Balance direction in Update 13

HoloYoitsu

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

PVP players REALLY need to be able to land 3 unblockable curses in 12 seconds this patch, especially with the ice staff changes and incoming Magicka Templar ice staff block/purge/heal tanks.

We know that burst is really important in PVP - having the 3 extra globals helps with that, but we'll re-evaluate the change.

@ZOS_RichLambert, the biggest problem with removing Velocious Curse is that dual wield magicka sorc builds rely on it to function. DW sorc damage options look like this:

• Crystal Frags
• Velocious Curse

That's it. The only other skills on their bar that even do any damage are Structured Entropy & Endless Fury. There are no other 'filler' skills outside of the destro line that can fill the lost dps from the Haunting Curse change. The single change of Curse timing from 3.5 to 6 seconds removes close to 1/4th of their sustainable damage, in effect forcing all magicka sorcs to use a destro staff period in PvP.

I distinctly remember ZOS statements in the past when players asked why dual wield provided more spell damage than a staff: the answer was that it gave more base spell damage in order to offer an alternative to destro staff dps builds for magicka - something in line with the "play the way you want" philosophy. So that's why I'm perplexed by what Haunting Curse is doing this update.

I'm glad that you are open to re-evaluating it. After hearing your reasoning behind the change, as many other have suggested, I think incorporating the Haunting Curse echo effect with the Daedric Prey morph (keeping Velocious Curse as is) is the fairest way to go.

Blackfyre20

Also kinda funny looking back at all the finger pointing PVEers did at PVPers about all the nerfs. Only for it to be confirmed that PVE is the reason we can't have nice things.

Gilliamtherogue

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

Tfw that older gamer who "shouldn't be playing games" is probably out DPSing 99% of the people bashing him. Keep fighting the good fight Rich.

Mojomonkeyman

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

Sorry Rich, I`m close to my 40s and I don`t feel any decline in my abilities that would be noticable on non high-end esports level and I`m pretty sure it will be same thing in 10 years. I mean you don`t make playing a guitar or piano artificially easier the older the user gets.

You pov is as narrow, and you know it. I don`t wan`t my or others age to be your argument, I feel it`s discriminating. Quite the opposite, I wish you would focus a bit more on bringing back the difficulty and skill rquirements of games back in the day.

Faulgor

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

[*] Raising the floor on the bottom damage

Thanks, Rich! That approach makes a lot of sense to me. Sadly, I haven't seen a lot of "raising the floor" so far in this first update. I'm specifically thinking about

- Stamina Templars
- Nightblades in group PvE content

Further, a huge chunk of our characters' performance relies on gear and item sets. I feel this has been wholly ignored in this update cycle, except for the change to proc sets. The problem is that this blanket nerf decreased strong and weak sets alike in their appeal.
So I'd ask you to take your approach of lowering the ceiling and raising the floor towards specific item sets, addressing overperforming sets like Viper, Widowmaker, Black Rose, etc as well as underperforming sets, which include nearly all crafted sets.

I'm hoping to see this tackled in the near future, and am looking forward to the next updates on PTS.

BigES

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert
Thanks for the post!

My buddies and I have had this and similar conversations quite often, especially in terms of where we are now as players compared to when we started. And so much of it is the lack of clear explanations in game, and just so much hidden information that we have to rely on guys like Nifty and Alcast for.

Dragonblood on PTS appears to have a base value, even at full magicka. Nowhere in the tooltip is that explained. The base crit hit damage isn't explained anywhere in the game. The fact that pets aren't impacted by CP isn't explained anywhere. Nowhere is the relationship between max magicka and shield strength on a sorc explained. I'm not even sure "empowered" is explained. It's kind of really hard to tell when you're just starting out what stuff actually does, and how things interact. I think you all could get stunningly far in reducing the gaps between players by trying to reduce the information gap between players. It's an immensely complex game, and it would be really hard to naturally explain all of that stuff, but I've had many a friend give up because they simply didn't understand what was going on and watching hours of @Alcast videos to be taught mechanics kind of rubbed them the wrong way (props to Alcast though haha).

