Does the community actually want another tank meta or completely different changes?

Fawn4287

Im honestly curious, the current PTS changes to me seem absolutely dreadful like the absolute worst possible direction PvP could head in and I’m guessing Im not alone. The devs could be making useful changes like introducing reliable and useful spammables for half the classes in the game (stam whip wanted for literally years) but seem to only be concerned with introducing obscene PvP playstyle and meta shake ups that will from my point of view make the game worse in every possible way. So what does the community want the the developers focusing on gameplay improvements or game breaking shake up for what seems like the sake of it?

baselesschart

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

I have absolutely nothing against tanks, only when they can tank damage. Once they can start killing me is when I have a problem with them. Tanks as a whole are necessary in an mmo scene, but in my eyes they are not supposed to be able to kill people, you shouldn't be able to have it both, godly resistances and damage. Damage is super high right now on live server, I'm getting ganked a lot, but a damage meta is way, way healthier for the game than a stalemate tank meta.

fred4

I'll just repost something I wrote in a YouTube comment:

"Of course another perspective that I've come to believe recently is that it's not ZOS who create the tank meta. It's the players! Nightblades usually drive that point home and are possibly on the cutting edge of how the game is balanced. There is only a certain amount of ganking power players will tolerate. Experienced players need to build tanky so they can 1vX bad players. Once you pass a certain threshold into squishiness your attack collapses. You get too busy with active defense. That is expensive too, so your sustain collapses. On the other hand, if you are an inexperienced player, you just want to survive and you may build tanky without having a good offense (yet). No one likes to be killed excessively.

On PC EU people are just tankier again [already, this patch]. Give a few weeks or maybe 2 months and the playerbase actively chooses a certain level of tankiness as a whole. The gank build outliers, the crazy 1 shot stamsorcs, they even seem to have subsided, probably from lacking enough targets or because of the extreme squishiness of those builds. I could be wrong ... I play less now ... but that is how it seems to me.

So what will change? What will change are the builds and armor sets. Instead of half the population wearing Pariah, more aggressive set combinations will come back in vogue. What will also change are the outliers. If the meta as a whole is squishier like now, that favors nightblades, but also stealth and damage avoidance (movement / speed based) builds in general. If it is tankier, those builds will be blunted and extreme (werewolf or whatever) tanks will be possible again. The people who are not playing the extreme builds however, which is probably 90% of the population, they will just settle on the same level of tankiness they always had. It will only take a bit of time and different armor sets."

fred4

Actually, as a corollary, I predict the following: If everyone gets tankier at base -> many people will build for more damage -> they will have (still more) weapon / spell damage than right now -> there will be a greater prevalence of procs again, because those will become more viable.

alberichtano

I don’t particularly care

baselesschart wrote: »

I have absolutely nothing against tanks, only when they can tank damage. Once they can start killing me is when I have a problem with them. Tanks as a whole are necessary in an mmo scene, but in my eyes they are not supposed to be able to kill people, you shouldn't be able to have it both, godly resistances and damage. Damage is super high right now on live server, I'm getting ganked a lot, but a damage meta is way, way healthier for the game than a stalemate tank meta.

So you are saying that tanks should basically be mobile training dummies? I mean, if they can't kill you, what's the point?

alberichtano

I don’t particularly care

Honestly I don't care. Not even sure what the fuzz is about. So they changed the meta. So what? They will soon change it again. If these changes mean that tanks get a period of grace, for heaven's sake let them have it. Gods know tanks have it hard as it is in this game.

Wyrd88

I don’t particularly care

I don't care. Went through quite a rolloercoaster over the time of playing since 2016, so it's kinda whatever at this point.
I completely stopped playing only once, for a 3+ months, during the DoT meta in Scalebreaker and sustain nerf after. Was just too much of a BS for my liking.

And there's no point to complain about the balance, because broken things will be released anyway, just to be nerfer in the future, sooner or later. And nothing really you can do about it, because feedback often just ignored, or simply takes too much time to implement, so it gets forgotten by it's givers because of the new problems/stuff to complain about.

baselesschart

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

alberichtano wrote: »

So you are saying that tanks should basically be mobile training dummies? I mean, if they can't kill you, what's the point?

