Class Fixes, ill do it for you ZoS.

Moonchilde

How about making physics count?

1. Make cloth extremely vulnerable in terms of damage/resistance.
2. Make heavy armor way tougher and resistant, but have it impact speed and casting costs more significantly.
3. Done

This will start a line of adjustments that will balance classes and abilities. Sure, you can stack your magika to godly levels, but you will be a glass cannon. You can wear heavy armor to compensate, but you will move slower, and your godly magika pool gets balanced out.

These are really old fantasy balance measures, but we should not have to reinvent the wheel here, should we?

Wargasmo

"Therium104 wrote: »

I am not following your logic. If Templars can heal better than DK's under all situations is it not reasonable to assume DKs should have more dps in most if not all situations. Like 20%. Isn't balance between the classes as relevant as different abilities? If the dps is the same would that not require the healing ability of dk's to be increased?

Short answer: no, no, and no. (you asked 3 questions even though your first is incorrectly punctuated with a period)

And here's why:

A 12 man trial group typically brings 2 healers and 1 hybrid heal/dps capable player. Likewise, they bring 1 tank and another tank/dps capable player. This means there are 7 pure dps spots to be filled as well as 2 hybrid dps spots.

The gripes about class imbalance comes from the slotting for these raids spots. It's not about being able to do everything as well as everyone else. If we homogenized classes there'd be no point. What class balance means is that each class should be theoretically equally desirable in a raid.

Currently, Templars are desirable for 2 spots in the raid, the healer spots, and marginally acceptable in a third spot, the dps/heal hybrid (if you stack enough dk's to pick up the slack on the fights where the Templar is dps'ing). No raid that expects to clear content will take more than 3 Templars. Dk's cannot fill the healer spot or the hybrid healer spot. However, they are the top choice for the remaining 9 spots in the raid, being the preeminent tanks as well as the best dps in the game. This is the problem and what makes my class less desirable than yours. I can be the best healer in the world, but it doesn't matter since there are only 2 spots for healers in a raid. you can be a lousy dk who only pushes 900 dps and still get into the raid just fine. This is what class imbalance is.

Likewise, sorc's are sitting pretty with them being able to fill the dps, heal, and dps heal hybrid spots: 10 possible raid spots for them, with the only caveat that the 7 pure dps spots are better filled with dks. Sorcs can overcome this because they bring negate, a powerful raid utility tool while they do not suffer enough dps wise to make encounters meaningfully difficult.

Nightblades get the ultimate shaft. For a competitive run, they fill 0 roles. Hence, they don't get into raids.

So no, it doesn't matter that you can't heal as well as me. Just like it doesn't matter that I can't tank as well as you. DPS, though, has traditionally been fair game to ALL classes in mmo's as they traditionally fill the most raid spots. This is why class balancing mostly revolves around dps. Surely there should be balancing issues in healing and tanking too. DK tanking is OP and is one of the reasons the nightblade is so marginalized despite being an "ok" tank. Templar healing is quite easy and powerful, and while sorcs and nb's get really good passives to synergize with resto staff skills, they should probably be more balanced in this regard as well. Every class doesn't need to be able to do everything though. They just need to be able to fulfill enough roles to par that players have an equal chance of getting into a raid, skill not withstanding.

Class balance isn't about across the board equal performance. It's about generalized equal class desirability in trials. If trials required 4 healers, I'd say my class was in balance even though I cannot realistically fulfill tank or dps roles to standard. However, they don't. They require 2 healers, with maybe an off heals that people want a sorc for. And some fights are better solo healed. So I need to be able to fulfill more than one role.

There is something wrong when the ideal raid wants 6 DK's 5 Sorcs 1 Templar and 0 nightblades or 7 DK 3-4 sorc and 1-2 temp. They'll settle for 6 dk 4 sorc 2 Templar or 5 dk 5 sorc 2 Templar also. A pug run strapped for players might go 5/4/3, 4/5/3, 6/3/3 or even 7/2/3. Still 0 nightblades. Stil heavily skewed towards taking a veritable and metric crapton of DK OP beatdown. The only ways to even class desirability is to even out dps capability, add massive utility to undesired classes, or drastically change encounters to change the composition of trial groups. IF trials consistently required 3 tanks 4 healers (not off tanks or off healers, full spec roles) and 6 dps, I'd say all you have to do is nerf DK tanking and fix NB skills so they actually work and we have good class balance. Templars heal, NB's and DK tank or dps, and Sorcs dps, bring great utility, and can heal too.

