Did my Greatsword get replaced by a wet towel?

Volrion

I'm by no means an elite at this game. I play PVP in BWB over and over with alts. I level my guys, and then make a new one when they hit vet, so I can do it all over again. It's been really fun this way for me (pre-patch.)

I'm not a beast, but I worked a little bit on learning mechanics etc. and trying to improve my skills in combat so I could hold my own and not always rely on grouping with my guildies or hovering near the zerg.


Up until about a week ago, I could fight up to 5 enemies and win. Sometimes I would come up short in outnumbered fights, but that's the way it goes.

I had no Exploits or CP stacks etc. So the only thing I could put it down to is my build and skill. There aren't really many other variables in lowbie PVP, and that's why I love(d) it. It was the purest form of player vs player in the game.

I never lost a 1v2 or 1v1, and would mostly win anything up to 1v5.


POST IC PATCH, by the time I've finished the first player off, I'm almost completely out of resources every time!

If it's only a 1v2 thats fine because I can just evade for a while and wait until my resources are back up and then kill the remaining enemy. If it's more than one remaining, though, I simply can't defend myself and end up dropping.

So all the patch has done is either delay the inevitable (making it SLOWWWWWWWW) or just making it so the good players can't do anything to fight back in an outnumbered situation once they've executed somebody from full health.


I understand that for the elite V16s with everything at their disposal they can build some amazingly powerful builds and probably overcome this kind of resource loss that I'm experiencing, so the damage mitigation may not necessarily be a bad thing. (I can't say for sure though as I've not experienced it)


For the remaining 98% of the ESO PVP population, it has just made fights slow, incredibly boring, and more about numbers than anything else.

Just last night I was 1v1 with my vamp magicka night blade against a DK in 7 piece heavy on Azura. I controlled him easily, and CC'd multiple times and then went to burst him as usual for the finishing kill, but I kept running out of resources before I could get his health bar down. He wasn't even trying to defend by the end of it as I couldn't strike him down before my resources expired. (I'm running Magnus and Seducer with enchants, pots, drinks, everything I can do with what's available to me)

So I let him return fire. I was only rocking light armour, and he still couldn't kill me either!

We ended up playing the lute, exchanging a couple of messages about the state of the game, and then went our separate ways...

Our factions are supposed to be at war! lol



From my experience, I feel like the skill has been completely sucked out of this game.


I don't even know if it's worth asking if they'll ever try to fix this. With all the IC bugs and such, I feel like were stuck with this style of "combat" for quite a while...

***Before you ask, I'm simply not interested in the time investment of getting my guys up to V16 as the grind is not enjoyable for me at all.


With my commentary over, (if you're still with me) can I request that we have a couple of servers where we replace Battle Spirit with Champion Point caps to create balance instead?


Cheers,

Dr_Ganknstein

Learn tactics.

Sanct16

Well you are not supposed to play away from the zerg. Better join some lagtrain, thats the way ZOS wants us to play.

Alucardo

This is what I've been saying - if you're not V16 you're getting half a game. People have argued with me, but your stats are NOT affected by the gear you wear except the 5th pc, so we can't even boost our max attributes that way. We're stuck with whatever mundus we've got and what battle levelling gives us. That's it. So if you don't have a zerg with you to complement your less than useful stats, you will quickly run out of resources and damage will be sub-par.
IMO it's not great, because you're taking some strategy out of the game - the ability to equip the perfect sets to compliment your build.
Like yourself, I wasn't willing to grind to VR16, but if I want a full game I will need to, so I will.. eventually. BWB is great for new players to get their feet wet in PVP, but if you want that little bit more out of it, you'll need to grind to VR14-16

Seth_Black

L2P ...all over again

Fights are longer, resources harder to manage it is BETTER and more fun even while playing solo.
Stop focusing only on max stam/weapon power or magicka/spell dmg ...put in some more regens.
Also weaving doesn't work as well as before on 2H you can't cancel animation in order to get that stamina back.
I would say ESO is heading towards way more skilled 1v1 fights and makes 1vX way bigger challenge.

New things make it fresh and way more interesting

mcurley

It would be beneficial to look into what does and does not work to improve your stats while battle leveled. It is annoying that gear is mostly useless with battle leveling turned on but I doubt they are going to ever change that so knowing the ins and outs is crucial to success.

