@Wrobel Thank you for the write up. We might disagree (me from an armchair designer's perspective), but I certainly appreciate your hard work and communication!
Regarding shields, I like the idea of having major/minor type wards to prevent shield stacking the best. However, if the design team is set on balancing via duration, I have two main concerns:
1) PvE. I believe this change was made primarily to balance PvP, but it also affects PvE, from casual questing to vMA. Would you consider making the 2/3rd reduction to shield duration a Cyrodiil thing (along with half damage, extra hp, etc.?) This also a quality of life issue, since having constantly refresh shields (or any buff) is not fun. Also hurts use of pets, particularly in dungeons.
2) Sorc uniqueness. I understand trying to get the player to choose offense/defense in order to tone down sorcs, but the buff to annulment/bone shield baffles me. Every other class has unique survival tools (dks - battle roar/wings/tankiness, temps - heals/cleanses, nb - HoTs/stealth/fear, stam classes - evasion/dodge) but they suddenly all gained what used to be unique to sorcs, while one of the sorc's defining skills is made completely redundant, and gained nothing in return.
In fact, the other classes will gain far more from the new shields, in combination with reflects, (reliable) heals, evasion, etc.
Bonus petition!
If you're looking into improving PvE, I hope you look into replacing Bound Armor. We need the bonuses from Bound Armor to be close to competitive, however, it's no fun having toggles in the bar instead of active skills. Ideally you can roll the bonuses into a passive of sorts, and give us something fun in place of Bound Armor.
jyates214b14_ESO wrote: »@Wrobel Thank you for the write up. We might disagree (me from an armchair designer's perspective), but I certainly appreciate your hard work and communication!
Regarding shields, I like the idea of having major/minor type wards to prevent shield stacking the best. However, if the design team is set on balancing via duration, I have two main concerns:
1) PvE. I believe this change was made primarily to balance PvP, but it also affects PvE, from casual questing to vMA. Would you consider making the 2/3rd reduction to shield duration a Cyrodiil thing (along with half damage, extra hp, etc.?) This also a quality of life issue, since having constantly refresh shields (or any buff) is not fun. Also hurts use of pets, particularly in dungeons.
2) Sorc uniqueness. I understand trying to get the player to choose offense/defense in order to tone down sorcs, but the buff to annulment/bone shield baffles me. Every other class has unique survival tools (dks - battle roar/wings/tankiness, temps - heals/cleanses, nb - HoTs/stealth/fear, stam classes - evasion/dodge) but they suddenly all gained what used to be unique to sorcs, while one of the sorc's defining skills is made completely redundant, and gained nothing in return.
In fact, the other classes will gain far more from the new shields, in combination with reflects, (reliable) heals, evasion, etc.
Bonus petition!
If you're looking into improving PvE, I hope you look into replacing Bound Armor. We need the bonuses from Bound Armor to be close to competitive, however, it's no fun having toggles in the bar instead of active skills. Ideally you can roll the bonuses into a passive of sorts, and give us something fun in place of Bound Armor.
This this and more this. I feel like every Sorc is distracted by the 6 second duration.
THIS right here is the serious problem
jyates214b14_ESO wrote: »@Wrobel Thank you for the write up. We might disagree (me from an armchair designer's perspective), but I certainly appreciate your hard work and communication!
Regarding shields, I like the idea of having major/minor type wards to prevent shield stacking the best. However, if the design team is set on balancing via duration, I have two main concerns:
1) PvE. I believe this change was made primarily to balance PvP, but it also affects PvE, from casual questing to vMA. Would you consider making the 2/3rd reduction to shield duration a Cyrodiil thing (along with half damage, extra hp, etc.?) This also a quality of life issue, since having constantly refresh shields (or any buff) is not fun. Also hurts use of pets, particularly in dungeons.
2) Sorc uniqueness. I understand trying to get the player to choose offense/defense in order to tone down sorcs, but the buff to annulment/bone shield baffles me. Every other class has unique survival tools (dks - battle roar/wings/tankiness, temps - heals/cleanses, nb - HoTs/stealth/fear, stam classes - evasion/dodge) but they suddenly all gained what used to be unique to sorcs, while one of the sorc's defining skills is made completely redundant, and gained nothing in return.
