@ZOS - two questions on Nirnhorned and Vigor

technohic

trimsic_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thanks for your patience, folks. We have some answers to both questions below. It's worth mentioning that these answers are straight from the combat team, headed up by Eric Wrobel.

Erock25 wrote: »

I have two questions that I would really appreciate an answer to.

1. Is Nirnhorned armor working as intended? As it is on live, a few pieces of Nirnhorned easily brings you up to the hard cap on spell resist even in Light Armor. Each piece of Nirnhorned is increasing total spell resist by the listed percentage. It is working as the Nirnhorned tooltip states, but I was wondering if you could provide a bit of clarity if this is indeed the intended mechanic.

Currently, Nirnhoned is more effective than intended. We’ll be adjusting how this works so it's not quite as powerful. This change is currently slated to go into the next major update.

And this will the return of Elder Magicka Online. Well, actually it has always been the Elder Magicka Online since day 1: overpowered magicka builds, 1100K damage to kill 1 sorc because of stacking damage shields, magicka builds having both huge offense and defense abilities, etc...

I'll have a look to the next major update, but if nothing is done to balance the game so as to have stamina builds on par with magicka builds it's the end of the game for me.

By the way, I spent over 100k for my Nirn stuff. But who cares...

Edit: with 4 pieces of armor with a nirn trait and 36k spell resist I still get nuked for 8k damage with crystal fragment. Without the nirn trait, it's about 12k damage. How can I compete with my stamina skills that are just ridiculous compared to what magicka skills can do, if I'm not a NB with a bow or a NB chaining surprise attacks?

I don't know what you're smoking but stamina builds for any class are the only things that compare that ONE class that you really are complaining about. Think it's about time we stop pretending stamina builds are in a bad spot just because there is a single magicka class that can even give them a hard time.

Lionxoft

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thanks for your patience, folks. We have some answers to both questions below. It's worth mentioning that these answers are straight from the combat team, headed up by Eric Wrobel.

Erock25 wrote: »

I have two questions that I would really appreciate an answer to.

1. Is Nirnhorned armor working as intended? As it is on live, a few pieces of Nirnhorned easily brings you up to the hard cap on spell resist even in Light Armor. Each piece of Nirnhorned is increasing total spell resist by the listed percentage. It is working as the Nirnhorned tooltip states, but I was wondering if you could provide a bit of clarity if this is indeed the intended mechanic.

Currently, Nirnhoned is more effective than intended. We’ll be adjusting how this works so it's not quite as powerful. This change is currently slated to go into the next major update.

Erock25 wrote: »

2. Has there been any further discussion on the Alliance Rank needed to obtain the Vigor skill? The last quote I heard from ZOS on this issue was that they want Alliance Ranks to be a long process to achieve but I feel that putting such a game changing skill at Rank 10 is a bit too much. I could personally accept it at Rank 10 if Alliance Rank was account wide, but as it is currently, none of my alts have any hope of ever reaching Vigor. My main is only Alliance Rank 8, and I spend a vast majority of my time in PVP and have been playing since the first day of early access. I am fairly casual, but just for reference, I gain on average around 1 CP a day (I keep up with enlightenment totals basically).

Yes, there has been further discussion and plans for change are in progress. We plan to move Vigor and Guard to Alliance Rank 5, also in the next major update.

Figures...make a set of armor today and the nerf it a week later heh

@xsorusb14_ESO You knew it was coming though.

OrphanHelgen

100 % agree on the accountwide alliance skills. When I played my main to VR14, I didnt have a clue about how end game content was. I have no poblem on reroll, but something are just too time consuming for me to want to make a new character my main. So Im sort of stuck with my character now, because of research timers, mount feed timers, achievements and last but not least, alliance war.

Nivzruo_ESO

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thanks for your patience, folks. We have some answers to both questions below. It's worth mentioning that these answers are straight from the combat team, headed up by Eric Wrobel.

Erock25 wrote: »

I have two questions that I would really appreciate an answer to.

1. Is Nirnhorned armor working as intended? As it is on live, a few pieces of Nirnhorned easily brings you up to the hard cap on spell resist even in Light Armor. Each piece of Nirnhorned is increasing total spell resist by the listed percentage. It is working as the Nirnhorned tooltip states, but I was wondering if you could provide a bit of clarity if this is indeed the intended mechanic.

