PTS Update 32 - Feedback Thread for Combat & Classes

Alexium

IronWooshu wrote: »

It still has its use in PVP...

I don't participate in PvP. I play mainly in overland content and this skill gives me some fun.

Fhritz

I think Khajiit need some love, with the new crit dmg cap i think the race need to trade crit dmg for crit change or anything else

Tommy_The_Gun

IronWooshu wrote: »

Alexium wrote: »

Don't touch Mist Form! You will make this skill useless.

It still has its use in PVP...

Tbh. I don't think that some things should be reserved just for PvP. Werewolf for example can be used in PvE & PvP. Of course it is not bis and I would even say it may even be not viable & competitive, but at least WW can be used.

I don't play Vamp much, but I would imagine that changes to Mist form will actually hurt a lot of solo PvE builds that are actually not overperforming.

If trials are the only environment in which Mist form is causing too many problems - then maybe limit the penalty just to "trial bosses & monsters" ?

^ Also it does not have to be a removal of damage reduction, but maybe making it less effective ? So for example you would get 50% reducion, so 75% damage reduction in PvP and PvE, but inside trials you would get only half of that (37%) etc.

Artemis_X_

Removing mist form is pretty much the end to vampire imo. It leaves it's only pve use as faster movment in sneak and a bit of roleplay tbh. Such a shame, I dont understand the year long nerf to vampire. Is it time you remove.it from the game all together?

gariondavey

master_vanargand wrote: »

Need change Drain Power's Major Brutality and Major Sorcery to Siphoning Strikes.
And Drain Power, Sap Essence, Power Extraction needs to be redesigned.

[My idea]
Change Drain Power's Major Brutality and Major Sorcery to Siphoning Strikes.
Change Minor Cowardice of Power Extraction to Drain Power.
Adds an effect to Power Extraction that "the more enemies hit, the more damage Power Extraction do".
(It's like the Titanic Cleave of the Master Weapon set for two-handed skill)

The summary is as follows.

Drain Power
AoE damage + Minor Cowardice

Power Extraction (Stamina Morph)
AoE damage + Minor Cowardice + "the more enemies hit, the more damage Power Extraction do"

Sap Essence (Magicka Morph)
AoE damage + Minor Cowardice + "Same heal effect as before"

Siphoning Strikes
Major Brutality and Major Sorcery + "Same effect as before"

Great concepts!

katorga

Artemis_X_ wrote: »

Removing mist form is pretty much the end to vampire imo. It leaves it's only pve use as faster movment in sneak and a bit of roleplay tbh. Such a shame, I dont understand the year long nerf to vampire. Is it time you remove.it from the game all together?

The mistform change is wierd. What is the difference between mistform and block in terms of avoiding PVE damage?

universal_wrath

katorga wrote: »

Artemis_X_ wrote: »

Removing mist form is pretty much the end to vampire imo. It leaves it's only pve use as faster movment in sneak and a bit of roleplay tbh. Such a shame, I dont understand the year long nerf to vampire. Is it time you remove.it from the game all together?

The mistform change is wierd. What is the difference between mistform and block in terms of avoiding PVE damage?

Block reduce your movement speed while blocking and blocks less damage than mist form while it cost more if you are attacked by multiple targets.

Trixterion

katorga wrote: »

Artemis_X_ wrote: »

Removing mist form is pretty much the end to vampire imo. It leaves it's only pve use as faster movment in sneak and a bit of roleplay tbh. Such a shame, I dont understand the year long nerf to vampire. Is it time you remove.it from the game all together?

The mistform change is wierd. What is the difference between mistform and block in terms of avoiding PVE damage?

DoTs are unblockable once they are applied, while pure damage mitigation reduces all damage

PrinceShroob

One idea that hasn't been suggested is allowing certain passives to raise the cap on Critical Damage, but not by the full amount of the increase in Critical Damage. As an example, Khajiit's Feline Ambush passive might read "Increases your Critical Damage and Critical Healing by 12%. Raises the maximum Critical Damage and Critical Healing you can do by 2%." In this example, by raising the cap, Khajiit can now neatly meet the cap of 125% without exceeding it.