In fact, the other classes will gain far more from the new shields, in combination with reflects, (reliable) heals, evasion, etc.
Bonus petition!
If you're looking into improving PvE, I hope you look into replacing Bound Armor. We need the bonuses from Bound Armor to be close to competitive, however, it's no fun having toggles in the bar instead of active skills. Ideally you can roll the bonuses into a passive of sorts, and give us something fun in place of Bound Armor.
This this and more this. I feel like every Sorc is distracted by the 6 second duration.
THIS right here is the serious problem
You heal from your mines, and I'd say streak is pretty unique. Yes, temps have heals, but blessing of resto is pretty close to BoL for your own heal, and our "cleanses" are down to 2 now, making purge the better option because of the magicka recovery.
jyates214b14_ESO wrote: »@Wrobel Thank you for the write up. We might disagree (me from an armchair designer's perspective), but I certainly appreciate your hard work and communication!
Regarding shields, I like the idea of having major/minor type wards to prevent shield stacking the best. However, if the design team is set on balancing via duration, I have two main concerns:
1) PvE. I believe this change was made primarily to balance PvP, but it also affects PvE, from casual questing to vMA. Would you consider making the 2/3rd reduction to shield duration a Cyrodiil thing (along with half damage, extra hp, etc.?) This also a quality of life issue, since having constantly refresh shields (or any buff) is not fun. Also hurts use of pets, particularly in dungeons.
2) Sorc uniqueness. I understand trying to get the player to choose offense/defense in order to tone down sorcs, but the buff to annulment/bone shield baffles me. Every other class has unique survival tools (dks - battle roar/wings/tankiness, temps - heals/cleanses, nb - HoTs/stealth/fear, stam classes - evasion/dodge) but they suddenly all gained what used to be unique to sorcs, while one of the sorc's defining skills is made completely redundant, and gained nothing in return.
In fact, the other classes will gain far more from the new shields, in combination with reflects, (reliable) heals, evasion, etc.
Bonus petition!
If you're looking into improving PvE, I hope you look into replacing Bound Armor. We need the bonuses from Bound Armor to be close to competitive, however, it's no fun having toggles in the bar instead of active skills. Ideally you can roll the bonuses into a passive of sorts, and give us something fun in place of Bound Armor.
This this and more this. I feel like every Sorc is distracted by the 6 second duration.
THIS right here is the serious problem
You heal from your mines, and I'd say streak is pretty unique. Yes, temps have heals, but blessing of resto is pretty close to BoL for your own heal, and our "cleanses" are down to 2 now, making purge the better option because of the magicka recovery.
"Heal from mines," ie the 8% (sorry, in pvp 4%) max health heal that has an internal cool down. And with all of the gap closers everywhere streak sometimes is bad to use.
Sallington wrote: »
Don't tell anyone, but I bought 5/5 well-fitted shield breaker set for <12k the day they dropped patch notes. I'm about to double the world's salt supply.
Why is most of this discussion centered around PvE combat?
Also is Clouding Swarm getting fixed? This is players' main concern with vampirism right now. Well, that and the very small number of skills in the vampirism line.
WTB magicka morph of Dragon Leap.
Who said that?Strider_Roshin wrote: »Why is most of this discussion centered around PvE combat?
Also is Clouding Swarm getting fixed? This is players' main concern with vampirism right now. Well, that and the very small number of skills in the vampirism line.
WTB magicka morph of Dragon Leap.
Because most ESO players are into PvE, not PvP.
Sugaroverdose wrote: »Who said that?Strider_Roshin wrote: »Why is most of this discussion centered around PvE combat?
Also is Clouding Swarm getting fixed? This is players' main concern with vampirism right now. Well, that and the very small number of skills in the vampirism line.
WTB magicka morph of Dragon Leap.
Because most ESO players are into PvE, not PvP.
Strider_Roshin wrote: »Sugaroverdose wrote: »Who said that?Strider_Roshin wrote: »Why is most of this discussion centered around PvE combat?
Also is Clouding Swarm getting fixed? This is players' main concern with vampirism right now. Well, that and the very small number of skills in the vampirism line.