Additionally, we know the game is incredibly hard to balance in regards to PvE vs PvP. Balancing one can generally screw the other. You could get pretty far though in terms of classes and skills by looking at some of the morphs and skills that just aren't used and tweaking those. No one uses daedric prey, so why not make that the PvE morph. No one uses crystal blast, make that a more PvE oriented morph. Luminous shard is seldom used, so why not adjust it upwards. Things like that. You can make everyone happy that way. would be a lot easier to balance on your end too if you knew what folks were going to use in specific circumstances. And finally, let us spend gold to remorph skills on an individual, as needed basis. If I want to take my PVP magicka sorc into PvE, I could go remorph my crushing shock and curse to fit PvE. Stuff like that.

Thanks again sir.

QFT.

So many things in this game are just lying behind the curtain. Information is what makes a good player in this game. All the top trials players know it. All the top PvP players know it.

If you want to close the skill gap, stop making game mechanics so cryptic.

There are probably a ton of intelligent people that play this game that would be 10x better at it and less frustrated if they just made clear tooltips and combat descriptions.

STEVIL

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

Sorry Rich, I`m close to my 40s and I don`t feel any decline in my abilities that would be noticable on non high-end esports level and I`m pretty sure it will be same thing in 10 years. I mean you don`t make playing a guitar or piano artificially easier the older the user gets.

You pov is as narrow, and you know it. I don`t wan`t my or others age to be your argument, I feel it`s discriminating. Quite the opposite, I wish you would focus a bit more on bringing back the difficulty and skill rquirements of games back in the day.

i wish i was still close to my 40s - from either side.

Betheny

Grunim wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

[

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

All the older gamers I've encountered who have difficulties playing for whatever reason realise they're not going to be playing at the high end of competitive gaming. They'll just play for fun. And taking away some of their choices by "simplifying" is removing some of their fun.

snip

Wasn't me who brought up older gamers you'll notice, it was Mr Rich there...it looks to me like @ZOS_RichLambert is using older gamers as a scapegoat for why he's simplifying the game.

What I said was gamers don't need things simplified, we're gamers because we love to game things.

Minalan

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

You're not that old yet mate, a more complex rotation is just a matter of practice. A LOT of it, just to get the muscle memory down. The "over 40" crowd in my guild do just fine, no reflex problems or slowness. They do say their fingers hurt a little after hours of PVP play, but it's totally worth it.

Besides, I plan on playing video games until they stick me in the ground dead. It's awesome that some of you older guys are still playing.

PS: If you think a 3.5 second curse is too short, how about a 6 second shield?

Betheny

Minalan wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

You're not that old yet mate, a more complex rotation is just a matter of practice. A LOT of it, just to get the muscle memory down. The "over 40" crowd in my guild do just fine, no reflex problems or slowness. They do say their fingers hurt a little after hours of PVP play, but it's totally worth it.

Besides, I plan on playing video games until they stick me in the ground dead. It's awesome that some of you older guys are still playing.

PS: If you think a 3.5 second curse is too short, how about a 6 second shield?

Hey that's a really good point - people who need help with their response time or whatever are going to find the six second shield a major problem.

@ZOS_RichLambert

caeliusstarbreaker

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

Then give luminous shards an actual cc that's worth a crud. Disorients are pointless, it just handing out CC immunity... To everything. Make luminous have a stun.

Afafrenferr

Nothing to say on the strife cost increase? I was really hoping to see something about that.

timidobserver

Blackfyre20 wrote: »

Also kinda funny looking back at all the finger pointing PVEers did at PVPers about all the nerfs. Only for it to be confirmed that PVE is the reason we can't have nice things.

He said they nerfed proc sets to "reduce overall burst potential". Burst doesn't matter in PvE, which means that the proc set nerf is 100% a PvP issue.