Currently, Nirnhoned is more effective than intended. We’ll be adjusting how this works so it's not quite as powerful. This change is currently slated to go into the next major update.

Erock25 wrote: »

2. Has there been any further discussion on the Alliance Rank needed to obtain the Vigor skill? The last quote I heard from ZOS on this issue was that they want Alliance Ranks to be a long process to achieve but I feel that putting such a game changing skill at Rank 10 is a bit too much. I could personally accept it at Rank 10 if Alliance Rank was account wide, but as it is currently, none of my alts have any hope of ever reaching Vigor. My main is only Alliance Rank 8, and I spend a vast majority of my time in PVP and have been playing since the first day of early access. I am fairly casual, but just for reference, I gain on average around 1 CP a day (I keep up with enlightenment totals basically).

Yes, there has been further discussion and plans for change are in progress. We plan to move Vigor and Guard to Alliance Rank 5, also in the next major update.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_BrianWheeler

It is so so so frustrating. Again stuff is getting nerfed over PvP. So, in order to make it balanced for pvp, it will probably be made useless for PvE. On top of that, you are probably going to break it again in the process since that seems to happen every time nirnhoned or sharpened is touched. Sharpened and Nirnhoned have worked properly at the same time for probably 2-3 total weeks over the last 3 months.

I like just about everything about ESO. I am cool with the Champion System, the Crown Store, even the Console launch. This constant trashing of gear and skills over PvP is my one and only issue. Somebody is mad because they died, so my gear has to be remade.

It was obvious to everyone no matter how much they argue to the contrary that this one trait is far more powerful than any armor trait deserves to be. A sure indicator something is OP is the moment every hardcore player such as myself(and many others here) instantly converts all their gear over to it.

Additionally it further increased the divide between Medium and Light armors and stamina builds in general not just because Magicka damage is cut significantly but because the protection it offers to light armor it offers twice as much to on Medium armor and 3 times as much to Heavy. Force multipliers in this game should be a rare and extremely limited thing, not something you can stack on 8 pieces of crafted gear.

Everyone (including ZoS) evidently thought this armor trait was working just like Reinforced and the patch notes mention that specifically. Once it became clear that it was multiplicative with your overall spell resist people started switching in droves. There is a reason Fortified Nirncrux which used to sell for 10K is now selling for 19K.

Everyone converted to it because Sorcs damage and survival is over the top.

When you're running solo, you build your toon to defend against the most powerful thing on the field...and that's currently Sorcs.

Exactly.

olsborg

Fantastic to hear vigor will be rank 5, finally my alts will have a hope of getting it one day, probably not soon, but atleast before I die.

Good that the nirnhoned issues is getting fixed, it needs to be on par with Reinforced trait, maybe just a little better.

Weberda

If Vigor is moving down to AR5 then it should be nerfed accordingly. Skills should have effects appropriate to the level they unlock on.

olsborg

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

Figures...make a set of armor today and the nerf it a week later heh

Sorry to hear that. For what it's worth the next major update won't be until after console launch in June.

Nice, will get to enjoy it a few then .

Might be smarter to not enjoy it too much in the given time because when this new change happens, your character will take a big nerf. Atleast thats what it will feel like.

eliisra

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

Everyone converted to it because Sorcs damage and survival is over the top.

When you're running solo, you build your toon to defend against the most powerful thing on the field...and that's currently Sorcs.

I dont think that's the main reason. If there was a broken trait that gave up to 24% physical resist each pieces, than people would abuse the hell out of that one to, over using reinforced. I know I would, on every single one of my characters.

Wouldn't matter that sorcerers hit hard with magicka, players would still run around with 33k physical resist, to take all weapon dmg users out of the equation. Anything that's overtuned will be popular, regardless of class balance.

Yet magicka sorcs are probably the least bothered by nirn. Even with 50% spell resists, you can hit pretty damn hard with pen/spell stacked Crystal Fragment. While other classes using magicka, you can tank those indefinitely with nirn traits, only need to hit Harness Magicka once in a while. I almost feel a bit bad when DK's stand there whipping and whipping me, trying with good old Talons, breathing some fire, but nothing happens.