WTB magicka morph of Dragon Leap.
Because most ESO players are into PvE, not PvP.
No one needs to say it, it's obvious.
Sugaroverdose wrote: »Who said that?Strider_Roshin wrote: »Why is most of this discussion centered around PvE combat?
Also is Clouding Swarm getting fixed? This is players' main concern with vampirism right now. Well, that and the very small number of skills in the vampirism line.
WTB magicka morph of Dragon Leap.
Because most ESO players are into PvE, not PvP.
jyates214b14_ESO wrote: »@Wrobel Thank you for the write up. We might disagree (me from an armchair designer's perspective), but I certainly appreciate your hard work and communication!
Regarding shields, I like the idea of having major/minor type wards to prevent shield stacking the best. However, if the design team is set on balancing via duration, I have two main concerns:
1) PvE. I believe this change was made primarily to balance PvP, but it also affects PvE, from casual questing to vMA. Would you consider making the 2/3rd reduction to shield duration a Cyrodiil thing (along with half damage, extra hp, etc.?) This also a quality of life issue, since having constantly refresh shields (or any buff) is not fun. Also hurts use of pets, particularly in dungeons.
2) Sorc uniqueness. I understand trying to get the player to choose offense/defense in order to tone down sorcs, but the buff to annulment/bone shield baffles me. Every other class has unique survival tools (dks - battle roar/wings/tankiness, temps - heals/cleanses, nb - HoTs/stealth/fear, stam classes - evasion/dodge) but they suddenly all gained what used to be unique to sorcs, while one of the sorc's defining skills is made completely redundant, and gained nothing in return.
In fact, the other classes will gain far more from the new shields, in combination with reflects, (reliable) heals, evasion, etc.
Bonus petition!
If you're looking into improving PvE, I hope you look into replacing Bound Armor. We need the bonuses from Bound Armor to be close to competitive, however, it's no fun having toggles in the bar instead of active skills. Ideally you can roll the bonuses into a passive of sorts, and give us something fun in place of Bound Armor.
This this and more this. I feel like every Sorc is distracted by the 6 second duration.
THIS right here is the serious problem
You heal from your mines, and I'd say streak is pretty unique. Yes, temps have heals, but blessing of resto is pretty close to BoL for your own heal, and our "cleanses" are down to 2 now, making purge the better option because of the magicka recovery.
jyates214b14_ESO wrote: »jyates214b14_ESO wrote: »@Wrobel Thank you for the write up. We might disagree (me from an armchair designer's perspective), but I certainly appreciate your hard work and communication!
Regarding shields, I like the idea of having major/minor type wards to prevent shield stacking the best. However, if the design team is set on balancing via duration, I have two main concerns:
1) PvE. I believe this change was made primarily to balance PvP, but it also affects PvE, from casual questing to vMA. Would you consider making the 2/3rd reduction to shield duration a Cyrodiil thing (along with half damage, extra hp, etc.?) This also a quality of life issue, since having constantly refresh shields (or any buff) is not fun. Also hurts use of pets, particularly in dungeons.
2) Sorc uniqueness. I understand trying to get the player to choose offense/defense in order to tone down sorcs, but the buff to annulment/bone shield baffles me. Every other class has unique survival tools (dks - battle roar/wings/tankiness, temps - heals/cleanses, nb - HoTs/stealth/fear, stam classes - evasion/dodge) but they suddenly all gained what used to be unique to sorcs, while one of the sorc's defining skills is made completely redundant, and gained nothing in return.
In fact, the other classes will gain far more from the new shields, in combination with reflects, (reliable) heals, evasion, etc.
Bonus petition!
If you're looking into improving PvE, I hope you look into replacing Bound Armor. We need the bonuses from Bound Armor to be close to competitive, however, it's no fun having toggles in the bar instead of active skills. Ideally you can roll the bonuses into a passive of sorts, and give us something fun in place of Bound Armor.
This this and more this. I feel like every Sorc is distracted by the 6 second duration.
THIS right here is the serious problem
You heal from your mines, and I'd say streak is pretty unique. Yes, temps have heals, but blessing of resto is pretty close to BoL for your own heal, and our "cleanses" are down to 2 now, making purge the better option because of the magicka recovery.