The exact values can be adjusted as necessary, and this creates the possibility of sets, passives, and Champion passives and slottable stars that raise the Critical Damage cap higher than the the increase in Critical Damage they provide, or sets, passives, and Champion passives and slottable stars that purely increase the cap (for example, because Nightblade is focused on single-target burst and critical damage, their Hemorrhage passive could be changed to "Raises the maximum Critical Damage you can do by 10%").

I want to note that, if Critical Damage must be decreased, I would prefer a reduction in the power of bonuses to Critical Damage rather than a cap. But adding ways to increase the Critical Damage cap could be an alternative.

Jhalan

Thanks for all the dk changes. But my feedback is that they mostly benefit magdks and stamdks are still in a bad situation. Im not even talking about stamwhip as i find the idea bad and wouldnt want to use whip on a stamdk but thats just my opinion.

Still, stamdks do need a spammable that they can benefit from the new poison dmg passive. My suggestion is to rework stone giant morph that it hits poison dmg and it should an instant cast, only damaging 1 time and auto cancellable spammable . Something like a poison suprise attack. Every third cast could stun or hit more which would be really good. But please remove the ground stomping or rock throwing animation. A melee hit animation for this would be perfect as it will be a stamdk skill.

Also draconic skill line skills and passives need to be looked at as they are underwhelming and unbalanced imo. Wings should provide 4 immunity or 3-4 secs of major expedition with its 2 secs of snare immunity. Green dragon blood should scale with max hp and increase in potency as health decreases. Armor passive should provide %5 dmg reduction or %2 for each draconic skill slotted.

With these changes stamdks could use their earthen heart posion spammable and benefit from both minor brutality and world in ruin, leave fragmanted for green dragon blood get a good heal similar to what stamdens have. Just some ideas for stamdk as the class itself just stands underwhelmed compared to all other classes.

Narvuntien

I am not an elite player but my MagDk damage has increased from 54K to 58K so that's good, and a lot better magicka sustain that I think I need another damage ability.

Somehow by swapping from Shadow to Warrior my Khajiti, Stamblade increase thier crit to 133%?? some kind of combat metrics bug?
125% is just far too low for my stamblade

SandroLordOfDarkness

Hi
This problem has already existed for more than one patch, since the release of Elsweyr, I have written about this more than once, although there were no fixes.
There is a problem regarding the animations of the necromancer, and specifically worried about the fact that when using ANY skill of the "Necromancer" class, weapons "disappear" from the hands (including quivers when equipping a bow).
I want to ask you for help in resolving such a question - what can be done so that the weapon does not disappear when using the above skills, tk. purely from a role-playing point of view, the necromancer is my favorite class, and since I am inherently a perfectionist (to some extent), this problem is very painful for the eyes, in addition, I express not only my opinion, but the opinion of a huge number of my guildmates / friends / acquaintances who play for this class.
I understand that you have a lot of work now, but I ask you to help me with solving this problem.
Thanks

ajkb78

Advancing Yokeda (Berserking Warrior) should drop staves and bows. Given the hybridised stats this patch, it is perfectly possible for a magicka or hybrid character to deal melee martial damage while using a staff (e.g. magsorc opting to slot hurricane). As the proc condition is not impossible when wielding a staff (or bow) those weapons should be available.