Elijah_Crow

I'm really disappointed that Vigor is being moved to Rank 5. Isn't it Rank 24 now? I just hit VR12 and started working on my PvP build. I just started Pvping daily this week and I'm already AR6. I guess I've picked up a few points when playing my normal once a month but that seems like really taking away a strong reward for those who have worked for it. Hope it is replaced with something worth having.

technohic

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

I'm really disappointed that Vigor is being moved to Rank 5. Isn't it Rank 24 now? I just hit VR12 and started working on my PvP build. I just started Pvping daily this week and I'm already AR6. I guess I've picked up a few points when playing my normal once a month but that seems like really taking away a strong reward for those who have worked for it. Hope it is replaced with something worth having.

Pretty sure it's skill level 5 not rank.

Ezareth

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

It's worked the same way since it was introduced. This isn't a recent change or anything .

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Exploration & Itemization
Itemization

• Actually increased the value of the Nirnhoned Trait so it is 50% stronger than the Reinforced trait for armor, as mentioned previously.

@Attorneyatlawl

I'm well aware of how it used to work. Unfortunately ZoS was not.... and thus when they increased it to be "50% stronger than Reinforced" they believed it was only impacting that specific armor piece not multiplicative of your entire spell resistance. It doesn't take a genius to realize this and trying to make a case otherwise or argue semantics is pretty disingenuous

There is no reason that Nirnhoned should be the best trait for *everyone* in the game for crafted items. Why would anyone ever craft anything else? The only reason is that you're already at or close to SR cap, because it's so powerful it takes only a couple pieces to put most people at cap. You argued that Impenetrable was too powerful as well and it wasn't nearly as powerful as Nirnhoned and was only useful in PvP.

c0rp

Nirnhoned armor needs to be HOTFIXED...not shelved until September...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

It has become clearly apparent that NO ONE left at ZOS actually participates in Cyrodiil any longer.

Nirnhoned armor not acting as intended is BREAKING the game, and needs to be fixed now.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_MattFiror

tist

How is this not something that can be hotfixed or included in a small patch. Takes 4 month to make a balance change in a game revolved around PvP. What?

Sotha_Sil

Ezareth wrote: »

There is no reason that Nirnhoned should be the best trait for *everyone* in the game for crafted items.

I think it was definitely made on purpose as it is the most expensive trait in the game but not only for balancing reasons. I guess their idea was to provide some "end game" activities with everything associated to the nirnhoned crafting.

RinaldoGandolphi

Honestly though, I think this nerf to Nirnhoned is being made too hastily, we are jumping the gun here.(I don't even use it)

Most folks don't have Spell Erosion maxed in the Champ System yet which increases the amount of Spell Resistance your spells ignore by 25% at 100 points, Combined with 10% from Destro Staff, Element Weakness, Sharpened/Nirn Weapon Traits, and the Light Armor passive, its probably possible to get just as much Penetration as it is to get Resistance which should in theory cancel them out.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/161781/patch-notes-v2-0-3#latest

• Champion System
  
• The Mage
• The Apprentice Constellation
• Spell Erosion: Fixed an issue that was resulting in this passive having a much lower effect than desired.

I think its counterable, maybe we should wait a bit and see how things go. let folks get more points invested in spell erosion and the like and see if its still a problem. Besides, let folks who invested tons of gold into this at least get a few months out of their gear.

hamon

technohic wrote: »

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

I'm really disappointed that Vigor is being moved to Rank 5. Isn't it Rank 24 now? I just hit VR12 and started working on my PvP build. I just started Pvping daily this week and I'm already AR6. I guess I've picked up a few points when playing my normal once a month but that seems like really taking away a strong reward for those who have worked for it. Hope it is replaced with something worth having.

Pretty sure it's skill level 5 not rank.

yes , skill level is roughly rank 10-11 still a reasonable grind but not the insane way it is now..

Attorneyatlawl

Ezareth wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

It's worked the same way since it was introduced. This isn't a recent change or anything .

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Exploration & Itemization
Itemization

• Actually increased the value of the Nirnhoned Trait so it is 50% stronger than the Reinforced trait for armor, as mentioned previously.

@Attorneyatlawl

I'm well aware of how it used to work. Unfortunately ZoS was not.... and thus when they increased it to be "50% stronger than Reinforced" they believed it was only impacting that specific armor piece not multiplicative of your entire spell resistance. It doesn't take a genius to realize this and trying to make a case otherwise or argue semantics is pretty disingenuous

There is no reason that Nirnhoned should be the best trait for *everyone* in the game for crafted items. Why would anyone ever craft anything else? The only reason is that you're already at or close to SR cap, because it's so powerful it takes only a couple pieces to put most people at cap. You argued that Impenetrable was too powerful as well and it wasn't nearly as powerful as Nirnhoned and was only useful in PvP.