1vX was way too easy before and I'm glad it's harder now. Resource management is actually something you have to focus on instead of everyone just having unlimited resources to spam every skill they wanted to... it makes more sense this way.

Fighting outnumbered is still very possible. Just last night in BwB a DK and I (NB) fought a group of about 8 or so EP outside of Bleakers for a good 10 minutes while they continuously respawned and came back for more death. I got 16 killing blows before they managed to get me down, the DK must've gotten about the same. Skill still matters.

Are you running into many 1v1s that you can't finish or is the example you gave the only time? I haven't come across a single 1v1 situation yet that lasted an unreasonable amount of time.

MissBizz

Did you try twisting the wet towel, holding it by the very edge and using more wrist action when fighting?

Heh. Sorry.

I have read that BWB is making fights just way TOO long with the new battle spirit though Not sure what you can do on BWB to help since battle levelling is weird.

Volrion

Seth_Black wrote: »

L2P ...all over again

Fights are longer, resources harder to manage it is BETTER and more fun even while playing solo.
Stop focusing only on max stam/weapon power or magicka/spell dmg ...put in some more regens.
Also weaving doesn't work as well as before on 2H you can't cancel animation in order to get that stamina back.
I would say ESO is heading towards way more skilled 1v1 fights and makes 1vX way bigger challenge.

New things make it fresh and way more interesting

I can do all that, and do. I studied PVP on this game, and I understand how to play and anti-cancel etc.

Unfortunately, regardless of what I do in the new patch I eventually run out of resources with battle levelling...

(Sometimes it's longer than others, but it still is too taxing on my play style, which before was no problem at all.)

I'm fine with learning new tactics and such, but as a battle levelled player, unless with my group, it's just a lot harder to finish people, and thus requires a lot more resources.

@Alucardo Perhaps a mindless grind is my only choice.

@mcurley I think they just dropped the ball in terms of how these changes effect elites, vs how they effect average, battle levelled players. I never ran into the 1vX gods, but I saw videos and I can understand that would be frustrating so its nice that its harder to do that now. But for your average fight, it's made things very slow and boring now.

I find on blackwater it doesn't matter so much if i have a partner who is organised. We just call a target and take them out one by one while everyone is scattered... By myself though I don't have the hitting power of a second player so it's either option A ) play for regens and sustain and never be able to finish more than one or two people before I'm out of resources, or B ) Try to hit hard and quickly kill one guy and then I'm struggling to regen for the next battle.

Perhaps if I had the ability to manipulate my build more I'd be able to counter this, but with battle levelling and only a small amount of champion points, I really don't have many options.

As for the fight where we shook hands and went our separate ways, I have only found this to be a problem with my magicka players.

That incident was my V5 NB. I have noticed since the patch that my Magicka Templar hits like a baby now also.

Stamina guys are hitting harder, but resources are a bit of a struggle.

With battle levelling the most I can get my stam up to is around 19-20k btw with food.

I think we should be able to allocate our attribute points however we want, and then have them just use that as the basis for our own personal battle level.

It would allow for the fun of theory crafting and creating unique builds, without having to grind up to V16 to actually do it.

@MissBizz lol Yeah it's a bit much. Perhaps they'll look into it. I'm hoping so. BWB used to be amazing.

Blackfirehawk

I had 30 friends playing this game daily.
Now after a week orso their is not that many left.

Elder scroll is bleeding to death because some people tho it wasn't fair for NB to dodge roll out of hard situations, sorcs streaking because your zerk is charging in abd you cant get them or perm tanks just block.

The game is now made for the Zerk blobs.

Volrion

@Blackfirehawk that's a shame, man.

Maybe take a break, and check back after the next patch (lol) and hope for the best.

Seth_Black

Just one stupid question...

Are you v16 on battle leveling?

If you are v16 pretty nicely geared switch it OFF!
It scales you down and maybe that's your problem

Volrion

@Seth_Black sorry to double tag you, but I just wanted to say that if anything, combat requires much less skill now.

Before, if you made mistakes, you'd get bombed. Now, because people hit softer and mobility has taken a huge hit, you don't get wiped as easily for making mistakes/taking hits, and because players can't move around as much, it's much easier to target and keep your attacks hitting their mark.

Fights are now slower, more forgiving with less power, and less mobility.

I'm not sure how that creates a more skill based environment?

