Balance direction in Update 13

anitajoneb17_ESO

Koolio wrote: »

So we just worked for years to get stronger only to have you lower our damage because a new player wouldn't be as strong. Great. I wonder how long I can go on knowing that if I put in the time to get stronger you'll just nerf me because someone just bought the game. Very discouraged to continue.

The thing is, you're meant to play together with that guy who just bought the game. Maybe not now, but sooner or later and most certainly sooner than you think. Some of the people you play with NOW will leave the game, because life and reasons and all, and then you'll rely on that guy who just bought the game. That's possible if the gap is 1:2 or 1:3, but it's impossible if the gap is 1:10 as it is now. If you end up alone with your 45K+ DPS and everyone else is doing 15-20K you'll leave the game too. If you're "limited" to 30K and everyone else does 20-25K you can still have fun playing together. Simple as that.

Rich mentioned on several occasions how much he hates downgrading / downscaling or any kind of limiting for that matter. I'm sure he respects skills and competition. But the whole thing must remain fun, and people need to be able to play together. That huge gap needed to be narrowed down badly, and that's what they intend to do. I wish they'd bring back soft caps for that purpose, but let's see how this goes for now.

Koolio

gothickaiserub17_ESO wrote: »

Koolio wrote: »

So we just worked for years to get stronger only to have you lower our damage because a new player wouldn't be as strong. Great. I wonder how long I can go on knowing that if I put in the time to get stronger you'll just nerf me because someone just bought the game. Very discouraged to continue.

I hope these adjustments (nerfs) are not making you anywhere near new players, simply a little less overpowering.If years of experience has been washed away by changing how the game is played there may be a different problem (the gap in gear has never meant as much as the gap in play skill), since it does not take years to actually acquire the items / skill points / CP, but only a few months.

They are underpowered. They do not have the Cp/Skill we worked on for a few YEARS. Now that they are closer why did we dedicate the time?

However they are adding more build diversity (less gap between casual builds to meta builds, doesn't expand the builds that play at the top but does add to those that are within an acceptable percentage to the top).
By nerfing Overwhelming Surge? Buff under performing Sets not nerf what people spent time/gold to acquire.

Additionally while no one who can play at the top level will appreciate it, if there is a large gap between the best who can achieve perfect (animation cancel, attack weaving, multi-dot/buff) rotation
There should be considering YEARS of play.

and those who can not it causes a content problem. With such a large gap you cause bored top tier players

We are bored because they add 4 EXP Events with no actual content. No Cyrodiil Changes. One new Raid and 2 Dungeons.

or create content that almost noone will see (and such hard to budget good development for it). Since they said they wish to still leave skill a factor (as they should) they wish to have it provide less of an extreme benefit so they can produce more balanced content (with tighter balanced content high skill pushing only a smaller % above will still achieve noticeable results).

Hopefully This turns out ok. Normally post from my phone not on my laptop

Nifty2g

Neoauspex wrote: »

Could some of the PTS testers comment on whether the crit changes to proc sets have accomplished these goals?

I did vmol last night, damage is almost exactly the same (if you factor in ult changes it will be about 5% raid dps nerf, almost nothing)
Undaunted sets are still nice, they do a very controlled damage now, still high up there. Though I don't think I am ever going to agree with taking critical chance away from pve. It just doesn't fit

Vanzen

Quite Flabbergasted that you dont even mention and explain the reason for changing CDB that no DK understand or like.

LiquidPony

Lieblingsjunge wrote: »

It will not help. The crits on the monster set was never an issue. A 5k or a 3k Selene's doesn't matter. Monster set + Poisons + incap + heavy attack + viper proc is what matters, everything together. Monster sets not critting won't help counter the 20k instant damage, because in addition to the other attacks, it won't make a difference between a 3k or a 5k monster set proc. 18k or 20k, does it matter? Nope. The only thing the PTS change does, is ruin PvE-crit builds. It won't address the issue.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your point, you left out the Viper proc crit. Take away Monster crit and Viper crit and you're dropping, what, 6-7k damage out of that burst?

That seems like a pretty significant change.

Have you tested on PTS?

STEVIL

@ZOS_RichLambert

thank you.

Solariken

I may not always agree with you Rich, but you're a good egg. We all appreciate you interacting with us and providing insight.