As it stands, the easiest way of balancing class desirability is to balance dps performance. And when I say performance I mean peak performance. If my class needs to roll 3 dots at irregular intervals and use a channeled spell that makes me run slow a lot and maintain specific range just to match what your class outputs by standing in the middle of nowhere and spamming 2 buttons, that's fine. Perfectly fine. But when you can hit a third button and suddenly do 20% better than me while I play perfectly, and then start hitting a fourth button to do 40% more than me, it's not ok anymore. There can be a learning curve gap or a skill gap in dps potential, but never an actual hard design gap.

Stop kidding yourself that the state of the game is ok concerning DK's. Nothing is hurting this game more than the imbalance of that one class at the moment except maybe the crowd of elder scrolls fanboys who think leveling is somehow hard or matters in the slightest.

Anyway hope that clears up any misconceptions people out there may have about the nature of good PVE class balance. PvP class balance has more nuances that need to be considered, but I think the state of this game is such that the basic PVE class balance needs to be fixed asap. Like yesterday asap before we even begin to delve into the PvP utility available to certain classes such as bolt escape, DK claws/banner, NB stealth gibbing and Templar's exclusive ability to burst heal, all of which are a bit out of balance imo. But that can all wait. If ZoS can't balance a game for PVE there's no way in hell they can manage pvp.

dastone

Weapon skills need st least a 50 percent buff.

The 10 or 25 percent mentioned would not nearly be enough to have more the one on the hot bar

yelloweyedemon

Wargasmo wrote: »

"Therium104 wrote: »

I am not following your logic. If Templars can heal better than DK's under all situations is it not reasonable to assume DKs should have more dps in most if not all situations. Like 20%. Isn't balance between the classes as relevant as different abilities? If the dps is the same would that not require the healing ability of dk's to be increased?

So much stuff I won't read

duuuude... TLDR in all it's meaning. You are trying too hard. As I said I don't care if at this point of the game a DK has barely a 20% more damage capabilities, and I don't care if noobs wanna stack the fotm class in order to beat "end-game" content slightly faster, just to stare at their names on ldrboards. None of that is on a gamebreaking stage. In pvp I kill DK's with my NB easy. (at least most of them)

If a future update with real end game content comes, and DK's are boosted even more, then I won't mind people complaining. Now it's just typical MMO QQ.

khele23eb17_ESO

yelloweyedemon wrote: »

If a future update with real end game content comes, and DK's are boosted even more, then I won't mind people complaining. Now it's just typical MMO QQ.

Thats a very myopic attitude. People should complain now, BEFORE it comes to the situaton youre describing.

yelloweyedemon

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

yelloweyedemon wrote: »

If a future update with real end game content comes, and DK's are boosted even more, then I won't mind people complaining. Now it's just typical MMO QQ.

Thats a very myopic attitude. People should complain now, BEFORE it comes to the situaton youre describing.

No offence, but I don't think some real end-game content will come soon. Not before several class updates/fixes/boosts. If ever.

Atm everyone's acting like DK's are making the game unplayable. (Probably because they got butthurt for being declined a raid spot from some wanna-be elitists)

People will always find a reason to cry. Then again it is easier to cry on forum than learn to play your class, so I'll give 'em that.

Zaxq

Wargasmo wrote: »

Read Wargasmo's post above - didnt want to quote the whole thing as its quite long.

Great post.

Probably the best post on class balance on the forums.

BrassRazoo

I reached the end. That was a lot of words.

Zaxq

BrassRazoo wrote: »

I reached the end. That was a lot of words.