Brahma_Br

Magden really needs somo love/a buff. It was the most nerfed subclass in recent years, and is way behind the other magic subclasses. DD magicka warden are almost extinct in pvp, where we only see them as healers.
The presented ideas of scaling the Artic Blast with magic, as well as Deep Fissure as frost dmg, can help to balance this long-abandoned subclass without influencing the Stamden

ESO_Nightingale

Brahma_Br wrote: »

Magden really needs somo love/a buff. It was the most nerfed subclass in recent years, and is way behind the other magic subclasses. DD magicka warden are almost extinct in pvp, where we only see them as healers.
The presented ideas of scaling the Artic Blast with magic, as well as Deep Fissure as frost dmg, can help to balance this long-abandoned subclass without influencing the Stamden

Frost Shalks 100% since it logically makes the most sense gameplay-wise and is easily justifiable from a lore perspective. Subterranean Assault now absolutely outclasses Deep Fissure in pve because it competely removes the cost hemorrage of magicka every 3 seconds, AND gives a free GCD, now with the hybrid changes, it means the overall burst damage loss from using sub assault is mostly mitigated leaving Sub Assault as the defacto best morph for damage dealing. Major Breach is really common and not that important when it's sourced from tanks, healers and even other dps. It'll likely stay as the worst morph even with Frost Shalks, but what Frost Shalks does, is give it a niche in more chilled application via rotation and in aoe, while also interacting with sets like frostbite. This is a positive change idea that helps out Frostden while not effecting most magicka warden builds bar for the exceptionally rare ones that use war maiden, even then, there are still classes like templar and nightblade which gain benefit from that set.

BUT, arctic blast's healing scaling with magicka and spell damage is not a good idea. We already have an entire skill line dedicated to healing skills that underperform when healing yourself. we need THOSE to be looked at in terms of healing. namely enchanted growth and living trellis. NOT Arctic Blast. Arctic Blast does absolutely need to be looked at, but it should instead be repurposed for dealing damage and offensively stunning an enemy instead of being an obnoxious jack of all trades defensive stun with a heal and small damage component. It feels bad to use as a stun and it feels cheap and annoying to play against. We have the least damage skills out of any class. Arctic Blast REALLY does not need yet another half baked rework. They need to get it right.

ManM

Not that my two cents will matter much, but removing mist form from PVE wrecks my thematic vampire pretty badly. The whole premise was to blood mist to move around during a fight to get into better melee position for blood for blood spam.
It's a PvE overland/dungeon build that's quite fun, to be honest.

That whole gameplay style, which I thought was explicitly promoted as peak vampire, is gone now.

MECHA_STREISAND

Hello! As someone who mains a stamina DK, you can imagine how excited I was when I read that DKs were FINALLY getting some attention. So excited was I, that I logged in to PTS for the first time ever to try it out, and created a forum account just so I could reply to this thread.

First of all, I want to say please don't forget about stamina! Other people have said it, now I am saying it too: nothing that has been done here seems to benefit stam DKs at all. After building a clone of my main and doing some parses, I struggle to even match my 90k DPS on the trial dummy, and all of the old issues are still present.

Seething Fury stacks lasting 10s is a great start, but Stone Giant is still clunky as hell and doesn't hit hard enough. People have been saying this for years, so I don't understand why this wasn't the first change you made! I actually quite like the 1/4 casts being a channelled stomp, because it makes it a bit more challenging to use, and I imagine it's a lot of work to completely re-design the animations to get rid of it. So don't! Just make Stone Giant hit harder so it's viable as a spammable skill! All that takes is tweaking some numbers, right?

I don't understand the recovery switcheroo with World in Ruin / Combustion as it has no effect on stam recovery that I can see, but if it helps mag DKs then that's cool. No complaints here.

But mostly, nothing seems to have been done to fix stam DKs being the useless meme class as far as group content is concerned. We still provide nothing that a DK tank can't, so we will still be picked last for prog group lineups. I'm sure every single stam DK out there will be bitterly disappointed that our mains will have to be shelved once more if we want do vet trial content.

Please give us some utility so our beloved mains can be taken seriously in group PvE! Others have suggested this too, so please listen to us! Buff Stone Giant's damage and make it a DD skill - problem solved.