I notice a lot of people aren't dying from being outplayed now, they're either dying from having no resources to defend/evade, or they just get outnumbered.

It's more about Zerging or outnumbering than anything else... For me as a Pvp junkie, that's a real shame.

Seth_Black

I'm playing only solo IC and mostly encountering 1 or 2 enemies at once + trash.
Why it is more about skill now?
1. Manage your resources
2. Use the area properly (buildings, trash ...hell even bosses)
3. Enemy after being killed can release and come back really fast ...so watch your back
It is more tricky = more fun than just fighting around ONE ROCK in Cyrodiil to kill 10 people solo
I've been there, done that ...THAT was boring!
If you know your district well and you can use every building and trash pack to your advantage
it's really fun to play

Volrion

@Seth_Black Nah man, I have a bunch of low VRs and non vets (7 total characters now).

I'm going to level one to end-game eventually, but I've been happy just Pvping only for the most part up until now.

Mauz

Seth_Black wrote: »

L2P ...all over again

Fights are longer, resources harder to manage it is BETTER and more fun even while playing solo.
Stop focusing only on max stam/weapon power or magicka/spell dmg ...put in some more regens.
Also weaving doesn't work as well as before on 2H you can't cancel animation in order to get that stamina back.
I would say ESO is heading towards way more skilled 1v1 fights and makes 1vX way bigger challenge.

New things make it fresh and way more interesting

No its not just about L2P.

There's a guy who recently posted a stamina nb build. He hat 3k weapon dmg, 36k stamina, 13k magicka and 20k hp and 2,8k stam reg, 50% crit with 500 cp. My toon has 2k weapon dmg, 18k stamina, 8 magicka and 20k hp without cp if I want the same 2,8k regen and 50% crit. And I still have higher spell costs and much less mitigation. Dont tell me I'll lose against him cause I lack of skill. It doesnt matter whether I've skill or not, he can simply nuke me into the ground. Apart from that I cant image someone with 500 cp doesnt know what he is doing. Man, everyone seems seems to think everybody else he fights against is an idiot.

2.1 was nothing but a reaction to insane high dmg peaks and endless resource caused by cp stacking. You say: " go grinding"? Even if I do so and reach 500 cp next year he'll already has 1000+. Apart from that I would have ZERO time left to play pvp. So for what should I go grinding then? Not everyone can effort to waste 20+h per week into video games. You say this game is not for me then? Might be true but actually ZOS says it is.

This cp system is a fully loaded heavy attack against any new or casual pvper. Its a deadlock. theres no way out. It's just a question of time it becomes completely unplayable for us. Ok, apart from running with a zerk having 20v1s what I personally find boring.

Volrion

Seth_Black wrote: »

I'm playing only solo IC and mostly encountering 1 or 2 enemies at once + trash.
Why it is more about skill now?
1. Manage your resources
2. Use the area properly (buildings, trash ...hell even bosses)
3. Enemy after being killed can release and come back really fast ...so watch your back
It is more tricky = more fun than just fighting around ONE ROCK in Cyrodiil to kill 10 people solo
I've been there, done that ...THAT was boring!
If you know your district well and you can use every building and trash pack to your advantage
it's really fun to play

I agree on some points and I disagree on others.

1. I can understand managing resources is a necessary skill in this game. But if you're comparing an end game build with 30k stam or magicka (depending on your build) and enough champion points spent on resource regen, not to mention end game food or drink plus the various buffs you get from gear, to a battle levelled player, you really can't understand where I'm coming from.

Even if I enchant my armour, it doesn't effect my base stats with battle levelling. If I eat blue or purple food with the best gear available to me the best I can get it to is around 21k of magicka or stamina. But if I do that, I have no regen and run out very quickly, versus an end game build which can easily pop 30k and then have drinks + champion points into regens + enchants and gear passives/traits so resource management is not a big problem there. If I run drinks it hovers around 18k but I don't hit very hard at all.

All the while I have something like 30k hp?! The amount of times I've more or less stood there and slowly dropped because I can't evade or block or cloak or bolt (whatever) drives me up the wall.

As I said, the battle levelling makes sense for the end-game players, but for the guys who are on their way to end-game (the vast majority) it really REALLY, makes gameplay in PVP suck. lol.

