Update 31 Combat Preview

Ackwalan

All that work trying to balance combat in PvP won't mean anything until, the delay is fixed. Breakfree and 4 seconds later your character may breakfree, or any other skill that should happen takes several seconds to register. That is what is killing PvP comabt.

Alucardo

I really don't know why you just don't re-introduce soft caps.

FluffyDoom

Really appreciate the communication about work on combat updates/improvements/fixes.

A few other Cyrodiil combat questions, I hope you can address:

1. May we have an update on the "stuck in combat" bug please? For the last several years, players are stuck "in combat" long after actual combat ends - having to walk or sprint from a keep to an outpost due to being stuck in combat long after combat ended (5 - 10 minutes after combat ends at times) and therefore unable to mount for example. I recall that when @ZOS_Gilliam first joined the Zenimax combat team it was stated that one of the first tasks was to log each encounter that caused a player to be in combat in order to find a solution to the sustained "stuck in combat" bug.

2. Long ago, players were able to add siege to the "quick slot" even while in combat, at some point (perhaps when the stuck in combat bug began?), this ability was removed.....meaning if you didn't have correct siege slotted prior to entering combat, then you were stuck without it until out of combat. Is this intended and if not, can this be reviewed for a fix?

3. Long duration debuffs - those 49710 days of burning, poisoned, mortal coil and more. Are you aware and working on these? They are not just UI bugs, they actually negatively impact players and require cleansing by going into a delve.

Thank you !

ZOS_Kevin

Hey @VaranisArano. Do you have the ticket number for the bug placed? If so, let me know and I can take a look later today.

Tommy_The_Gun

jaws343 wrote: »

Unless I am reading this wrong, it sounds like casting cloak will no longer shut down incoming projectiles. But it will also be more difficult to pull people out of stealth. Seems like a fair trade off if true.

Currently, it does not "cancel" all incoming projectiles. If a projectile was launched at you (example bow LA or a skill) before you entered cloak, it hits you and it breaks invisibility, since it deals dmg to you. Only projectiles that were fired at you after you casted cloak were shut down ("miss").

Right now, cloak & invisibility is being canceld by "taking dmg".

From what I understood, it looks like cloak wont be interrupted, but you will still take damage. So, imho it is a huge nerf & terrible trade-off, unless self-healing abilities wont be interrupting cloak & stealth.

Currently, on live server, if you are invisible or in stealth, if you cast Vigor for example - it will break invisibility. And it makes sense, since cloak can potentially suppress a lot of incoming dmg. But if cloak wont suppress any dmg at all, then it should also not be interrupted by self-heals. Kinda makes sense. We shall see soon on PTS I guess.

Besides:
" the only things that will break Stealth or Invisibility are direct damage, Crowd Controls such as stuns or immobilizes, or revealing effects such as Expert Hunter or Revealing Flare"
^ Nothing is mentioned about casting any ability like a buff or self-heal, so it should not interrupt cloak.

lucky_Sage

Wonder what nerf did will get that will be said like it’s a buff

CaffeinatedMayhem

Finally an admission that no, we can't fix Fetcher Swarm to prevent stealth and honestly, now that there's a Miat's replacement addon, I haven't landed a swarm cast this patch.

Are you doing anything about cloak's ability to be pulled mid combat then cancelled to effectively allow 0 damage, if the player has enough "skill"? Or is that just NB gameplay now? All the power, none of the damage as long as you can twitch fast enough (or macro).

SimonThesis

FluffyDoom wrote: »

Really appreciate the communication about work on combat updates/improvements/fixes.

A few other Cyrodiil combat questions, I hope you can address:

1. May we have an update on the "stuck in combat" bug please? For the last several years, players are stuck "in combat" long after actual combat ends - having to walk or sprint from a keep to an outpost due to being stuck in combat long after combat ended (5 - 10 minutes after combat ends at times) and therefore unable to mount for example. I recall that when @ZOS_Gilliam first joined the Zenimax combat team it was stated that one of the first tasks was to log each encounter that caused a player to be in combat in order to find a solution to the sustained "stuck in combat" bug.

2. Long ago, players were able to add siege to the "quick slot" even while in combat, at some point (perhaps when the stuck in combat bug began?), this ability was removed.....meaning if you didn't have correct siege slotted prior to entering combat, then you were stuck without it until out of combat. Is this intended and if not, can this be reviewed for a fix?