I'm just saying the uproar is a little late, and if you knew how it worked 8 months ago why wait to call it out as a perceived balance problem? . Impenetrable in its old form wasn't able to be bypassed by enemies, while nirnhoned can be and rather easily, as others already described and I briefly ran down in this thread too. An enemy with 50k spell resist versus my sorc for example ends up with about 22k worth for the actual mitigation given, and that's if I don't slot elemental drain which if I'm in a small group or solo, I always do, which gives the equivalent damage taken of having about 17k at that point. Add in extra from champion ranks and it's not a big deal as a caster to get a high level of pierce to hit tank types hard, while people without much mitigation just get mauled .

By contrast, impenetrable had no way to penetrate, and was easy to stack to where you couldn't be critically hit by the vast majority of enemies. At best most people ran around 30% to 40% critical chance, and it was difficult to stack higher than 50% for spell crit while impen was easy to get 3-5 pieces of that each negates 10% of that as a flat value additively . If you went to an extreme like 65-70% you lost a huge amount of everything else to fit it in making it pointless since you'd still only then get a 20% or less crit chance on enemies in pvp. They simply aren't comparable balance issues, and while impen needed to be changed to what it is now, nirnhoned doesn't need any big change, at most maybe a nerf to 15% gain per piece vs the 20% it is currently.

Long story short, a damage build can penetrate a lot of spell resistance and almost always will be specced in that fashion naturally since a lot of that comes from the skill lines and armor type in the first place. To get there they sacrifice a lot of defense . Conversely, a huge spell resist build won't have anywhere near as much outgoing attack penetration, and if they up the spell resist to where it would counter a high spell pen enemy they do end up giving up their trait slots which limits the sets they can equip since most of the best ones are not crafted so you can't choose the trait for those slots . So the defensive type takes less damage and deals less too. The offensive type deals more damage, but takes more as the tradeoff. That is called balance .

Ezareth

woodsro wrote: »

Honestly though, I think this nerf to Nirnhoned is being made too hastily, we are jumping the gun here.(I don't even use it)

Most folks don't have Spell Erosion maxed in the Champ System yet which increases the amount of Spell Resistance your spells ignore by 25% at 100 points, Combined with 10% from Destro Staff, Element Weakness, Sharpened/Nirn Weapon Traits, and the Light Armor passive, its probably possible to get just as much Penetration as it is to get Resistance which should in theory cancel them out.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/161781/patch-notes-v2-0-3#latest

• Champion System
  
• The Mage
• The Apprentice Constellation
• Spell Erosion: Fixed an issue that was resulting in this passive having a much lower effect than desired.

I think its counterable, maybe we should wait a bit and see how things go. let folks get more points invested in spell erosion and the like and see if its still a problem. Besides, let folks who invested tons of gold into this at least get a few months out of their gear.

I'm aware of everything you've said and I know you're excited to be joining the ranks of stamina users but just because something is *partially* counterable does not make it balanced.

The argument that....well if you put 100 champion points into a passive, change your Mundus stone to Apprentice, Use a legendary Nirnhoned Staff, 5 Pieces of Light Armor, ensure you slot and cast Elemental Weakness on all your targets you can cancel out a freaking armor trait's effectiveness....*with Destro Staff abilities* is ludicrous.

Why do I even spend the time debating arguments such as these? We're not talking about someone who Sacrificed DPS and such by going full Heavy Armor here....we're talking about *armor traits*.

The last time I checked the third point I put into Spell erosion (Which is about 3-6 times as effective of the later points) increased my Power Overload damage against a high SR target by 18 Damage.

Not everyone wants to use Destro Staff abilities and I'm already aware that they passive is providing far more than 10% Spell Penetration. So all the Sorc class abilities are just screwed then right?