I think lowering the damage ceiling is fantastic though, very excited about this goal. I still think you haven't quite taken care of the most egregious procs on the battlefield, but it's better than nothing.

bikerangelo

Thanks Rich, the added communication is exactly what we need.

These changes, however, aren't. I understand the need to decrease the gap between newer players and seasoned veterans, but the problem there doesn't lie within class mechanics and ability stats, it's in the Champion Point system. Your end game progression is seriously broken and needs to dramatically change if you want newer players to be competitive WHILE STILL maintaining some semblance of value when it comes to player skill and experience.

Ashtaris

@ZOS_RichLambert I understand the problem with power creep but you already adjusted and increased the dungeon difficulty with the last update making many of the dungeon undoable by many pug groups. If you don't believe me, just look at all the rage threads about lower CP people getting kicked from dungeon runs. Now this is only going to get worse if you really are trying to "Lower the ceiling on the top damage", and nothing I have seen in update 13 has "Raised the floor on the bottom damage".

redspecter23

Will there be any balance changes to the majoirty of proc sets that were in no way overpowered but are still receiving an overall nerf to their output? Perhaps some changes to the base numbers to make up for losing crit chance on these sets that were never a problem and are in many cases underperforming even with crit chance? These sets were designed and balanced with crit chance in mind and are having that taken away with nothing else added to compensate.

ArtOfShred

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Like I said in my original post... we have more coming. Hopefully they make PTS3.

Oh good stuff, I misunderstood PTS3 as meaning something later in the year.

Zakor

@ZOS_RichLambert
First: Thanks for the heads up provided here.

Second: I have one simple and easy question:

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

We have a lot more balance changes planned, but due to how our build cycle works, most of them won't make the next PTS build - they should hopefully make PTS3 though.

If you say "a lot more", do we understand the same? Could you clarify about how many changes we are talking? Like 10? 20? 100? What is a lot?

Thanks in advance.

maxjapank

Appreciate the insight. And hope that these goals can be achieved. Good players will still be better than newer ones. But the gap from gear and over the top burst must be discouraging to newer players in pvp. I just had a family member start the game, and I was actually surprised at the difference between someone with 160 cp and 561 cp. The amount of resources is considerable.

LiquidPony

Major Force: This buff category’s Critical Damage bonus is now an additive bonus instead of a multiplicative one (consistent with all other Critical Damage bonuses), but its value has been reduced to a 15% Critical Damage bonus to compensate from 30%. Total Critical Damage bonus from this buff remains unchanged.

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno can you please clarify the Major Force change? I don't understand the last sentence. This is a huge nerf to Major Force yet you say that the bonus remains unchanged. That does not compute.

Here's hoping that something in subsequent PTS builds addresses the raid imbalance. I'd really like to see stamina builds find a place in Trials, particularly stamblades and stamplars, neither of which were buffed or adjusted at all, both of which are hit harder by the Major/Minor Force nerfs than other builds.

Erondil

@ZOS_RichLambert great to see you are looking at players feedback, but about he procc sets more needs to be done.
With only the blanket change made on the first PTS version the balance between each set hasnt changed, and if it effectively reduced enough the burst of procc stack (viper+undaunted is the most common) then it also made 90% of procc sets out there undesirable whatsoever. Else... well the issue with the OP combos on live is not solved. I think blanket changes have always hurt the game badly, for example the "solution" to oneshots in 1.6 or to shields in TG, they may be necessary in some occasions but should always come with a rebalance of each skill/set individually.

ku5h

Sigtric wrote: »

ku5h wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Update 13 has been out on the PTS for almost a week now and there’s been a lot of good feedback and questions posted with regards to the balance changes. I wanted to take a few moments to briefly discuss the overall direction for these changes so you can hopefully start to see why these changes are occurring.