Being forced into a resto staff isn't ideal, and BoL is sooo much better. Annulment is in the light armor tree so it can be freely placed on any bar. Imagine having a BoL added to the mages guild skill like, or wings/stealthing added to the undaunted skill line.
Streak is nice, but it's a waste of a hard cc (1.5 seconds...) And does minimal damage. And it can't be used to escape anymore so it's been losing its luster, not to mention using it lets the other players spam gap closers at us. Certainly not something that helps define our class like our Ward had.
Make dark exchange/dark deal a reliable heal / class defining ability, because right now I don't know anyone who slots it after you nerfed it from scaling off resources.
Constitution needs in my opinion still a further buff:
Comparing Resource sustain between HA and LA,MA:
The Constitution passive gives a flat recovery, whereas LA/MA give mainly a percentual cost reduction and a smaller flat recovery.
In order to make a comparison, this wall of Math is therefore aimed at calculating for what amount of ability costs there is a break even between HA and LA,MA.
For abilities higher than that break even, the percentual cost reduction of LA and MA will always favor LA and MA above HA.
Bear also in mind that the ability costs have been increased in PTS.
Important note:
The HA Constitution passive gives both Magicka as Stamina restoration.
IF you use only Magicka or only Stamina abilities, the hybrid recovery purpose of Constitution will NEVER be really valuable for you !
The first assumption to be made is how to handle the hybrid resource regain of Constitution (Mag + Stam) so that we get a "like for like" with the mono Resource sustain of LA or MA.
The easiest way to do that is by conforming to the already by ZOS used method for hybrid features.
Those are Food (tri-stat, two-stat and one-stat), Drinks (same) and for example the bonus for Spell & Weapon Damage used in the Black Rose set.
If we normalise the values of Food and Drinks, and put the one-stat value at 100,
you get for Food:
one-stat: 100/---/---
two-stat: 80/80/---
tri-stat: 67/67/67
The same ratios are used for Drinks.
So the total stat increase effect for Food is for tri-stat 200, compared to 160 of the two-stat and 100 of the one-stat.
Hybrid and tanky-Tank builds use tri-stat. Focussed/stacking DPS/HPS builds use two-stat.
And apparently ZOS and everybody of the playerbase is comfortable with this method of giving BOTH dimishing returns PER stat for the more Hybrid Food, but also giving a higher overall total.
The same happens more or less with the hybrid Black Rose set if we compare that for example with the Kagrenac's hope set.
Black Rose has a 5 piece bonus for a damage effect of 154 more Spell AND Weapon Power, besides a second effect of increasing Constitution.
Kagrenac's hope has a 5 piece bonus for a Damage effect of 224 more Spell Power, besides a second effect of the 25% rezz time and the Magicka regain when an ally is rezzed.
If you divide the 154 by the 224 you get 68%.
So if you normalise that, you either get the one-stat bonus of 100 or two times 68 for Mag and Stam. (there is no Health Power)
So....
Ignoring Health and Health recovery aspects of Food and Drinks, because Constitution is about Magicka and Stamina only, 2x67 should be converted in 1x100
ZOS has done the same with the Black Rose set. They applied 2x68 in Black Rose instead of 1x100 in Kagenac.
Applying this to convert the two-stat Constitution bonus to a one stat, I think it is justified to say that we must take 67-68 as base to convert Constitution to a one stat recovery.
So if Constitution gives 186 per piece per 4 seconds of Stamina AND Magicka.
Then the converted value is (100/67*186) = 279 Magicka OR Stamina per piece per 4 seconds.
That is: Converted to one-stat Constitution this gives during combat per piece of HA Armor 70 Magicka per second OR 70 Stamina per second.
If you take for example one piece of LA, you get 4% Magicka Recovery, during combat and out of combat and you get 3% Cost reduction.
When your base Magicka Recovery would be around 700, the 4% per piece deliver 28 Magicka Recovery. When you have 71 CP in Arcanist for 20% more recovery, you get 34 Magicka Recovery per piece of LA, which is 17 Magicka per second.
