After a break from pvp, first impressions back in

CP5

I generally avoided the 'upper end' of pvp, for a while I ran only non-vet, back when you couldn't even get a full raid together with all the members of the faction. I enjoyed the smaller pvp, and I found I never really enjoyed fighting some of the more optimized builds, they became way to boring, to repetitive, and in the end just frustrating to deal with. I have recently not been playing eso all that much and decided to go into one of the more populated campaigns to see how things were going, these points apply outside of pvp to a degree likely but I felt they fit here best.

I was playing on my tank, back in bwb forever ago I would be able to dive into the middle of a zerg, do bugger all damage, take forever to kill, and have a good laugh while doing it. The combat was slower paced and what you did felt like it mattered more. This pvp I just watched (which I did just sort of follow groups around) was not enjoyable from what I saw.

I know people are bringing up shuffle and i'll just get it out of the way now. The skill works fine in concept, but fails in practice.If it isn't the case feel free to correct me but it seems like the 20% proc chance isn't a 20% chance to avoid A hit, but instead a 20% chance to avoid SEVERAL hits. This makes the skill's defensive value scale fairly well with the number of enemies you're fighting, as each incoming attack can proc it and then you'll just dodge a few extra attacks as a side bonus. Either that or cp allow for far more dodge rolling than I would expect. I'm all for survivability by evasion, my first character is an archer, but this functionality makes the skill feel far more like a troll skill than anything else, i'll question its effectiveness and leave it at that.

Another thing I noticed, again from the perspective of a character built to tank, is that passive defense doesn't scale anywhere near as well as attack options. Just think about how much stronger your attacks get when you step between a cp and non-cp campaign, then think about your survivability. You survive by either having the magicka to dump into purges and heals/shields or by dodge rolling and using shuffle then a heal. All of these go hand and hand with your attack power, nothing else, and that just keeps stacking the game in favor of high damage builds. It just feels like that sort of style is what is expected of all end game builds, and anything a little outside of it, unless hiding behind such builds, is likely not going to get anywhere.

My ping was fine, my fps never dropped to any noticeable degree, so i'll count myself lucky there, but the longer I watched these fights the more I found myself not wanting to take part at all. It just seems the game keeps leaning more and more in favor of high damage, with anything missing such as sustainability or defense slowly getting added into it. I don't feel like fights have the depth they do in the lower level campaigns since fights are shorter and rather dull repetitions of the same attacks from the same kind of builds over and over again. I know many people will hate me for saying this, but I believe damage numbers with cp go far beyond what is good for the game on a whole, and as fun as it is to one-shot people I just think that longer fights with more meaningful choices in them (from your actions and reactions) are far more engaging than this, damage fest.

This is just my knee-jerk reaction to a, probably small period of time in pvp on one night so maybe it was just a bad one, but I felt like putting this here to get some opinions on, in case anyone was interested.

Frawr

I understand your sentiment. I think that it is this way by design though. If you look at what wrobel writes, for example re Heavy armour; they're deliberately making the game more dps - orientated so that everyone can feel strong in any gear. This is fine in pve because the mobs all fall over as soon as you approach them.

In pvp, however, the power - creep is real and defence is not keeping up with offence. This has created crazy burst.

They seem to prefer active defence to passive, but they also don't seem to like the heavy armour defence. I am not sure why.

The changes to heavy will help in 1 v 1, I think, but when is there ever 1 v 1 outside of duels?

It still feels heavily weighted towards shields anf roll compared to block.

I'm not sure what they are trying to achieve with offence vs defence.

Armitas

PvP in ESO is like call of duty now. ZOS doesn't want you to counterplay and survive, they want you to die so you don't generate lag.

Armitas

Frawr wrote: »

They seem to prefer active defence to passive, but they also don't seem to like the heavy armour defence. I am not sure why.

QFT. Light armor and medium armor actually have the best defense because Heavy Armor provides an actual 0 defense. This is due to all the penetration everyone has. A 2handed maul alone has 20% armor penetration, which would penetrate heavy armor and then some. Come DB stamina will have the strongest defense in the game through well fitted permadodge roll, dodge miss, Vigor, Snare/root immunity/removal, and Stamina shields. Unlike heavy armor all of that survival is parallel to offense, meaning increasing your offense increases your survival.

Perma roll is returning due to well fitted, meanwhile ZOS is putting all their concern over whether or not bracing + wrath would be OP. They have no overall vision of balance, they just fixate on certain things until it's lifeless and then they move on.

leepalmer95

Armitas wrote: »

Frawr wrote: »

They seem to prefer active defence to passive, but they also don't seem to like the heavy armour defence. I am not sure why.

QFT. Light armor and medium armor actually have the best defense because Heavy Armor provides an actual 0 defense. This is due to all the penetration everyone has. A 2handed maul alone has 20% armor penetration, which would penetrate heavy armor and then some. Come DB stamina will have the strongest defense in the game through well fitted permadodge roll, dodge miss, Vigor, Snare/root immunity/removal, and Stamina shields. Unlike heavy armor all of that survival is parallel to offense, meaning increasing your offense increases your survival.

Perma roll is returning due to well fitted, meanwhile ZOS is putting all their concern over whether or not bracing + wrath would be OP. They have no overall vision of balance, they just fixate on certain things until it's lifeless and then they move on.

Let people perma roll, even if they go 7 well fitted they'll run out eventually.

I'll happily 2 hit them when they have no impen.

Lokey0024

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

Frawr wrote: »

They seem to prefer active defence to passive, but they also don't seem to like the heavy armour defence. I am not sure why.

QFT. Light armor and medium armor actually have the best defense because Heavy Armor provides an actual 0 defense. This is due to all the penetration everyone has. A 2handed maul alone has 20% armor penetration, which would penetrate heavy armor and then some. Come DB stamina will have the strongest defense in the game through well fitted permadodge roll, dodge miss, Vigor, Snare/root immunity/removal, and Stamina shields. Unlike heavy armor all of that survival is parallel to offense, meaning increasing your offense increases your survival.

Perma roll is returning due to well fitted, meanwhile ZOS is putting all their concern over whether or not bracing + wrath would be OP. They have no overall vision of balance, they just fixate on certain things until it's lifeless and then they move on.

Let people perma roll, even if they go 7 well fitted they'll run out eventually.

I'll happily 2 hit them when they have no impen.

Ambush to fear incap strike. Cant dodgeroll while peeing pants

llSRRll

I agree I really dont like the way this game is going. DPS's get all the advantages and it makes it boring. I dont play a lot of Cyradill for this reason but do play quit a bit of IC for grinding levels and Monsters teeth. When I do play IC however I run when ever I see a rival faction bc I know my tank build is just going to get worked by some lame DPS build. Now that Ive found out my healing is so nerfed I may not even play that from now on out. Why did they do this why did they ruin this game?

Rune_Relic

Pretty much nail on head.
I hope the ZOS team actually stands back as a responsible mature game designer and consider balance from a holistic view.
Maybe they will have an eureka moment if they haven't already.
Perhaps they will just wander aimlessly and need persistent prodding in the right direction.


Alas until you actually stand back and look at the game from the outside ....you don't really see the issues.
In one breath they say this isn't COD and was never meant to be ....then go create COD/HALO.
/scratcheshead