For Update 13, our overall goal was to lessen the gap between the top and bottom. (in terms of overall damage output, coordinated vs. uncoordinated, small and large scale PVE & PVP) This doesn’t mean all classes are perfectly equal in all ways or that we want to remove skill from the game. We want to establish a solid baseline so that we can better tune and tweak balance. For this update we attacked this problem from multiple angles by doing the following:

1. Lowering the ceiling on the top damage
2. Raising the floor on the bottom damage
3. Simplifying some of the more intense rotations to make them a bit easier for players of all skill levels

Some of you will probably ask how the above goals translate into the changes we made. Here are some notes on a couple of the more hotly debated ones so you can see how they fit into the bigger picture:

• Proc Sets – This change falls directly into the “lower the ceiling” category for both PVP and PVE. We wanted to reduce the overall burst potential without dramatically lowering sustain. There have been a lot of comments on this change, specifically from the PVP side where sets not critting will not help because of the Impenetrable trait - Impen does not reduce the chance of being crit - it reduces the damage of the crit that hits you.
• Stun Removal on Blazing Spear – This change falls into the “simplify” category. We increased the duration of the damage on this ability to simplify the rotation. In addition we removed the stun component. Now the morph choices are more damage or more resources and disorient. (CC)
• Radiant Destruction – This one is definitely in the “lower the ceiling” category. It was strong in both PVE and PVP and needed adjustment.
• Haunting Curse – This one falls into the “simplify” category. The goal was to free up globals for more abilities to be cast with this change. (i.e. – every 10.5 seconds you get to use 3 more abilities) @Alpheu5 has a pretty great image that illustrates this change in this thread.

I didn't touch on every change or class, but I hope that sheds some light into how and why we've made some of the changes we've made. We have a lot more balance changes planned, but due to how our build cycle works, most of them won't make the next PTS build - they should hopefully make PTS3 though.

It should also be noted that what is on PTS now is our first pass at these changes. We’re evaluating all of them and will make adjustments based on both feedback and data collected, so please continue to test them on PTS and give feedback.

-rich

So you wanted to simplify Curse by breaking it in PvP. Good job man, you deserve standing ovation. My God, when the game is balance by halfwits that dont even play the game.

Halfwits are folks that haven't a clue about the truth regarding the claims they make.

I edited my post few min after i posted it, realising i was a bit to agressive with it. So, you call me halfwit, right?! Implying that i have no clue of what im talking. So pls explain to me what is it that i said was wrong. If you think that it will still be as good in PvP then you have no idea what your talking about. Multiple ppl tested it whom i belive to be objective and all told me the same....its garbage, but i could have predict that without the testing because i play sorc a lot and i know what impact aditional 2.5 can have. Next time trow in an argument, ifyou even have any!

Nifty2g

LiquidPony wrote: »

Major Force: This buff category’s Critical Damage bonus is now an additive bonus instead of a multiplicative one (consistent with all other Critical Damage bonuses), but its value has been reduced to a 15% Critical Damage bonus to compensate from 30%. Total Critical Damage bonus from this buff remains unchanged.

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno can you please clarify the Major Force change? I don't understand the last sentence. This is a huge nerf to Major Force yet you say that the bonus remains unchanged. That does not compute.

Here's hoping that something in subsequent PTS builds addresses the raid imbalance. I'd really like to see stamina builds find a place in Trials, particularly stamblades and stamplars, neither of which were buffed or adjusted at all, both of which are hit harder by the Major/Minor Force nerfs than other builds.

Compensation only if you have base critical damage modifier

Kilandros

Thanks @ZOS_RichLambert but bro, please give us an idea as to where you guys see the mDK and its playstyle heading.

ManDraKE

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

[*] Proc Sets – This change falls directly into the “lower the ceiling” category for both PVP and PVE. We wanted to reduce the overall burst potential without dramatically lowering sustain. There have been a lot of comments on this change, specifically from the PVP side where sets not critting will not help because of the Impenetrable trait - Impen does not reduce the chance of being crit - it reduces the damage of the crit that hits you.

Common Richard, you really think that experienced PvPers dosn't know what the impen trait does? ....

Even withouth the crit, stacking proc sets (specially to add burst to heavy armor builds) is way OP. Adding that burst damage to heavy armor removes the need of using medium armor for high burst damage on PvP, and since Heavy is superior to medium in terms of sustain/resistences/maxhp/healing, it pretty much kills medium armor.
Also, we need a individual balance past in some sets, for example termoscale. The 70% perma-snared is absurd, the coldown is lower than the overal duration of it (8 seconds duration, 4 seconds cooldown). Reduce the duration to 2seconds and the overall strenght of the snare to 40-50% please.