From a balance perspective, I don't think its fair for someone to be able to build really tanky and still have high damage, being a jack of all trades isn't balanced. Besides, the whole premise of PvP is to kill other players so why you would build to be a huge tank beats me.

alberichtano

I don’t particularly care

baselesschart wrote: »

alberichtano wrote: »

So you are saying that tanks should basically be mobile training dummies? I mean, if they can't kill you, what's the point?

From a balance perspective, I don't think its fair for someone to be able to build really tanky and still have high damage, being a jack of all trades isn't balanced. Besides, the whole premise of PvP is to kill other players so why you would build to be a huge tank beats me.

Well, in response then, DDs shouldn't be able to build up any defenses of note, as it would be unfair to be able to kill anyone AND be able to survive an attack.

See the logical fallacy there? Tanks are more defens than offense, but not ZERO offense. DDs are more offense than defense, but not ZERO defense. Of course a tank should be able to kill you, what would the point be with playing a tank otherwise? And of course a DD should be able to have defenses, for the same reason.

taugrim

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

fred4 wrote: »

I'll just repost something I wrote in a YouTube comment:

"Of course another perspective that I've come to believe recently is that it's not ZOS who create the tank meta.

Stopped reading right there.

It's never the fault of the players when there is a meta. It's the design of the game that makes it advantageous to build a certain way. It's on the developers to create balance, they're the ones actually designing and coding the product. Not the players.

(There is also the possibility that the playerbase has made assumptions about what does / does not work, and they're incorrect.)

taugrim

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

baselesschart wrote: »

alberichtano wrote: »

So you are saying that tanks should basically be mobile training dummies? I mean, if they can't kill you, what's the point?

Besides, the whole premise of PvP is to kill other players so why you would build to be a huge tank beats me.

Some people really hate dying, and would rather not die to you than have a meaningful change to kill you.

Beyond that, some modes in this game heavily favor not dying, e.g. especially the flag modes (Chaosball, Capture the Relic) and to a lesser extent the node modes (Domination, Crazy King).

Besides that, in game after game, it's possible for tanks to coordinate and kill opponents, but obviously it's not as easy as when you have real DPS builds doing the killing.

baselesschart

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

alberichtano wrote: »

Well, in response then, DDs shouldn't be able to build up any defenses of note, as it would be unfair to be able to kill anyone AND be able to survive an attack.

See the logical fallacy there? Tanks are more defens than offense, but not ZERO offense. DDs are more offense than defense, but not ZERO defense. Of course a tank should be able to kill you, what would the point be with playing a tank otherwise? And of course a DD should be able to have defenses, for the same reason.

To be honest I would be completely fine with dps builds being completely squishy. I think the best damage mitigation for damage dealers is honestly the avoidance of damage, and it always has been that, kiting and roll dodging literally reinforce that. I'm not entirely opposed to tanks having some damage, but it should not be enough to be classified as burst, and thats what we have here in the game right now. As someone that has logged over 4k hours in pvp, I've developed the necessary skills to survive in open world pvp and in dueling scenarios, so its a little frustrating when someone of a way lesser skill level can play a tank build and have a good chance of killing me. I'm sorry but I am not a fan of when games hold your hand and discourage actual development of skills.

Urzigurumash

I don’t particularly care

What's a tank again?

baselesschart wrote: »

To be honest I would be completely fine with dps builds being completely squishy. I think the best damage mitigation for damage dealers is honestly the avoidance of damage, and it always has been that, kiting and roll dodging literally reinforce that.

This is a bit NB-centric to say this should uniformly apply to anybody capable of dealing meaningful damage. Neither Facetanking nor Kiting is inherently more virtuous or skillful.

baselesschart wrote: »

I'm not entirely opposed to tanks having some damage, but it should not be enough to be classified as burst, and thats what we have here in the game right now.

I agree, NBs should have the highest burst, and I agree, DKs should convey much of their damage through DoTs, but Facetank specs still need some burst, just like Kite specs still need some mitigation, and I don't think 100 out of 100 players should be spamming RaT on cooldown, that's not "balance".