Tell you what. Put together your scenario of maximum Penetration and test it out. Then test with abilities like Crystal Fragments. I can pull numbers out of my rear and make a point about something but I have yet to conduct a single test in ESO and walk away understanding a mechanic is working exactly as the tooltip or common sense would expect....and I've conducted many tests in this game. I have a Spreadshseet right now that is over 400 lines of data from conducting tests in game. Who knows maybe they fixed everything and everything is working as intended

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Rude and Insulting comments]

Attorneyatlawl

@Ezareth, you mentioned before that you haven't done any testing on this at all... and champion points weren't even among the things being listed as easy to build into a damage setup, and you could just as easily ignore the destro staff part if desired (though given that's the primary weapon for dealing magic damage in this game I don't know why you would ever count it out ). There's nothing stopping you from doing testing if you're concerned something has changed... I did this type of testing for raid damage over the last few days and the mechanics worked as described here though, so it's unlikely it is different for enemy players.

Joy_Division

Devoting your entire build, gear, and skills to counter a single armor TRAIT is *not* balance people.

Yeah, I enjoy running around rekking people with my stamina DK too, but can we at least have the pretense of objectivity?

Attorneyatlawl

Joy_Division wrote: »

Devoting your entire build, gear, and skills to counter a single armor TRAIT is *not* balance people.

Yeah, I enjoy running around rekking people with my stamina DK too, but can we at least have the pretense of objectivity?

It isn't to counter a single build anyway, since we're still adding a ton of damage to other enemies as well. It's just part of what a strong damage build would tend to build into it in the first place to varying degrees.

Tankqull

Erock25 wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom Thank you! Very good info to know for gear planning.

Weberda wrote: »

Vigor at Alliance rank 5. Congrats ZOS. You're turning PvP into a real joke. Kids complain because they have to earn something and you just cave in like marshmallows. Between this and the keeps bonuses outside of Cyrodiil you may as well just give everybody all the goodies and make everybody V14 so they don't have to work for that either and shut down PvP. That will take care of some of the lag anyway. And those of us who pay for a challenge in a game can go elsewhere.

I am not a kid. That is the problem, actually. I understand wanting something to strive for and look forward to in PVP, but Vigor was undeniably too long of a grind for such a powerful skill when you consider a lot of people like to have alts and that Vigor really adds a ton of viability. As I said in the OP, fine with it being rank 10 if your PVP skill line rank was account wide, but with the current set up for all but the top 5% (just a guess), Vigor was out of reach on an alt.

timidobserver wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thanks for your patience, folks. We have some answers to both questions below. It's worth mentioning that these answers are straight from the combat team, headed up by Eric Wrobel.

Erock25 wrote: »

I have two questions that I would really appreciate an answer to.

1. Is Nirnhorned armor working as intended? As it is on live, a few pieces of Nirnhorned easily brings you up to the hard cap on spell resist even in Light Armor. Each piece of Nirnhorned is increasing total spell resist by the listed percentage. It is working as the Nirnhorned tooltip states, but I was wondering if you could provide a bit of clarity if this is indeed the intended mechanic.

Currently, Nirnhoned is more effective than intended. We’ll be adjusting how this works so it's not quite as powerful. This change is currently slated to go into the next major update.

Erock25 wrote: »

2. Has there been any further discussion on the Alliance Rank needed to obtain the Vigor skill? The last quote I heard from ZOS on this issue was that they want Alliance Ranks to be a long process to achieve but I feel that putting such a game changing skill at Rank 10 is a bit too much. I could personally accept it at Rank 10 if Alliance Rank was account wide, but as it is currently, none of my alts have any hope of ever reaching Vigor. My main is only Alliance Rank 8, and I spend a vast majority of my time in PVP and have been playing since the first day of early access. I am fairly casual, but just for reference, I gain on average around 1 CP a day (I keep up with enlightenment totals basically).

Yes, there has been further discussion and plans for change are in progress. We plan to move Vigor and Guard to Alliance Rank 5, also in the next major update.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_BrianWheeler

It is so so so frustrating. Again stuff is getting nerfed over PvP. So, in order to make it balanced for pvp, it will probably be made useless for PvE. On top of that, you are probably going to break it again in the process since that seems to happen every time nirnhoned or sharpened is touched. Sharpened and Nirnhoned have worked properly at the same time for probably 2-3 total weeks over the last 3 months.

I like just about everything about ESO. I am cool with the Champion System, the Crown Store, even the Console launch. This constant trashing of gear and skills over PvP is my one and only issue. Somebody is mad because they died, so my gear has to be remade.