Dovahmiim

Lol, Rich I'm sorry but I think you'll find the vast majority of people will disagree with the "logic" behind most of these "balance" changes. Thanks for at least communicating with us though! I disagree with the curse change, I main a templar and it will be insanely easy to avoid sorc burst now. As for the change to shards, I want to remind you that the disorient on the other now "pvp" morph is basically handing out free CC, as this disorient has no conditions like fossilise or rune prison, so it's useless. So with the Blazing Spear stun gone, I'll pose to you a question:

• You are a Magplar fighting a stam character, who is snaring you and not allowing you to cast toppling (which in and of itself is very easy to avoid). Keeping in mind that Javelin is disproportionately expensive and easy to dodge, how are you meant to efficiently CC this stam opponent with class abilities?

Grunim

Betheny wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

You're not that old yet mate, a more complex rotation is just a matter of practice. A LOT of it, just to get the muscle memory down. The "over 40" crowd in my guild do just fine, no reflex problems or slowness. They do say their fingers hurt a little after hours of PVP play, but it's totally worth it.

Besides, I plan on playing video games until they stick me in the ground dead. It's awesome that some of you older guys are still playing.

PS: If you think a 3.5 second curse is too short, how about a 6 second shield?

Hey that's a really good point - people who need help with their response time or whatever are going to find the six second shield a major problem.

@ZOS_RichLambert

This was quite true in my case. Shortly after sorc shield duration was reduced to 6 seconds, I found the magicka sorc play style to be far too demanding and having to replenish an important skill every 6 seconds was just too often for my comfort. So I converted my magicka sorc over to stam sorc for this reason.

Preyfar

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

It is a narrow view, I agree, especially as an "older" game. I'm 36, but... according to some people I should be using a walker when I WASD+WM1 in FPS games. XD

But, given your statement, how do you feel this applies to things like animation cancelling? Trying to constantly keep up a high end rotation, cancelling attacks, getting timings right can be frustrating even for good players. For many it's to the point you need to practice enough where it becomes almost second nature, but at a certain point I feel like you're not playing the game so much as playing an internal dialogue in your head to land this rotation in order to hit 50K+ DPS which more and more people seem to want for a DPS.

Sigtric

Blackfyre20 wrote: »

Also kinda funny looking back at all the finger pointing PVEers did at PVPers about all the nerfs. Only for it to be confirmed that PVE is the reason we can't have nice things.

There was like 3 of us going HEY GUYS MAYBE DPS IN PVE IS TOO HIGH, but they, pver's pointing fingers,didn't listen. lololol

Yolokin_Swagonborn

@ZOS_RichLambert


The proposed change to Velicious curse seems to only benefit those players who are engaging in endgame structured PvE, i.e players fighting bosses with rotations in fights that last upwards of two minutes. At the same time, the proposed change greatly reduces the effectiveness and utility of the curse skill in shorter fights against trash mobs, overland enemies, and enemy players in PvP.

In the thread created by @Alpheu5, the DPS gain for his highly situational and theoretical rotation was only 771DPS gain for a 24 second parse. In a longer 2+ minute fight, this (again theoretically) would result in an increase of 3k+ DPS at the cost of greatly reducing the utility and effectiveness of the skill for pretty much every other application.

I know that your team tries very hard to balance abilities across a variety of playstyles (as you said coordinated vs. uncoordinated, small and large scale PVE & PVP), so please consider how changing this particular morph of Curse will effect the other ways sorcerers use curse in the game.