3. Long duration debuffs - those 49710 days of burning, poisoned, mortal coil and more. Are you aware and working on these? They are not just UI bugs, they actually negatively impact players and require cleansing by going into a delve.

Thank you !

I was definitely hoping for an update on these bugs too! Everyone in Cyrodiil is experiencing these problems especially 1 and 3. Often times Im stuck in combat at the gate and cant log out or use the wayshrine to leave.

Any updates if these are getting looked into? @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

VaranisArano

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey @VaranisArano. Do you have the ticket number for the bug placed? If so, let me know and I can take a look later today.

I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't have it written down with my notes! If you'd like, I can make another report. And thank you!

My data from April is below the spoiler:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/566457/plentiful-harvest-passive-does-not-equal-50-tested/p2

First off, I do have Plentiful Harvest slotted and maxed out.


Method: I should have a 50% chance? I'm harvesting wood, ore, cloth, water, and flower/mushroom nodes. I should be getting 50% of those nodes doubled. Just so we're clear, a doubled wood/ore/cloth node gives 6-8 mats. A doubled water node give 4-6 mats. A doubled alchemy reagent give 2 mats. I did not track housing mats because those can give 1-4 mats, and so its impossible to tell when they doubled.

If Plentiful Harvest is working correctly, my results should approach 50% in a large sample size.

They do not.



Result: 40% Doubled / 60% Single

More data:

Half of my data (1,060 node) was done in three batches, more or less three Craglorn loops plus a short run in Bal Foyen. Here’s the breakdown.


So there was some speculation that given our limited data pool, that if the Plentiful Harvest was truly proccing 50% of the time, that players who weren’t reporting must be getting above 50% some of the time.

My observation based on my tally marking was that this would not happen with any real length of farming run, since the disparity between the doubled and undoubled nodes only becomes more apparent with time.

So what about small batches? Most players don’t farm for an hour, like I do. Most players pick up mats over a short period. So what happens with players who only pick up 10 nodes at a time?

I’m glad you asked. I tracked 1000 nodes in batches of 10, noting down how many were doubled/single.
Here I’m displaying results in terms of how many times I got a certain result in that batch of 10. Markings such as 2D/8S should be read as “2 Doubled, 8 Single”.


Result: while its possible to double over 50% of a small batch, its much more likely to get less than 50% doubled. Specifically, I got less than 5 nodes doubled 70% of the time.

There's a big caveat to that data set: all those small batches don’t really capture what happens when we correctly aggregate the data from those small batches into one whole. Then, we really see the disparity.

Result: 39% doubled/ 61% single

Final Question. What happens if you pull together all the data that everyone on the forums has posted about their drop rates on this and the other thread?

Result: 35% nodes doubled I'm not sure why that result is so much lower than mine, but its certainly trending in the wrong direction for Plentiful Harvest to be working correctly. (Also, sorry that I didn't catch that Microsoft Word spellchecker on your names, folks!)

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk about why my Plentiful harvest isn't giving the stated results. Please fix this!

Tyvarra

All I want are better servers...

Pepegrillos

Just make sure you do something about the pair of weapon damage/spell damage and effective healing. If you only increase the amount of damage reduction in battle spirit but leave healing as it is, there are a few out there that just won't die.

Fennwitty

No more active slotted stars please.

In Red they're pure fluff. There are clear winners and loser slotted stars, adding more won't add options simply change what's meta.

In Green the insane number of active stars are hugely frustrating.

Soulshine

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

"as well as Frost Staff’s ability to give the touch of cold death"

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!

Guess its a good thing I never deconned my master's perfected ice staff from vdsa?

ZOS_Kevin

No worries, @VaranisArano. We'll use the two threads you noted to check. This may take a bit of time, but we'll check on the status.

VaranisArano

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

No worries, @VaranisArano. We'll use the two threads you noted to check. This may take a bit of time, but we'll check on the status.

Thank you and the team so much! It means a lot to hear that this is being looked at.

Luke_Flamesword

Likely the biggest adjustment to an existing set is to Pelinal’s Aptitude, which will be changed to Pelinal’s Wrath, which now focuses on the blood lust this hero of lore succumbed to in their legacy left in Tamriel!

I'm afraid... It will be still set for making hybrid build or you will just destroy that?

