With a new Class, at least I’d be able to explore a bunch of different skills and build for fun and make up a backstory for a character to fit it all together. The release of Arcanist definitely kept me busy on the “new character” mode for months (pretty well the full year if you count the fact that it was revealed in January). I want that again.

But can the balance handle it?

The problem with Lambert's off-meta philosophy is that it only works in single player games. When I play Skyrim, I can roll an elven two-handed mage and complete the Thief's guild questline because there aren't human opponents to punish me for running an inefficient build.

For all those who say they run an off-meta build and never had a major issue with groupmates, that's because you aren't hearing what we say after you log out of Discord. We look through the logs, we see your setup, and we see how poorly your numbers are. Every PVP and PvE guild I have been in does this, even those that consider themselves not "sweaty." We don't like wiping to the same boss over and over, and we most certainly do not like wiping to a rival PVP guild and have to hear their condescending whispers.

ESO's balance has rarely been in a good state becuase of ZOS's lackadaisical approach to combat, combined with the devs overall lack of awareness of how the game is played at the highest level. I still remember in the class rep meetings talking about lack of bar space and sustain for Sorcerers, Zos asked us why dont pvp sorcs just not use major resolve or PvE sorcs just use Dark Exchange to solve their sustain woes. They didnt seem to genuinely understand that running around Cyrodiil without major resolve was suicidal for anything but a gank build, and serious PvE players will not slot a skill that lowers their DPS.