Also i'm VERY worried about the lack of news in the API update to block the Miat's PvP Alerts Addon. Is plain cheating, i know that you can't enforce bans and such because is something that is allowed by the API, but this thing needs to go ASAP.

p.d: don't forget about stamplars

Grunim

ArtOfShred wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Like I said in my original post... we have more coming. Hopefully they make PTS3.

Oh good stuff, I misunderstood PTS3 as meaning something later in the year.

And from Rich's wording I wonder if additional balance changes will bypass PTS altogether and be part of Update 13 when it goes live.

Sigtric

1

ku5h wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

ku5h wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Update 13 has been out on the PTS for almost a week now and there’s been a lot of good feedback and questions posted with regards to the balance changes. I wanted to take a few moments to briefly discuss the overall direction for these changes so you can hopefully start to see why these changes are occurring.

For Update 13, our overall goal was to lessen the gap between the top and bottom. (in terms of overall damage output, coordinated vs. uncoordinated, small and large scale PVE & PVP) This doesn’t mean all classes are perfectly equal in all ways or that we want to remove skill from the game. We want to establish a solid baseline so that we can better tune and tweak balance. For this update we attacked this problem from multiple angles by doing the following:

1. Lowering the ceiling on the top damage
2. Raising the floor on the bottom damage
3. Simplifying some of the more intense rotations to make them a bit easier for players of all skill levels

Some of you will probably ask how the above goals translate into the changes we made. Here are some notes on a couple of the more hotly debated ones so you can see how they fit into the bigger picture:

• Proc Sets – This change falls directly into the “lower the ceiling” category for both PVP and PVE. We wanted to reduce the overall burst potential without dramatically lowering sustain. There have been a lot of comments on this change, specifically from the PVP side where sets not critting will not help because of the Impenetrable trait - Impen does not reduce the chance of being crit - it reduces the damage of the crit that hits you.
• Stun Removal on Blazing Spear – This change falls into the “simplify” category. We increased the duration of the damage on this ability to simplify the rotation. In addition we removed the stun component. Now the morph choices are more damage or more resources and disorient. (CC)
• Radiant Destruction – This one is definitely in the “lower the ceiling” category. It was strong in both PVE and PVP and needed adjustment.
• Haunting Curse – This one falls into the “simplify” category. The goal was to free up globals for more abilities to be cast with this change. (i.e. – every 10.5 seconds you get to use 3 more abilities) @Alpheu5 has a pretty great image that illustrates this change in this thread.

I didn't touch on every change or class, but I hope that sheds some light into how and why we've made some of the changes we've made. We have a lot more balance changes planned, but due to how our build cycle works, most of them won't make the next PTS build - they should hopefully make PTS3 though.

It should also be noted that what is on PTS now is our first pass at these changes. We’re evaluating all of them and will make adjustments based on both feedback and data collected, so please continue to test them on PTS and give feedback.

-rich

So you wanted to simplify Curse by breaking it in PvP. Good job man, you deserve standing ovation. My God, when the game is balance by halfwits that dont even play the game.

Halfwits are folks that haven't a clue about the truth regarding the claims they make.

I edited my post few min after i posted it, realising i was a bit to agressive with it. So, you call me halfwit, right?! Implying that i have no clue of what im talking. So pls explain to me what is it that i said was wrong. If you think that it will still be as good in PvP then you have no idea what your talking about. Multiple ppl tested it whom i belive to be objective and all told me the same....its garbage, but i could have predict that without the testing because i play sorc a lot and i know what impact aditional 2.5 can have. Next time trow in an argument, ifyou even have any!

I have no interest in the Curse issue one way or another, it was the "don't even play the game" crap that is so prevalent on these forums. It doesn't take a whole lot of looking around to see that who you called a halfwit does indeed play, and if you watched, you'd know he was pretty damn good at it.

Panth141

@Nifty2g

How was magicka sustain with the new magickasteal and no Ele Drain/Siphon stacking?

Nifty2g

Panth141 wrote: »

@Nifty2g

How was magicka sustain with the new magickasteal and no Ele Drain/Siphon stacking?

Completely fine, healers just need to set up differently.
That said I'm still sad 3 skills are the same (aura, ele drain and siphon)

ScooberSteve

No what everyone is saying why remove crit on proc sets when crit damage is low due to impen?

rhapsodious

Thank you for posting your rationale behind the decisions. I'll be waiting for the further PTS builds.