Urzigurumash

I don’t particularly care

People like to rip on "legalese" IRL but it's nice not having to vote on things that have no definition

Anyhow hate is bad for your health

vesselwiththepestle

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

I thought the current meta to be pretty good, with just some fine-tuning needing... Generally I am tired of those big meta changes, I just want to be able to play this game. 3 months of meta isn't enough time, when I finally adapt, it is almost over and we'll prepare to the next one.

baselesschart

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

Urzigurumash wrote: »

This is a bit NB-centric to say this should uniformly apply to anybody capable of dealing meaningful damage. Neither Facetanking nor Kiting is inherently more virtuous or skillful.

Yeah you're right on that. Not every damage dealer is kiting or roll dodging, but I do think if they aren't doing that they are holding right click. I think block doesn't do enough for the squishies that need it and it does too much for the really tanky people that crutch on it.

Indigogo

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

This game seems to be driven by crybaby tanky xers who think they're entitled to be unkillable while dishing out a tonne of damage.

I like the current balance in cyro. Feels more varied. Encourages a bunch of different roles needed - you NEED a pure tank or two to be frontline. You need healers. You need support toons, negates...
You need brawlers and high damage ranged dps..

I think it encourages grouping and strategy...

It's far more engaging than a meta of stam dps dizzying swinging each other for 45 minutes straight.

Urzigurumash

I don’t particularly care

baselesschart wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

This is a bit NB-centric to say this should uniformly apply to anybody capable of dealing meaningful damage. Neither Facetanking nor Kiting is inherently more virtuous or skillful.

Yeah you're right on that. Not every damage dealer is kiting or roll dodging, but I do think if they aren't doing that they are holding right click. I think block doesn't do enough for the squishies that need it and it does too much for the really tanky people that crutch on it.

Blocking is the counter to NBs though. It's intended to frustrate you. Anyhow my point is mostly that discussing PvP "balance" through the strict lens of DD-Tank-Healer is confusing. In other words, it confuses me. What's a tank?

If DK "DDs" aren't allowed to Block, then NB isn't allowed to have the highest burst. Take both those things away - what happens? We both hop on StamCro and whoever Dawnies first wins?

This word "crutch" is loaded with sanctimony. It's unbecoming. I've seen it said a thousand times about NBs, "crutching on cloak". Aka, playing the class and using the tools at their disposal for maximum effectiveness.

All that being said, of course I think ganking should be effective. I think facetanking should be too.

As I've said before, let balance not be a repainting of our world in all the same grey - but an equalization of the vibrancy of neon pink, neon green, and neon blue.

divnyi

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

I hate tank meta, but I think that damage reduction on players is a step in a right direction. It limits the amount of HP nightblade can oneshot from cloak, thus makes more build variety - if you can play at, say, 22k and don't die to oneshot gank if you do bunch of active defences - it would be fantastic direction, as that will allow some really high DPS builds to shine. As it stands now, 25k and some heavy armor pieces is a must.

What they should do now, is to change the amount of healing. Reduce all the healing and shields to 40% of original value, cut the cross-heals by 2. If HP is not so easily replenishable, you would be able to kill tanks by draining their HP pool under long pressure, which is ideal scenario IMO.

alberichtano

I don’t particularly care

vesselwiththepestle wrote: »

I thought the current meta to be pretty good, with just some fine-tuning needing... Generally I am tired of those big meta changes, I just want to be able to play this game. 3 months of meta isn't enough time, when I finally adapt, it is almost over and we'll prepare to the next one.

Which is why I don't even bother. I run pretty much some old gear and hope for the best. The 1337 PvP-ers will still squash me whatever I wear, so why bother? I just try to get what fun and AP I can out of cyro, and try to win Battlegrounds (sans Deathmatch) with wits and tactics rather than full on force. And suffer through IC during event-times. *shivers*

chuckythexii

taugrim wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

I'll just repost something I wrote in a YouTube comment:

"Of course another perspective that I've come to believe recently is that it's not ZOS who create the tank meta.

Stopped reading right there.

It's never the fault of the players when there is a meta. It's the design of the game that makes it advantageous to build a certain way. It's on the developers to create balance, they're the ones actually designing and coding the product. Not the players.