As a final thought - can wood elves get a racial passive rework? It seems silly that what should be the perfect stam race is lagging way behind all the others. Sone bonus crit chance or damage would be lovely.

DavGlen

The "dev comment" for the Mistform change says that the skill's intended purpose is for it to be used as disengage ability, but I disagree. Only one of its morphs is themed around disengaging (and the speed boost doesn't even match the one from just sprinting). What is the point of the Bloodmist morph (dealing damage during mistform) if the ability was a disengage?

I get the problem, tank meta builds were abusing it in super high level PvE, but removing it from PvE entirely for EVERYONE is just a lazy fix and way too overkill.

The solution is simple: make the damage reduction scale with vampirism stages. So at vampire stage 4 you would have the same amount as it is now.

Don't break the game for 99% of players only to "fix" the 1% abusing something.

MECHA_STREISAND

Thought I would add some extra thoughts after a couple more hours experimenting..

1 - I honestly can't tell any difference in long-term sustain as a stamina DK - it still kinda sucks

2 - Carve increasing to 12s DoT is brilliant - thanks so much!

3 - This might be controversial, but I LOVE the crit damage cap. Finally being able to drop Barbed Trap from my rotation without suffering a big DPS hit is brilliant, as IMO it was a joke that every single build had to use it. Freeing up CP to use a different slottable than the two crit damage buffs is also very welcome, as again - it was a bit of a joke.

I saw a lot of complaints about Khajit being pointless now with the crit damage cap, and I was very worried about it, but I think that's actually going to be far from the case. You don't need Barbed Trap, you don't need any CP slottable, and certainly as a stam DK the losses are more than balanced out by focusing on crit chance and weapon damage instead. I'm creeping up on 100k now which is very nice to see

The only problem I can see is SUSTAIN - you shouldn't have to use Lava Foot, hit every synergy, 100% uptime your potions, drop every ultimate, and STILL find yourself running out of stamina. With all of the above done perfectly, you shouldn't ever run out! I'm still experimenting, but as far as I can tell this needs some more work.

ETA: Quick note that my point about utility in my previous post 100% still stands - while I have found damage improves it has been due to Seething Fury stacks increasing to 10s and using Carve a LOT more now that it stacks well. I'm still very scared that this patch will make StamDK a great "nothing" DD that still has no use in a Vet Trial group, so will be 100% redundant. Stone Giant needs to be exclusively a DD ability and do a little more damage, OR you need to give StamDK some kind of unique desirable utility in group situations. If that isn't implemented in this patch I'll be very disappointed.

VioletDracolich

I apologize in advance for I am extremely angry. After learning about the Mist Form change I was fuming, and made a simple comment about it. After some time and recollection, I decided that I am still enraged.

This change is an absolute nerf to the skill, and skill line, in every way, not just in PvE but all around. After learning about the change I decided to grab my vamp and respec them to a PvP toon. It's fun, but after playing a bit I realized something important. Cyrodill, and to a equal extent Imperial City, has NPCs too. By removing the damage reduction for NPCs, you actually take away from the disengagement aspect, and make it a useless crowd crontrol immunity.

Not only that but this change will also undo everything you guys made last year. You guys worked hard to remake vampire from the ground up. Was it perfect? No. But it was fun. It had a point, and honestly could be fun. You guys spent possible thousands in assets and code attempting to revitalize a skill line, only to throw it all away because ONE skill was used in a clever manner?

Now does this change make vampire useless? Actually yes! In PvP Cyrodill and Imperial City, vampire will have no place, as mobs mow down players easily. The main reason you guys changed vampire was to avoid players using it for the passives only. Well now it'll see basically no use at all, as one of the skill line's most essential skills is removed in order to protect against cheesing future trials.

I can understand the need to change it, but this goes to far. I believe the change will go through, and that this will be the single worse mistake so far. There have been decisions in the past that come close, but this one I know will have long term repercussions.