I saw a nice idea which would remove the need for battle levelling and that was to have either servers with Vet Caps or CP Caps.

Instead of all the buff servers etc. just have five total servers; V1-4 / V5-8 / V9-12 / V13-16 (x2) servers along with seasonal CP caps as the devs have discussed and then just get rid of the battle levelling nonsense.

If I suck, if I make mistakes, I deserve to die. I can learn from that, and I'm ok with that.

Improving my skills and getting better only to have my gameplay completely hindered by imbalance and then an attempt at balance which completely misses the mark, I'm not ok with.

For example; Whe my first character made it to VR, I jumped into Azura to check it out. I got hit by a nightblade in a Jester suit (I'll never forget him lol) with a Meteor (Teleport Strike while the meteor was in mid air) and an Impale all about 2 seconds and dropped like a sack of potatoes!

IT WAS AWESOME.

I knew he was V14 with a lot better stats than me, but the timing and skill required to bomb me like that with a huge burst excited me about PVP and made me want to improve my SKILLS. (and of course level a little more).

Now, if he were to do that to me today, he might bomb me still, but then drop to my friends because he burned so many resources on that lethal combo. (Perhaps not at V16, but most certainly if he was battle levelled. Actually, if he where battle levelled I dare say he wouldn't be able to hit that hard that quickly to begin with, but thats just my guess.)


2. A lot of the time, thats the only option in IC for me. The amount of time's I've killed one or two people to have them respawn and head back before my resources are even close to being able to fight is too much! So I have to run around looking for a boss or mob to pull to keep them busy. But that's another subject, and it's not really PVP, and even though I do it, it feels really cheesy every time, which I'm not a fan of.

Here's a question I have for another topic; If they made IC with close respawns to create a faster pace, why on earth did they kill damage and regens!?! lol

It's like they went one way (which was a great idea) and then completely hindered it with battle spirit.

I shouldn't have to flee after a fight after a kill, just so I can wait for my regens. Sure I should be hindered a little, but at the moment it's just way too much.

3. Kind of already covered that. I do love the map in IC and the potential it has to be really great fast paced action. But because of the changes to PVP, it's really not. It's just a lot of people fighting and then pulling mobs to do the dirty work for them.

I'd much prefer instanced areas where it was 5 on 5 battles with no NPCs in the way.

Even battles, even numbers. Play for kills or map control. It would be amazing. Small scale with no trash mobs/bosses too so there would be no lag issues. It could be amazing.

Volrion

Mauz wrote: »

Seth_Black wrote: »

L2P ...all over again

Fights are longer, resources harder to manage it is BETTER and more fun even while playing solo.
Stop focusing only on max stam/weapon power or magicka/spell dmg ...put in some more regens.
Also weaving doesn't work as well as before on 2H you can't cancel animation in order to get that stamina back.
I would say ESO is heading towards way more skilled 1v1 fights and makes 1vX way bigger challenge.

New things make it fresh and way more interesting

No its not just about L2P.

There's a guy who recently posted a stamina nb build. He hat 3k weapon dmg, 36k stamina, 13k magicka and 20k hp and 2,8k stam reg, 50% crit with 500 cp. My toon has 2k weapon dmg, 18k stamina, 8 magicka and 20k hp without cp if I want the same 2,8k regen and 50% crit. And I still have higher spell costs and much less mitigation. Dont tell me I'll lose against him cause I lack of skill. It doesnt matter whether I've skill or not, he can simply nuke me into the ground. Apart from that I cant image someone with 500 cp doesnt know what he is doing. Man, everyone seems seems to think everybody else he fights against is an idiot.

2.1 was nothing but a reaction to insane high dmg peaks and endless resource caused by cp stacking. You say: " go grinding"? Even if I do so and reach 500 cp next year he'll already has 1000+. Apart from that I would have ZERO time left to play pvp. So for what should I go grinding then? Not everyone can effort to waste 20+h per week into video games. You say this game is not for me then? Might be true but actually ZOS says it is.

This cp system is a fully loaded heavy attack against any new or casual pvper. Its a deadlock. theres no way out. It's just a question of time it becomes completely unplayable for us. Ok, apart from running with a zerk having 20v1s what I personally find boring.

Yep.

Kill me because you're more skilled than me.

Kill me because you know more about game mechanics.

Kill me because your team works better as a group than mine.

I'm ok with all of those.