• New players. When you first unlock curse, a 6 second wait to use the ability seems like a lifetime. The shortened time morph becomes the obvious choice as overland and quest fights are much shorter and its much more satisfying to have the ability do damage sooner.
• Questing, roaming, exploring overworld PvE. Again, overland fights are shorter, I may want to switch targets and focus a different threat. Waiting 12 seconds before I can use the skill again is very clunky.
• PvP - Offense: Many others in this thread have explained this already. 12 seconds is a lifetime in PvP and the skill will get purged, mitigated or otherwise ignored. This change greatly reduces a sorcerers ability to pressure a very tanky or very elusive target. This change means Sorcerer loses a very valuable tool and one of the few effective sorcerer class-based DPS skills in PvP. Sorcerers are already tied to the desto-staff. This would make it worse.
• PvP Utility - Outside of a lucky streak, Sorcerers in PvP lack a good counter to cloak spamming enemies. Curse is a great counter to stealth at the moment but at 6 seconds, a stealthed enemy will be halfway across the map before curse reveals them. This currently functions as good counterplay to stealth and should stay that way.
• Killing that pesky skeever I accidentally aggro'd on my way to a crafting station: Why would I ever use an ability that took 6 seconds to be effective when the fight will be over much sooner than that? The proposed changes make this skill clunky and impractical for anything but long boss fights.

Solution:
There is an easy solution to this issue that will fulfill ALL of your stated goals and keep Velocious curse as an effective skill for ALL types of playstyles:

Add the second "haunting" effect to the "Daedric Prey" Morph and leave Velocious Curse the way it is. The other morph is rarely used so this will give people more reason to use it and at least offer people a choice.

Please consider this option as it is a win-win for everyone. It fulfills your goals without making the skill less effective for the people that enjoy it exactly the way it is.

FriedEggSandwich

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert


The proposed change to Velicious curse seems to only benefit those players who are engaging in endgame structured PvE, i.e players fighting bosses with rotations in fights that last upwards of two minutes. At the same time, the proposed change greatly reduces the effectiveness and utility of the curse skill in shorter fights against trash mobs, overland enemies, and enemy players in PvP.

In the thread created by @Alpheu5, the DPS gain for his highly situational and theoretical rotation was only 771DPS gain for a 24 second parse. In a longer 2+ minute fight, this (again theoretically) would result in an increase of 3k+ DPS at the cost of greatly reducing the utility and effectiveness of the skill for pretty much every other application.

I know that your team tries very hard to balance abilities across a variety of playstyles (as you said coordinated vs. uncoordinated, small and large scale PVE & PVP), so please consider how changing this particular morph of Curse will effect the other ways sorcerers use curse in the game.

• New players. When you first unlock curse, a 6 second wait to use the ability seems like a lifetime. The shortened time morph becomes the obvious choice as overland and quest fights are much shorter and its much more satisfying to have the ability do damage sooner.
• Questing, roaming, exploring overworld PvE. Again, overland fights are shorter, I may want to switch targets and focus a different threat. Waiting 12 seconds before I can use the skill again is very clunky.
• PvP - Offense: Many others in this thread have explained this already. 12 seconds is a lifetime in PvP and the skill will get purged, mitigated or otherwise ignored. This change greatly reduces a sorcerers ability to pressure a very tanky or very elusive target. This change means Sorcerer loses a very valuable tool and one of the few effective sorcerer class-based DPS skills in PvP. Sorcerers are already tied to the desto-staff. This would make it worse.
• PvP Utility - Outside of a lucky streak, Sorcerers in PvP lack a good counter to cloak spamming enemies. Curse is a great counter to stealth at the moment but at 6 seconds, a stealthed enemy will be halfway across the map before curse reveals them. This currently functions as good counterplay to stealth and should stay that way.
• Killing that pesky skeever I accidentally aggro'd on my way to a crafting station: Why would I ever use an ability that took 6 seconds to be effective when the fight will be over much sooner than that? The proposed changes make this skill clunky and impractical for anything but long boss fights.

Solution:
There is an easy solution to this issue that will fulfill ALL of your stated goals and keep Velocious curse as an effective skill for ALL types of playstyles:

Add the second "haunting" effect to the "Daedric Prey" Morph and leave Velocious Curse the way it is. The other morph is rarely used so this will give people more reason to use it and at least offer people a choice.

Please consider this option as it is a win-win for everyone. It fulfills your goals without making the skill less effective for the people that enjoy it exactly the way it is.

Well said man, I appreciate your effort.

reesenorman

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

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

And what happens if it doesnt make PTS3? You just going to release it to live without any testing or feedback?