Xandreia_

I mean, making cloak work would be nice and all but what about the huge crutch that is harmony? No synergy should be able to hit harder than an ultimate, Or the broken skill delay in pvp when 10 or more people are within render distance? I would rather have a working pvp zone that has been over looked for quite some time! Adding a lancer is not enough, infact it has made gameplay worse! Being pelted by 6 Lancers in prime time lag isnt great!

Smaxx

While I've seen a few people drop almost instantly in PvP during Midyear Mayhem, I don't think time to kill overall is an issue. For me the biggest issue are solo (or sometimes) duo players somehow unkillable "tanking" 10, 20 or even more attackers (simply ignoring Meatbag catapults and the like with more than 50% mitigation). And here I'm not talking about people just running around some border tower or similar, some seem to be able to do it in the open field, while still dealing out enough damage to kill people.

Maybe I'm totally missing something (and I'm really just bad at PvP, not going to hide that), but that always feels very fishy to me balance wise.

Integral1900

Please don’t change Pelinal’s Aptitude any more than absolutely necessary, all my favourite characters are hybrids, if you take this set away from them you will pretty much shut down the only way I like playing this game anymore!

On my knees I beg you! It’s already hard enough with some classes needing half a bar of critical and damage boost skills to play a hybrid, please don’t make it any harder! There are players who want to do something else other than these tedious magic or stamina dedicated things, I haven’t seen a meta build I’ve enjoy playing in three years!

Ralamil

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

As many player builds lean towards dealing damage in PvP environments, this creates a situation where TTK lowers. While we’ve identified specifics, such as base stat adjustments, we wanted to stay focused on where the problem was felt, which was exclusively related to PvP. Our main adjustment in Update 31 will be to Battle Spirit and focusing on the damage taken portion, increasing it so the base character takes 60% less overall damage, rather than 50%.

So, you and the rest of the team have truly learned nothing, even after all this time.

The reason a lot of people are squishy in PvP is not because some global buff value is too low. It's that they don't know how to play properly, aren't playing with friends, aren't terribly great, have wildly unrealistic expectations about how they should be performing solo/small man versus large groups, and because ZOS has a hard on for proc sets that can add crazy burst with no skill required.

All this will do is reduce their squishy-ness slightly, which I would bet good money won't actually make one bit of difference because it's going to boost the survivability of the groups that are farming them as well.

essi2

So... did I read that right? No more FG bonus dmg to Lycans and Undead in PvE!?!

Xandreia_

Smaxx wrote: »

While I've seen a few people drop almost instantly in PvP during Midyear Mayhem, I don't think time to kill overall is an issue. For me the biggest issue are solo (or sometimes) duo players somehow unkillable "tanking" 10, 20 or even more attackers (simply ignoring Meatbag catapults and the like with more than 50% mitigation). And here I'm not talking about people just running around some border tower or similar, some seem to be able to do it in the open field, while still dealing out enough damage to kill people.

Maybe I'm totally missing something (and I'm really just bad at PvP, not going to hide that), but that always feels very fishy to me balance wise.

It isnt about tanking 10 plus people as a solo player, we are using movement and kiting around things to mitigate damage, solo/duo players arent an issue, its actually harder to solo/duo because nerfs hit us hard.

FluffyDoom

essi2 wrote: »

So... did I read that right? No more FG bonus dmg to Lycans and Undead in PvE!?!

Wouldn't it be so awesome and solve a lot of issues between PvE and PvP balancing if "battle spirit" could be used to isolate such changes to either PvE or PvP as applicable instead of adjusting one mode at the expense of another?

One would assume there are technical issues that prevent such a use of battle spirit? Or maybe not? They can disable pets, mementos, some emotes via battle spirit so why not make changes intended for PvP to be handled by battle spirit?

I play both PvE and PvP and at times the impact can be pretty harsh and demotivating depending on which mode of gameplay was unnecessarily nerfed to solve a balance issue.

jaws343

FluffyDoom wrote: »

essi2 wrote: »

So... did I read that right? No more FG bonus dmg to Lycans and Undead in PvE!?!

Wouldn't it be so awesome and solve a lot of issues between PvE and PvP balancing if "battle spirit" could be used to isolate such changes to either PvE or PvP as applicable instead of adjusting one mode at the expense of another?

One would assume there are technical issues that prevent such a use of battle spirit? Or maybe not? They can disable pets, mementos, some emotes via battle spirit so why not make changes intended for PvP to be handled by battle spirit?