(There is also the possibility that the playerbase has made assumptions about what does / does not work, and they're incorrect.)

No Meta's are developed by players, especially when based on incorrect assumptions as you put it.

Meta's are in fact largely subjective, based on what players think is best. In a game like ESO with a large variety of builds and tactical situations there really is no "best" or "OP". Whoever matches their build to their situation is gonna be "OP" people who do not are gonna get destroyed.

Right now people don't actually even agree on whether or not high damage is OP or Tankiness is OP. Just look through the forums you will find people complaining about both, and any other thing.

The fact that people can't agree on what is/isn't OP or Meta is a testament to what is actually a well balanced game with large amounts of choices.

Fawn4287

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

fred4 wrote: »

I'll just repost something I wrote in a YouTube comment:

"Of course another perspective that I've come to believe recently is that it's not ZOS who create the tank meta. It's the players! Nightblades usually drive that point home and are possibly on the cutting edge of how the game is balanced. There is only a certain amount of ganking power players will tolerate. Experienced players need to build tanky so they can 1vX bad players. Once you pass a certain threshold into squishiness your attack collapses. You get too busy with active defense. That is expensive too, so your sustain collapses. On the other hand, if you are an inexperienced player, you just want to survive and you may build tanky without having a good offense (yet). No one likes to be killed excessively.

On PC EU people are just tankier again [already, this patch]. Give a few weeks or maybe 2 months and the playerbase actively chooses a certain level of tankiness as a whole. The gank build outliers, the crazy 1 shot stamsorcs, they even seem to have subsided, probably from lacking enough targets or because of the extreme squishiness of those builds. I could be wrong ... I play less now ... but that is how it seems to me.

So what will change? What will change are the builds and armor sets. Instead of half the population wearing Pariah, more aggressive set combinations will come back in vogue. What will also change are the outliers. If the meta as a whole is squishier like now, that favors nightblades, but also stealth and damage avoidance (movement / speed based) builds in general. If it is tankier, those builds will be blunted and extreme (werewolf or whatever) tanks will be possible again. The people who are not playing the extreme builds however, which is probably 90% of the population, they will just settle on the same level of tankiness they always had. It will only take a bit of time and different armor sets."

You could wear buffer of the swift, pariah and be on a necro this patch and that will be about the standard builds tankyness next patch with the proposed changes.

Amerises

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

fred4 wrote: »

Actually, as a corollary, I predict the following: If everyone gets tankier at base -> many people will build for more damage -> they will have (still more) weapon / spell damage than right now -> there will be a greater prevalence of procs again, because those will become more viable.

This ^

You can't take a PvE DPS into PvP because you will die in a heartbeat. In PvP, you balance damage vs survivability. If the survivability goes up at the base, people will build out of survivability and into damage. The only reason I don't like the changes is because I have to change gear 🙄

chuckythexii

Amerises wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Actually, as a corollary, I predict the following: If everyone gets tankier at base -> many people will build for more damage -> they will have (still more) weapon / spell damage than right now -> there will be a greater prevalence of procs again, because those will become more viable.

This ^

You can't take a PvE DPS into PvP because you will die in a heartbeat. In PvP, you balance damage vs survivability. If the survivability goes up at the base, people will build out of survivability and into damage. The only reason I don't like the changes is because I have to change gear 🙄

Especially once you consider that with how the math works it means that not only will people be tankier overall but the mitigation from armor resists will be less meaningful.

divnyi

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

chuckythexii wrote: »

Amerises wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Actually, as a corollary, I predict the following: If everyone gets tankier at base -> many people will build for more damage -> they will have (still more) weapon / spell damage than right now -> there will be a greater prevalence of procs again, because those will become more viable.

This ^

You can't take a PvE DPS into PvP because you will die in a heartbeat. In PvP, you balance damage vs survivability. If the survivability goes up at the base, people will build out of survivability and into damage. The only reason I don't like the changes is because I have to change gear 🙄

Especially once you consider that with how the math works it means that not only will people be tankier overall but the mitigation from armor resists will be less meaningful.