If Nirnhorned was giving more spell resist than they expected, then it wasn't 'nerfed over PVP'. It is being brought back in line to what they originally intended. I hope they keep it pretty good actually because of its added cost. For all we know, making PVE harder may be their primary reason for fixing this now that they know about it.

expect vigor to be nerfed into oblivion, within 1-2 months after that change went live as pve will become a total joke with no need to have a healer or a tank when 12 guys have rally and vigor running maybe 1-2 nbs using funnel from time to time aswell creating 24k HPS...

Tankqull

woodsro wrote: »

Honestly though, I think this nerf to Nirnhoned is being made too hastily, we are jumping the gun here.(I don't even use it)

Most folks don't have Spell Erosion maxed in the Champ System yet which increases the amount of Spell Resistance your spells ignore by 25% at 100 points, Combined with 10% from Destro Staff, Element Weakness, Sharpened/Nirn Weapon Traits, and the Light Armor passive, its probably possible to get just as much Penetration as it is to get Resistance which should in theory cancel them out.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/161781/patch-notes-v2-0-3#latest

• Champion System
  
• The Mage
• The Apprentice Constellation
• Spell Erosion: Fixed an issue that was resulting in this passive having a much lower effect than desired.

I think its counterable, maybe we should wait a bit and see how things go. let folks get more points invested in spell erosion and the like and see if its still a problem. Besides, let folks who invested tons of gold into this at least get a few months out of their gear.

dont forget Spell shield wich increases spell resistence by 25% and thus negates spell erosion entirely and as the warrior doesent provide much usefull to be specced for as a non tank...

ArcanusMagus

Weberda wrote: »

If Vigor is moving down to AR5 then it should be nerfed accordingly. Skills should have effects appropriate to the level they unlock on.

This, absolutely this. I don't have Vigor yet, being level 21 or 22 in rank, but it should mean something. The reward should be consistent with the investment.

How long before we start seeing zergs with everyone spamming vigor repeatedly?

If this change is coming no matter what, consider scaling the effectiveness of the healing with the player's alliance war rank.

Ezareth

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

@Ezareth, you mentioned before that you haven't done any testing on this at all... and champion points weren't even among the things being listed as easy to build into a damage setup, and you could just as easily ignore the destro staff part if desired (though given that's the primary weapon for dealing magic damage in this game I don't know why you would ever count it out ). There's nothing stopping you from doing testing if you're concerned something has changed... I did this type of testing for raid damage over the last few days and the mechanics worked as described here though, so it's unlikely it is different for enemy players.

Actually I've mentioned before I've done a ton of testing on this before but I haven't tested every single patch as it takes a good 2-3 hours of testing (and more gold than I'm willing to continue to spend on this), plus documentation each time I test. It doesn't help that Spell Penetration, Weapon Traits, and Champion passives have changed virtually every patch since 1.6. The only thing my testing can confirm conclusively is that Spell Resistance and Penetration has never worked correctly in any of the tests I've conducted. Why do two 9% Legendary Nirnhoned Swords provide *far* more spell penetration than 1 Nirnhoned 18% Legendary staff? Why does sharpened and apprentice provide more penetration than Nirnhoned + apprentice, yet Nirnhoned by itself provides more penetration than Sharpened? There are so many inconsistencies in this system I've found and verified patch after patch after patch that your matter-of-factness in stating your own testing counter to mine leads me to believe that everything you say is suspect.

Your PvE testing means absolutely nothing. No one knows the resistance a Boss has inherently and you don't control all of the variables in a raid fight. Even if you did know how much Resistance a boss has, that doesn't mean your penetration works on it the same way it would on a player in Cyrodiil.

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

It's worked the same way since it was introduced. This isn't a recent change or anything .

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Exploration & Itemization
Itemization

• Actually increased the value of the Nirnhoned Trait so it is 50% stronger than the Reinforced trait for armor, as mentioned previously.

@Attorneyatlawl

I'm well aware of how it used to work. Unfortunately ZoS was not.... and thus when they increased it to be "50% stronger than Reinforced" they believed it was only impacting that specific armor piece not multiplicative of your entire spell resistance. It doesn't take a genius to realize this and trying to make a case otherwise or argue semantics is pretty disingenuous

There is no reason that Nirnhoned should be the best trait for *everyone* in the game for crafted items. Why would anyone ever craft anything else? The only reason is that you're already at or close to SR cap, because it's so powerful it takes only a couple pieces to put most people at cap. You argued that Impenetrable was too powerful as well and it wasn't nearly as powerful as Nirnhoned and was only useful in PvP.