Sigtric

ScooberSteve wrote: »

No what everyone is saying why remove crit on proc sets when crit damage is low due to impen?

Inpen has nothing to do with addressing top end DPS in PVE. Read the post. They are intending in lowering the top end of DPS for PVE AND PVP.

timidobserver

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

[*] Stun Removal on Blazing Spear – This change falls into the “simplify” category. We increased the duration of the damage on this ability to simplify the rotation. In addition we removed the stun component. Now the morph choices are more damage or more resources and disorient. (CC)

@ZOS_RichLambert
Thanks for the explanations of this one. I disagree with some of the other changes, but this is the only one that actually bothers me.

I think that you should consider multiple factors in the future before nerfing something. You are correct that simplifying this ability by having one damage morph and one utility morph makes sense in a vacuum. However, you also need to consider that Templar are already light on stuns/cc in general, so removing one for the sake of simplicity might not be a good idea.

My suggestion, make the CC on Luminous shards a double CC like Encase, Fossilize, or Bombard and/or make the Disorient AoE.

austinwalter87ub17_ESO

The nerf to Blazing Spear for Templar by removing the stun is unnecessary. Templars are severely lacking in strong AOE crowd control. It is not wise to remove that stun for both PVP and PVE. Then you follow up and remove another CC to the Eclipse morph Unstable Core.

The nerf to radiant oppression is tolerable.

The changes to Backlash and it's morphs is tolerable.

Eclipse is something which I think should just be rethought of entirely. Almost nobody runs it.

Total Dark should be reworked into a much better skill. It is lackluster compared to DK'S reflect. I would propose changing Total Dark entirely. The damage from it is awful, the heal is awful, and only being able to apply it to one enemy is horrid.

You wanna remove stun from our spear? At least give us something new for Total Dark as a better crowd control and damage skill. I think some kind of Targetable AOE Silence with a short duration and a moderate chunk of damage.

"Total dark consumes the light of a target dealing 7000 damage (cut in half in pvp), silencing the target and surrounding enemies within 5 meters for 2-3 seconds."

Cost 3500 Magicka.

LiquidPony

Nifty2g wrote: »

Compensation only if you have base critical damage modifier

@Nifty2g can you clarify what you mean by that?

I was specifically noting NBs and Templars since they have class critical damage passives.

Koolio

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Koolio wrote: »

So we just worked for years to get stronger only to have you lower our damage because a new player wouldn't be as strong. Great. I wonder how long I can go on knowing that if I put in the time to get stronger you'll just nerf me because someone just bought the game. Very discouraged to continue.

The thing is, you're meant to play together with that guy who just bought the game. Maybe not now, but sooner or later and most certainly sooner than you think. Some of the people you play with NOW will leave the game, because life and reasons and all, and then you'll rely on that guy who just bought the game. That's possible if the gap is 1:2 or 1:3, but it's impossible if the gap is 1:10 as it is now. If you end up alone with your 45K+ DPS and everyone else is doing 15-20K you'll leave the game too. If you're "limited" to 30K and everyone else does 20-25K you can still have fun playing together. Simple as that.

Rich mentioned on several occasions how much he hates downgrading / downscaling or any kind of limiting for that matter. I'm sure he respects skills and competition. But the whole thing must remain fun, and people need to be able to play together. That huge gap needed to be narrowed down badly, and that's what they intend to do. I wish they'd bring back soft caps for that purpose, but let's see how this goes for now.

They are leaving now because of terrible performance and stupid changes that hurt what they worked on for a long time.I would actually feel like i put the most effort if i did 20k Dps more then them. Hell i would teach and train if i had nobody else on. Plus i see no reason to do a dungeon if all the sets are nerfed after i farm for days to get them. Again and again. They don't want to leave but with things like the strife nerf he feels betrayed. He waited patiently for "balance" only to get spit on. Plus 30k Dps means nothing in PvP. Thats where we have our fun. If Im "limited" because they suck then maybe my loyalty should be elsewhere. Ive waited 10 years for an Elder Scrolls MMo and ive loved every minute. I just don't want them changing it for someone whos going to turn the game in next week.