Assuming for the sake of simplicity that you cast 1 ability per second:
If the 3% Cost reduction from one piece of LA gives (70 -17) = 53 Magicka Cost reduction, you have a break even between Constitution and LA passives.
1 divided by 3% = 33.3. So we have this break even, when abilities used have an average cost of 1766.
Assuming that you have put 100 CP, the rest of your 171 CP, in Magician for 16% Cost reduction:
The break even takes place at (1766/84%) = 2102.
Concluding:
LA or MA are better in Resource sustain than HA, if the average base value costs of your abilities per second casted are higher than 2102 !
In my opinion that break even point has to be shifted up from 2102 to 2700 minimal.
That means that the to one-stat converted Constitution must deliver 86 Magicka or Stamina per second.
Or that the unconverted two-stat Constitution must deliver 57.6 Magicka AND Stamina per second.
This is 230 per piece instead of the PTS value of 186 per piece, or a 24% increase of the PTS value.
But my suggestion to increase the PTS Constitution value is ofc a personal opinion and open for debate, where the break even ability costs used in practice are pivotal.
Here below the PTS base costs of some abilities, which are BTW increased compared to live !
Puncturing Sweeps: 2952
Reflective Light: 2700
BOL: 4590
Grand Healing: 3510
Regeneration: 2160
Force Shock:2700
Uppercut: 3240
Strife: 1367
Assassins Blade morphs: 1890 Magicka or 1511 Stamina
Veiled Strike morphs: 2700 Magicka or 2160 Stamina
Sap Essence: 3240
Burning Embers: 1350 Magicka
Lava Whip: 2700
Dragon Blood/Inhale/Earthen Heart: >4000
CrystalFragments: 4050 (2025)
Liquid Lightning: 3510
Conjured Ward: 3510
EDIT:
although this post is aimed at analysing the comparable viability of the three Armor types.
You can also boil it down to a very practical conclusion that if you love to walk around in HA, you just have to make a build that is using on average cheap enough abilities in the basic rotations, whereby the PTS buff of Constitution gives you already more Resource sustain and allows for a wider choice of sets.
jyates214b14_ESO wrote: »Streak is nice, but it's a waste of a hard cc (1.5 seconds...) And does minimal damage. And it can't be used to escape anymore so it's been losing its luster, not to mention using it lets the other players spam gap closers at us.
Anyone else feel stam builds are really strong? The DPS is unbelievable in comparison to magic damage. Maybe I'm just weak but base magic damage around 2600 vs weapon damage around 5k just seems imbalanced. I can run around in 5 heavy and be one shot killed? I'm just saying it seems like every DLC this game shifts dramatically to one or the other. Also, when I compare sets it seems like there are always more stamina sets than magic sets. What's up with that? I guess when there are more stamina sets introduced that means the meta is changing to favor stamina builds? I'm just frustrated with the balance as I see it on pts. Of course there are really no X v X fights its all 1 v 1 and I hate solo play in that regards.
RoamingRiverElk wrote: »Questions:
1. Did you fix DK chains so that they too work like the other charges? Did you remove the height restrictions and the fact that chains don't take you to the player if the player dodges the charge? ("For player abilities, reliability is our top priority. We have continued to improve the reliability and responsiveness of charge abilities (specifically Focused Charge, Critical Charge, Shield Charge) over the past few updates.")
It won't hurt, ppl just be scrubs and like to complain. If your in an instance where a shield is actually required ie. solely PvP, vMA, lamia team then you're taking consistent damage and refreshing your shield frequently anyhow. This is a non-issue.Like dont get me wrong, I am a hardcore PvPer, I only PvE when I need something (undaunted, a drop, some XP, a skillpoint from an undone vet dungeon quest, etc). I may not be a paragon of knowledge of all things Dungeon, but what I do know, is the few times a month I run dungeons, I barely ever have to cast my shields except v bosses and only if healer sucks. Otherwise its just DPS spam and dont stand in stupid (usually overload/curse/procfrag/entropy shenanigans). I really dont see how a six second shield is honestly going to hurt PvE at all. All dem dere pro 30k DPS sorcs just throw hardened ward on their overload bar, hit it in between overloads, no real DPS loss.