I'm just saying the uproar is a little late, and if you knew how it worked 8 months ago why wait to call it out as a perceived balance problem? . Impenetrable in its old form wasn't able to be bypassed by enemies, while nirnhoned can be and rather easily, as others already described and I briefly ran down in this thread too. An enemy with 50k spell resist versus my sorc for example ends up with about 22k worth for the actual mitigation given, and that's if I don't slot elemental drain which if I'm in a small group or solo, I always do, which gives the equivalent damage taken of having about 17k at that point. Add in extra from champion ranks and it's not a big deal as a caster to get a high level of pierce to hit tank types hard, while people without much mitigation just get mauled .

By contrast, impenetrable had no way to penetrate, and was easy to stack to where you couldn't be critically hit by the vast majority of enemies. At best most people ran around 30% to 40% critical chance, and it was difficult to stack higher than 50% for spell crit while impen was easy to get 3-5 pieces of that each negates 10% of that as a flat value additively . If you went to an extreme like 65-70% you lost a huge amount of everything else to fit it in making it pointless since you'd still only then get a 20% or less crit chance on enemies in pvp. They simply aren't comparable balance issues, and while impen needed to be changed to what it is now, nirnhoned doesn't need any big change, at most maybe a nerf to 15% gain per piece vs the 20% it is currently.

Long story short, a damage build can penetrate a lot of spell resistance and almost always will be specced in that fashion naturally since a lot of that comes from the skill lines and armor type in the first place. To get there they sacrifice a lot of defense . Conversely, a huge spell resist build won't have anywhere near as much outgoing attack penetration, and if they up the spell resist to where it would counter a high spell pen enemy they do end up giving up their trait slots which limits the sets they can equip since most of the best ones are not crafted so you can't choose the trait for those slots . So the defensive type takes less damage and deals less too. The offensive type deals more damage, but takes more as the tradeoff. That is called balance .

The uproar isn't a little too late. 7.5% Spell resistance(the old Value), even in a multiplicative state is not significant enough to allow you to cut spell damage in half without significant sacrifice. Even 8 pieces of crafted gear (which almost no one uses) would only provide 60%. I'd be fine with that.....even 10%....hell even 12.5%. A 24%(Not 20%) multiplier that is additive with itself that can be stacked up to 192% increase (201% with nirnhoned 1H weapon) is something to be in an "uproar" about. A 201% potential modifier stacked on top of a Medium/Heavy rebalancing that already offers 3-4 times the protection of Light armor is absurd. Even stacked on Light armor it's absurd.

Why don't you do some testing with Power Overload, Crystal Fragments, Mages Wrath, Velocious Curse, hell even Heavy Staff attacks? As I mentioned before, the Destruction Penetration passive right now is providing far too much penetration and it always has. Working out how penetration and spell resistance works requires knowing every single variable involved in the process and observing how each piece interacts with the other pieces. You have to test each type of penetration in isolation first to discover its baseline. Then you have to test them together to see if they stack with each other together in the way you anticipate. Now that Resistance is linear it is much easier to determine exactly how it works than it used to be, but it still takes hours of painstaking testing and documentation.

I know exactly how Impenetrable worked ( I was one of the first people reporting that as well), it was OP and yes it had diminishing returns (depending on who was attacking) which is why I only ran 3-4 pieces of it depending on which bar I used. Impenetrable affected all classes and builds in the same way and at most it cut your total damage by 20-25%. If you're crit bonus damage is 65% (what shadow used to be) and you have 50% crit your damage agains me with 3-4 pieces of impen would be reduced by 15-20%. If you were running far less crit and had base bonus damage like most people had it would have impacted you far less. The solution to bypassing impen was stacking spell/weapon damage which was far more effective point per point than crit even without impen until you were into the softcap. Stealth attacks still guaranteed a crit and you couldn't crit damage shields anyways so Impen wasn't nearly as OP as Nirnhoned is right now.

Additionally I'm running 3 pieces of Nirnhoned right now to reach spell cap and I'm sacrificing 126 Magicka and 56 Magicka regen to get there. Most of the actual Non-Glass cannon real PvP players are utilizing crafted gear at least to some degree just as they did with impen gear.

hint: It's not balance when *every* good player is using it or planning on using it no matter what they're doing.

Durandal

I don't normally post, but I wanted to get my opinion down.