I play both PvE and PvP and at times the impact can be pretty harsh and demotivating depending on which mode of gameplay was unnecessarily nerfed to solve a balance issue.

Actually, in this case, they literally only removed the effect from PVE, while leaving it in for PVP. So this was an intentional nerf to PVE that had nothing to do with PVP.

silvereyes

• Came here fearing some awful changes that make everyone sad.
• Surprised they are killing Pelinals. It has a loyal niche following. There are way worse sets.
• Cautiously excited about frost mage hype.
• Leaving feeling relieved, overall. That wasn't so bad.

YandereGirlfriend

KurtAngle2 wrote: »

Do not touch Pelinal's Aptitude
Thanks

I am optimistic that Pelinal's will return in the form of a Mythic item.

Ideally one that scales your Critical Chance and Penetration as well.

YandereGirlfriend

SillyGT wrote: »

Still waiting on a harmony nerf. At most should buff synergies by 5% per piece.

LMAO.

This is not a serious proposal whatsoever.

Girl_Number8

Dalsinthus wrote: »

Girl_Number8 wrote: »

Are you also going to address Boosting in PvP to promote healthy gameplay....?

I mean, all these changes are not going to do much if some core issues are not looked at and resolved.

During MyM in a campaign that several sister guilds pop-locked they took boosting to new heights. Had all colors in one keep with no PvP going on for the entirety of the event.

I can explain how and what they did to you, plus give you vids and screenshots. Any sort of balance goes out the window if this is allowed to get worse and it is.

@ZOS_Gilliam

Unfortunately, I don't think that ZOS cares about this as I've not seen any repercussions for people that aggressively boosted. People in one of my guilds were making just under 1 million ap per hour in Quagmire for 6-10 hours per day throughout the event, just going in circles over and over and over. It's taken away what meaning there was left in pvp rank. I've done my best to let go of caring about this.

Repercussions already happened for some which I cannot discuss, as it is against the TOS. More is still being looked at from MYM, so I wouldn’t say they don’t exactly care. This was not typical boosting and involved irl money and other things.

I would however like to see a more public stance, otherwise all and any changes are moot.

Marto

ESO Forums: "Why aren't the devs transparent? They should explain why they make changes."
Devs: Explain why they make changes
ESO Forums: "Too many words... I can't read... Is this a buff or a nerf??"

Hymzir

Oh, how about just NO!

The last thing PVP needs is even more tanky BS. Those tower runners and their ilk are annoying enough as is.

And what about ball groups? Those guys already spec for def over damage and run around with 30k+ health as standard, and have constant hots and buff on, and take forever to kill as is. Lowering damage received even more means they will just do their choo-choo routine with even less worries. And the extra damage reduction don't mean jack-*** to you, when you get hit by 3 prxoydets, and 4 eye of storms and 5 other random AOEs while stuck in break free animation (if it even bothers to register.) Death by indiscriminate brainless run-by-AOEs is dumb as ***, and you want to make that play style even easier. Good grief.

As for the cloak changes... Uhm, do you really want the game to turn to gank central, even more than it already is? So you saying that caltrops can't be used to detect NBs anymore? Nor wall of elements? Please, at least tell me that the initial hit from volcanic rune counts as direct damage. If you strip these ways to deter and detect NBs, you gotta make the active ways of detection more viable. Det pots are fun and all, but they have so limited range, and the duration vs potion cool down don't make them viable against any NB that knows what they are doing. Most NBs have silly fast cloaked speed and just scurry away from the detection zone, and then re-engage while you are on potion cool down. With placed AOEs. you could at least set up a defensive perimeter and slowly make your way to safety when you knew there was a nightblade skulking about the bushes..

Now the idea that cloak no longer nullifies dots... Erhm... Don't know how to feel about that. Sure, the failed gank to vigor-cloak, reset the fight and re-gank routine, was annoying as hell, but... magblades kinda rely on that aspect of cloak to not die to all the crapton of dots the game routinely deals out. All those poison and bleed dots will make magblades kinda non-viable. Even more than they already are. Guess the harder detection makes bombing easier, but for everything else, stamblade is it for now, and ganking is the goal I suppose.

ungh... if these changes go live, I think it might be pretty close to the last nail needed for me to give up on PVP for good.