Strider_Roshin

Thank you Rich for taking the time to do this for us, the community.

reesenorman

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

He didnt even mention age so I don't know why thats relevant.

Anhedonie

Just remember that simple doesn't always means interesting and engaging.

bebynnag

Hold up hold up!

Let me as an older gamer (35) translate this for you whipper snappers

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

Older players are suffering with repetative strain injury in our hands from years of gaming!
winter being here is agravating our condition!

I literally feel your pain @ZOS_RichLambert

NightbladeMechanics

Sounds like you're making these decisions based entirely on PvE.

Please at least consider reverting the Curse change to maintain PvP magicka sorc mechanics. You're kind of butchering them, and that's important to some of us.

Shards was also PvP magplar's main cc. You toss that out first because it's harder to avoid Toppling Charge.

lucky_Sage

kyle.wilson wrote: »

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.

Wish I'd known that before I changed my khajiit stam sorc to redguard. That is different from what I had always heard about impen.

but when you get around 3200 inpen a crit may to like 200 more dmg so it really isn't a big. but when get hit by 5k vel 3.3k viper 8k incap 8k surprise attack and attack weave with 1 sec your died its not the crit that killing players.

Digiman

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

[*] 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 get the same effect by removing it from bar for a better ability which I will now because I won't use it. Not to mention this drastically causes it to become incredibly easy to purge in PvP, but I think we all know you just wanted to screw up class you hate.

There is no simplifying ideal here, just hate towards a class that constantly gets broken and forced into builds that are no longer fun to play.

I see no point in playing a sorcerer if that is your ideal of simplifying @ZOS_RichLambert

SHAME SHAME SHAME

TheHsN

vI just write here,

NOTHING they are going to change that looking to our feedbacks...
All will remains same as bad as they made in first patch ...

CUZ they are ZOS...

never listen people even Rich started to his write with theres been alots of GOOD feedbacks for balancing...I almost read all forum since 4 days and 95% of people are not happy about the changes about balance...

for me... i do not care about housing at all... even though i have arround 10m golds...this is not SIMS it is ESO

SO ı dont have any hope that they are going to fix things back...

Thank you...

Kolache

I figured the curse change was intended as a burst damage nerf... if it's for simplifying/freeing up globals I'm sorta confused--didn't greatly reducing shield durations kinda do the opposite? I guess I'm sort of sympathetic, (even though eso forum sorcs whine more than any internet clique I've ever seen), because changing math is one thing but altering gameplay is more frustrating, IMO.

That aside, I'm a big fan of normalization in MMOs--doubly so for an ES MMO. You can't make everyone happy, but if you can't make new players happy you might as well start the count-down. Even with these efforts I am a little concerning about how strung out the population will be across the power curve in the future.

Animation canceling, (especially + lag), is much less clean/intuitive than some sort of intended combo system should be, (but thank you for working on it). The CP system, even with a catchup mechanic, is proving to be pretty rough for newer players and pugs, (2 hour queue, kicked). The wonderful horizontal gear progression with all these new sets is probably my favorite thing in an MMO in a long time, but it also adds complexity in building your character, (a double edged sword)... don't get me wrong, I'm not saying get rid of this, but...

Combine all of these things and a lot of new players are going to be clueless as to why they are being kicked from dungeons or utterly wrecked in PvP for longer than they would in most seemingly casual-friendly MMOs I've played. I guess any system would have it's pros and cons, and I think the 'raise the floor/lower the ceiling/simplify' approach is the right prescription here.. I'm just super curious to see how you progress with that philosophy after removing soft caps and adding the current CP system

I'm definitely giving you the benefit of the doubt after delivering 1T.

GreenSoup2HoT

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.

I think you have misunderstood why players keep bringing up Impenetrable. The reason players bring it up because if you have 7 traits of impenetrable you can mitigate about 50% critical damage. Depending on class or cp allocations you may or may not have any more critical damage then not criting against your opponents which means if procs crit or not they are doing the same damage.