I am not at all happy with this planned change. Moving the goal post is not a good decision. This discourages players who have devoted a lot of time to acquire these high level alliance war rank skills.

I could see shuffling around the requirement of AW skills when new ones are added based upon the alliance rank curve of players, but this just seems like a moving the goal post scenario and it is very disheartening.

This, along with the motif books in the crown store, has me worried about the development direction of the game.

Two changes I would like to see:

• Make the unlocked Alliance War skills account wide. This will make it possible that people who want to level an alt in BWB can do so and keep the skills they've worked hard to acquire on their main character. Do not, however, make the actual alliance war rank account bound. Only the skills. The title should be special and character bound.
• Like @ArcanusMagus said, if you are going to shuffle the skill requirements down for alliance war skills, make a system where their power increases as you level your alliance rank. I can see the benefit to having these skills available to more players, but progressing through our alliance war rank should mean more than getting new titles.

Ezareth

On the Vigor change, I don't see the big deal TBH. I don't think it is fair to lock a single ability that is extremely important to a large segment of the playerbase in both PvP and PvE behind a steep (and for many) painful grind.

This isn't like the Assault skill that gives you bonus range....in Cyrodiil that was important to everyone but since it only impacted Cyrodiil was not needed by not PvPers.

I do think Alliance rank should be account wide however. It is the chief reason I don't seriously consider playing any of my alts.

Joy_Division

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Devoting your entire build, gear, and skills to counter a single armor TRAIT is *not* balance people.

Yeah, I enjoy running around rekking people with my stamina DK too, but can we at least have the pretense of objectivity?

It isn't to counter a single build anyway, since we're still adding a ton of damage to other enemies as well. It's just part of what a strong damage build would tend to build into it in the first place to varying degrees.

Yes it is. I'm not adding a "ton" of damage to WB spammers who use dropped set's like Skrimishers. I have to overspecialize my character, forget about using a resto staff bc/ I lose out on a 10% passive, and feel obligated to use a specific weapon trait in order to scratch players who slap on 2 nirn traits and then are given ridiculous spell resitiance.

That is not balance. It is so much easier to join the Wrecking Blow spammers and rek *everyone's* face just by using a generic two-handed sword and whatever random gear you happen to come across.

RinaldoGandolphi

Ezareth wrote: »

I'm aware of everything you've said and I know you're excited to be joining the ranks of stamina users but just because something is *partially* counterable does not make it balanced.

The argument that....well if you put 100 champion points into a passive, change your Mundus stone to Apprentice, Use a legendary Nirnhoned Staff, 5 Pieces of Light Armor, ensure you slot and cast Elemental Weakness on all your targets you can cancel out a freaking armor trait's effectiveness....*with Destro Staff abilities* is ludicrous.

Why do I even spend the time debating arguments such as these? We're not talking about someone who Sacrificed DPS and such by going full Heavy Armor here....we're talking about *armor traits*.

The last time I checked the third point I put into Spell erosion (Which is about 3-6 times as effective of the later points) increased my Power Overload damage against a high SR target by 18 Damage.

Not everyone wants to use Destro Staff abilities and I'm already aware that they passive is providing far more than 10% Spell Penetration. So all the Sorc class abilities are just screwed then right?

Tell you what. Put together your scenario of maximum Penetration and test it out. Then test with abilities like Crystal Fragments. I can pull numbers out of my rear and make a point about something but I have yet to conduct a single test in ESO and walk away understanding a mechanic is working exactly as the tooltip or common sense would expect....and I've conducted many tests in this game. I have a Spreadshseet right now that is over 400 lines of data from conducting tests in game. Who knows maybe they fixed everything and everything is working as intended

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Rude and Insulting comments]

Easy Ezareth. Yes i am excited to be joining the stamina world just for a different style, but i can always go back. This is something i have wanted to try for months, just never got around to it.

I'll concede, if it does prove to be over the top in the next few weeks, then by all means adjust it. The point i was trying to make is im not a fan of knee jerk reactions and jumping the gun to nerf. If they do nerf it, lets hope they don't make it usless, perhaps make it like reinforced but a good bit better per armor piece maybe?

Ifthir_ESO

tist wrote: »

How is this not something that can be hotfixed or included in a small patch. Takes 4 month to make a balance change in a game revolved around PvP. What?

because @ZOS_PaulSage doesnt prioritize anything pvp related.

the end