Kill me because of an OP statistical advantage from grinding/time spent in game? That's weak.


CP and Level caps with instanced, even numbered PVP games are the way to go IMO.

**And yes, it's safe with the zerg, but it's bloody boring.

mcurley

I too really wish they would alter battle leveling to allow for more theory crafting. Before I figured everything out I spent tons of gold on a few gear setups that I thought would be great which turned out to do absolutely nothing. That was a huge pain in the ass and I'm sure many people have done the same thing.

PvP is the most fun aspect of the game for me too. I only have 2 v4 characters which I play occasionally when BwB is not doing it for me (which is rare). I honestly wish I could just pay someone to grind them to v16 for me so I can start implementing my theory crafting ideas sometime before 2017.

With my play style I can kill 2 average players pretty easily and still have enough resources to at least escape or try put up a good fight for the dead's backup. More than 2 I don't even try unless I know them to be poor players because I'm pretty squishy. Your point about having a teammate is spot on. With just one solid teammate your kill potential goes through the roof... with a group of 4 really good and organized players you can fight off 3-4 times your numbers and still come out on top (probably the most fun I've had in this game).

It should be noted that my pvp experience is limited to BwB so I never run into the fully geared elite players who have a huge stat advantage over me. Usually when I die it's because of the zerg or because I got tunnel vision trying to finish someone off in a group that was too large for me to dive into.

Mauz

mcurley wrote: »

It should be noted that my pvp experience is limited to BwB so I never run into the fully geared elite players who have a huge stat advantage over me.

In your case the experience is simply like that: you suddently die and on your death screen you see two 5 digit dmg numbers plus some smaller stuff like light attacks.

Waffennacht

If you adjust your build,resource management becomes far better. I faced a templar and a NB at once last night, took something like 7 to 10 minutes. They never seemed to run out of resources and I know I didn't. Eventually I killed them both. Im vet 5 the temp was vet 2 and the NB was vet 3. So at most a 3 CP difference

mcurley

Mauz wrote: »

mcurley wrote: »

It should be noted that my pvp experience is limited to BwB so I never run into the fully geared elite players who have a huge stat advantage over me.

In your case the experience is simply like that: you suddently die and on your death screen you see two 5 digit dmg numbers plus some smaller stuff like light attacks.

Sounds painful. I'll stick to BwB until I can gear accordingly.

Omgwtfbbq321

This thread name is epic.

MrTarkanian48

So I'm not 100% on this, but basically gear doesnt matter until you level to VR16 now it appears. Go to cyro, check your character stats, then start unequpping things and recheck your stats. The only things that I can see helping you are maybe your racial bonuses, and reduced cost enchants.

Basically it sounds to me like PvP won't be fun until I hit V16, turn battle leveling off, and get the best gear. Someone correct me if this is wrong.

Cathexis

This thread seems more like crying about not being able to make infinite instagib meta than about combat.

Things are way better now, healing means something, resources mean something, there is way more back and forth. It's not about just who nukes first anymore. Skill is based on your ability to survive, not if you are a damage stacking nightblade with high regen or a shield stacking sorc with high regen or a block build dk or Templar.

Volrion

Cathexis wrote: »

This thread seems more like crying about not being able to make infinite instagib meta than about combat.

Things are way better now, healing means something, resources mean something, there is way more back and forth. It's not about just who nukes first anymore. Skill is based on your ability to survive, not if you are a damage stacking nightblade with high regen or a shield stacking sorc with high regen or a block build dk or Templar.

I think that may be the case for a v16 (I can't say for sure)... For battle levelled players it's just slowwwwwww and quite frankly way less fun that before.

Before the patch, you couldn't just nuke people with a battle levelled player to begin with, so there was no problem there.

FlounderOG

Theres nothing more fun than taking my level 10 tank into IC and watching a vet 16 stamblade smack on me for a while.

I can only imagine what it will be like at level 40+

Tankqull

Waffennacht wrote: »

If you adjust your build,resource management becomes far better. I faced a templar and a NB at once last night, took something like 7 to 10 minutes. They never seemed to run out of resources and I know I didn't. Eventually I killed them both. Im vet 5 the temp was vet 2 and the NB was vet 3. So at most a 3 CP difference

or 500+ if they had been alts... as creating a new toon to handle big patch changes is quite common...