The issue with proc sets is not that they can crit or not, its the fact you can still stack them and basically one shot players regardless of how your character is built/spec'd. I could have 100% of my attributes in health and kill players because ive stacked proc sets crit or not.

What needs to be done is a complete overhaul on some of the tooltips of these high damage sets instead of removing crit from them. Sure crit's do make the damage of proc's bigger but if the base damage wasn't so absurd we wouldn't have to remove crit's. Removing crit from all healing and damaging sets hurts the underpowered sets such as Ashen Grip or many other crafted sets. It also hurts the people who specifically build for critical chance or damage and penalizes them for using a proc set that cannot.

There are only a few sets overperforming. Infernal Guardian, Grotharr, Skoria, Tremorscale, Seleane, Velidrith, Viper, Red Mountain and Widowmaker. Each of these deal way to much damage. The biggest problem being that you can utilize 3 of them if you wanted without even compromising your build on magicka or stamina because of how much value these sets provide.

The crit change is nice Rich but now you have created more work for yourself now that basically all the crafted sets are useless because of it. The problem still exists that stacking proc sets grant to much free none-crit burst damage on builds that should not have it (ex:heavy tank builds with tremorscale).

Crit doesn't matter against shields which a lot of players have in pvp. You still see them dieing instantly to people stacking proc sets.

Last point, why does Seleane or Velidrith have a 12k tooltip? Seriously how is that even fair?



How to fix proc sets if i were to do it myself:

-Viper: only proc's on heavy attacks. deals only 4k tooltip damage.
-Widowmaker: only deals 4k tooltip damage
-Red Mountain: only deals 3.5k tooltip damage
-Tremorscale: Snare lasts 4 seconds, 8 second cool-down. Deals only 3k tooltip damage (this set is for the snare)
-Seleane: Only deals 6k tooltip damage, 7 second cool-down
-Velidrith: Only deals 5k tooltip damage (lower then seleane due to aoe potenail)
-Grotharr: Only deals 1k tooltip damage (its stealth prevention utility for pvp is all this thing needs)
-Skoria: Only deals 4.5k tooltip initial damage (hit scan damage so.. brought down the damage)
-Infernal Guardian: Only deals 3.5k damage (due to frequency of proc.)


With these changes you could avoid removing crit from proc sets. This would also fix heavy armor users stacking proc sets and getting high damage out of them. With these new values, you would need good critical chance or increased critical damage to obtain the same damage they deal now without critical hits. That means heavy armor users could not be granted high proc set damage due to terrible critical chance potenail.

In pvp due to Impenetrable, to have good proc based damage you would need full light/medium armor but also a lot of cp allocation into critical damage and even your mundus stone (shadow/thief) to make procs more effective.

PvE dps should be complimented by sets... sets should not be as good as abilities, reducing proc set damage will hurt pve but you can go in and reduce boss health if you need to. Note with my changes, the damage you get from proc sets will be almost equal to them without crit if you have good enough critical damage/chance. This is where war horn and critical modifiers would makes up for lost damage when you do not crit.

Hopefully this all makes sense. I personally think removing crit from proc sets just creates more problems then solving them due to there being a lot of proc sets out there that are not an issue. Only thing that needs to be done is modifying some specific sets damage.



In short: You can't just remove crit from proc sets when there are only a few sets that are unbalanced. Blanket nerfs don't solve anything.

This exact same thing happend to many other aspects of the game and im getting sick of it. The worst change to date that always grinds my gears is no sprint stamina regeneration. This just doesn't make any sense. If you did not like players sprinting so much just increase the cost. Why should medium armor users be penalized for using high stamina regeneration and then have it cut off for trying to utilize sprint which they specialize in. This change just makes it advantageous to never sprint ever and now combat in pvp feels terrible. Nobody wants to sprint. Especially me as a high regen based character even more so.

Sorry for the little rant about no sprint regen.



Thanks for reaching out Rich. I can't wait to see PTS2+3 in the next couple weeks. One step at a time!