That's not how math works. Damage and protective multipliers are always meaningful.

Tommy_The_Gun

I don’t particularly care

Tank meta or not, what I don't like is making an entire new build each update, golding out the gear etc...

katorga

I don’t particularly care

divnyi wrote: »

chuckythexii wrote: »

Amerises wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Actually, as a corollary, I predict the following: If everyone gets tankier at base -> many people will build for more damage -> they will have (still more) weapon / spell damage than right now -> there will be a greater prevalence of procs again, because those will become more viable.

This ^

You can't take a PvE DPS into PvP because you will die in a heartbeat. In PvP, you balance damage vs survivability. If the survivability goes up at the base, people will build out of survivability and into damage. The only reason I don't like the changes is because I have to change gear 🙄

Especially once you consider that with how the math works it means that not only will people be tankier overall but the mitigation from armor resists will be less meaningful.

That's not how math works. Damage and protective multipliers are always meaningful.

Depends, mathing it out for my necro gets me 77% damage reduction. Dropping just the spirit guardian (10%) only reduces me to 74% damage reduction. At some point it becomes a waste to continue to devote resources to more % damage reduction.

fullheartcontainer

TTK is absurdly low right now. It takes literally zero skill to gank or bomb people, and fights are mostly a cointoss due to sheer damage output.

I have 32k health in cyrodiil, full impen, and high resists. With that, I've had NBs jump out of stealth and gank me in like half a second. It's ridiculous. The miniscule amount of mitigation ZOS is adding back wont even really effect y'alls ganks. Oh no, your 13k incap will go down to like 11k. Dont act like you wont be able to kill people just fine with that

chuckythexii

divnyi wrote: »

chuckythexii wrote: »

Amerises wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Actually, as a corollary, I predict the following: If everyone gets tankier at base -> many people will build for more damage -> they will have (still more) weapon / spell damage than right now -> there will be a greater prevalence of procs again, because those will become more viable.

This ^

You can't take a PvE DPS into PvP because you will die in a heartbeat. In PvP, you balance damage vs survivability. If the survivability goes up at the base, people will build out of survivability and into damage. The only reason I don't like the changes is because I have to change gear 🙄

Especially once you consider that with how the math works it means that not only will people be tankier overall but the mitigation from armor resists will be less meaningful.

That's not how math works. Damage and protective multipliers are always meaningful.

Yes that is how the math works because mitigation is multiplicative.

currently with 50% global mitigation full resists give you another 25% mitigation (half of the remainder). With global mitigation being bumped up to 60% that means full resists will only give an additional 20% mitigation.

Now there is an argument to be made that 80% mitigation is much better than 75% because of how EHP works, that will only be true if you are full sending mitigation builds. Light and medium builds will see much less benefit from adding mitigation while Heavy tank builds will be much better.

These changes will also have a similar reduction in benefit from penetration, since a smaller portion of mitigation will be reduced by penetration.

This patch is going to be a lot more about resource management and sustainment than sudden burst combo kills. Mind you bursts will always be important, its just going to be about managing your opponent down into your burst window.

Raeyleigh

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

This battle spirit nonsense just needs to stop.

Back in Greymoor they reduced healing for everyone, because necros and wardens had too much. Big surprise, it didnt work out at all and they slowly rolled that change back.

Now ganking builds deal too much damage so they try to reduce damage for everyone.

Youd think they would have learnt their lesson the first time around...

divnyi

No, I hate the tank meta and want some useful, usable changes

@katorga @chuckythexii mitigation is being multiplicative is exactly the reason why it applies in exactly the same proportions.

Lets say you had 80% mitigation and you got to the point where you mitigate 82% damage. Is it "just 2%" so it's not worth it? Wrong, because (100%-82%) / (100%-80%) = 10%.

Say, you have 20k HP base.
With 80% mitigation it is 20k / 20% = 100k effective HP
With 82% mitigation it is 20k / 18% = 111k effective HP

And given it is mitigation that defines if you can outheal incomming damage (apart from healing strength), stacking all the %mitigations you can get never hurts.

OFC competitive duelists will always be sitting at "just enough burst to kill and rest in toughness". Always were there.