A lot of sensible words, with structure, that actually summed it up nicely.

dodgehopper_ESO

Therium104 wrote: »

Wargasmo wrote: »

"yelloweyedemon wrote: »

I've seen templars doing 1k dps. Also a friend of mine that plays temp told me that in his build, the lower the boss's health, the more damage he can do due to some skills, while DK's can't do that. So your point is that DK's are broken because they can do 0,2 more dps than you? Yes it might be easier to play, but all mmo's have braindead,easy,basic and advanced difficulty classes.

Same thing goes for raiding. Just find a guild that does not run FOTM class runs. In every MMO you'll find fotm exclusive runs. Those people will just switch to the next "OP" class in the next update, just because they only care for numbers to boost their e-peens.

First of all, you haven't seen templars doing 1k dps because the game's current addon situation doesnt support group meters. What you've seen is people lying about their dps in order to get into a trail group. Your friend either A) must have not played since craiglorn came out because they broke the skill you're talking about that used to allow Templars to do decent dps, or is lying to you because he has low self esteem and wants to justify his existence as that crappy raid member who does bad dps yet refuses to heal. Yes, Templars used to be able to do 1k dps. Biting jabs got bugged/nerfed and we don't know when it will be fixed. And yes, it's a big deal when a class does 20% more dps than you. It might not be a big deal in our current casual, take anyone that does over 800 dps pug environment, but once harder content that isn't really puggable comes out being 20% worse than a DK means sitting on the bench 100% of the time on progression raids (I'm assuming your 0.2 was a coefficient as 1200 dk dps is about 20% better than 1k pre-nerf Templar dps... which, btw, was not sustainable btw beyond about 60 seconds)

And guilds that do not run FOTM class runs are just another way of saying guilds that don't perform to their potential and are super casual and generally terrible at progression. If you're fine with not clearing v12 content until v14 content is released, by all means, don't worry about being 20 or even 50% behind other classes. But if you want to be on the bleeding edge of progression and you're 20% behind, you better pray that your class brings something super special to the raid... something like sorc negate (which is why sorcs are still getting into runs even though they are currently about 20% behind dk's).

I am not following your logic. If Templars can heal better than DK's under all situations is it not reasonable to assume DKs should have more dps in most if not all situations. Like 20%. Isn't balance between the classes as relevant as different abilities? If the dps is the same would that not require the healing ability of dk's to be increased?

No. DK's have amazing Crowd Control. In reality however, DK's also have better self heals than a Templar. So this argument doesn't fly. Best CC: Check. Best DPS: Check. Best Self Heal: Check. I love my Dragon Knight, but I'm under no illusions that there is a parity between Templar and Dragon Knight. I'd also like to add that DK's get a shielding buff that protects the team as well, and a damage boosting buff that boosts team damage. These are also under the purview of the Healer/Buffer class in a lot of games, so again I'm not sure the argument flies.

PhoenixWing

Moonchilde wrote: »

How about making physics count?

1. Make cloth extremely vulnerable in terms of damage/resistance.
2. Make heavy armor way tougher and resistant, but have it impact speed and casting costs more significantly.
3. Done

This will start a line of adjustments that will balance classes and abilities. Sure, you can stack your magika to godly levels, but you will be a glass cannon. You can wear heavy armor to compensate, but you will move slower, and your godly magika pool gets balanced out.

These are really old fantasy balance measures, but we should not have to reinvent the wheel here, should we?

They already somehow did that, in the form of passive skills for armor skill lines.

1. Cloth armor users already have less armor than other type of armors due to the lower armor rating on each piece.
2. Heavy armor got passives that enhances armor and spell resist. They also already have more armor rating on each piece.
Casting with heavy armor also already costs more than light armor users due to the passives in light armor skill line. (Casting time is not affected, though)

I think you suggestions are already somehow achieved and balancing can be done by only changing the numbers on the passives.

Sarezar

I will only comment on one thing:

A different bar is needed for sprint/roll/block. It shouldn't use stamina.

I can't comment on anything else but I strongly believe stamina should not be used for sprint/roll/block.

(I play Sorc only by the way.)