Sacred Ground (Templar passive) - Dev Request

Solariken

Sacred Ground currently snares enemies in Templar circles by 30%. There are far too many snares on spammable abilities in this game, and I would like to request that this passive be changed to promote more fluid and fun combat and introduce a soft counter to snares/immobilizes. I would like to see the offensive snare removed and make Sacred Ground do this:

While standing in the area of Cleansing Ritual or Rune Focus, the effectiveness of snares and the duration of immobilizes is reduced by 50% for you and your allies.

Ergo if someone hits you with a 30% snare, it becomes 15%. If they hit you with a 2 second immobilize, it becomes 1 second.

This would introduce a healthy amount of counterplay to movement modifying abilities in Elder Snares Online. It would also make the passive more appropriate for the Restoring Light skill line. I think after that change it would make sense to add the 30% snare back into Ritual of Retribution to make that morph a little more attractive.

I also think Shuffle (medium armor skill) and Forward Momentum (2h) should be changed to this mechanic as well (instead of immunity, but both buffed in other ways to compensate) for very good balance reasons, but that is a separate discussion.

I am generally a proponent of soft counters in combat rather than hard counters, and soft counters to movement modifiers are generally absent from this game currently. I think that hard counters are overly deterministic and make gameplay much less interesting. Soft counters retain some of the offensive reward for using the ability but also allow room for meaningful defense.

What do you think? Yay or nay to reworking Sacred Ground (and Rit of Ret)?

Ashamray

Say "No!" to all these spamable or even passive snares. Too many of them.

maxjapank

No. Need to keep the snare so Reactive armor can proc non-stop on it. Because....it's fun. And snares are important so that raids can have dedicated Purgers. A dedicated Purger is an important part of the team. Of course the Purger will still be necessary for all of the other debuffs, but why make their job less exciting. Must make them feel like they are using every bit of their 5k Magicka regen.

Talyena

Cleansing ritual has purge effects that can completely remove negative effects already. I would say it needs something other than a snare, but I it needs something offensive that forces enemies to stay out. I'd rather see it apply something like defile (reduced healing) or maim (reduced damage) to the enemy in the circle. Defile would be great in PvP, but maim might be better for PvP and PvE.

Solariken

@Wrobel and @ZOS_BrianWheeler it would be awesome if you guys could chat about the suggestion in the OP since there is allegedly a balance update in the works.

leepalmer95

Not sure why they were given a snare in the first place.

Both rune and purify already do enough as skills not sure they it needed a 30% snare when the entire community is complaining about snares.

Just Zos failing or ignoring the community again.

maxjapank

I'm fine with the skill. It works fine.