Please just lower the damage reduction to 30% or even as low as 15%, but don't get rid of it without adding something to it. Nearly all the skills in this game need a revamp, and how you handle this one will show us players how you'll likely do that in the future. I'm begging you to make the smart decision. Please.

wolvensol87

So I'm a tad confused on the whole mist from change is it just the damage reduction going away for it and the morphs? or is the DPS and healing from blood mist also only going to work in PVP only?

Thecompton73

NB's or any really any class going into crouch/stealth during a fight are still losing all stamina recovery even after leaving stealth. When this occurs the only way to get stam back is to stop all activities that cost stam and wait, then after a few seconds you can perform an action such as a LA and you'll get a burst of stamina equal to what you should have been recovering gradually the whole time. Relogging resets recovery but the problem comes right back.
When you're in combat you can't stop and stand still in the middle of a fight so it essentially turns off all stamina recovery 100% of the time in every encounter. Please fix.

Fabi95

The Templar fixes are very appreciated. It would be also great if the following would be considered for positive balance changes:

There are some huge disparities for quite a few Templar passives compared to other classes. For instance the "Restoring Spirit" passive needs rework since it's dated: "Reduces the Magicka, Stamina, and Ultimate costs of your abilities by 5%."

Let's compare this with the two following two Sorcerer passives:
Unholy Knowledge: "Reduces the Health, Magicka, and Stamina costs of your abilities by 6%"
Power Stone: "Reduces the cost of your Ultimate abilities by 15%"

The cost reduction for normal abilities is 1% higher, and Sorcerers also get a whole 10% extra reduction for all ultimates on top. This is extremely huge! And it makes the "Restoring Spirit" passive with it's humble 5% reduction very outdated, especially because Templars already struggle with sustain anyway. The Dawn's Wrath passive called "Prism" does not compensate here. 3 ultimate every 6 seconds for casting a Dawn's Wrath ability does unfortunately not come close to the flat 15% ultimate cost reduction for Sorcerers. On top, Sorcerers have extra passives for recovery already and a conversion skill.

My suggestion would be to increase the "Restoring Spirit" passive to at least 8%, this would be a great balanced value (this would need testing of course). Also reworking the "Enduring Rays" passive to include some sort of recovery bonus would be very needed, as a 2 seconds extension on some skills feels underwhelming. Please consider some of the recent feedback in the class feedback thread as well: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/416459/class-rep-templar-feedback-thread For consistency, I'm going to add this post there too. Thank you in advance for considering!

Fabi95

On another note, I noticed a disparity with the "Spear Shards" skill compared to the Undaunted "Energy Orb". Spear Shards can be only used once, while Energy Orb can be used by all team members. Additionally, Spear Shards and Energy Orb share the same cooldown of 20 seconds, which does put Spear Shards in a very bad place. Especially the "Blazing Spear" morph, because it does entirely the same like the Energy Orb still (grants only one resource, not both magicka and stamina). Yet it can be only used once. This pushes Templar players to use Energy Orb instead, simply because it can be used by all players in the group. I feel that a class skill should be better, and I'm confused why Spear Shards was made to perform worse than the generally available Undaunted orb.

MudcrabAttack

I don’t understand all the praise of the crit damage cap, and how it’s good that barbed trap can be dropped.

Like saying “Thanks for removing my character’s feet, now I don’t need those pesky shoes anymore”. The crit cap is dropping stamina potential. Now that sets like berserking warrior are available to mages, it’s only raising mage potential

Serious question now, why run stamina at all in trials in this coming patch? How about the live patch? What is the benefit? The gap is just growing wider

katorga

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

I don’t understand all the praise of the crit damage cap, and how it’s good that barbed trap can be dropped.

Like saying “Thanks for removing my character’s feet, now I don’t need those pesky shoes anymore”. The crit cap is dropping stamina potential. Now that sets like berserking warrior are available to mages, it’s only raising mage potential

Serious question now, why run stamina at all in trials in this coming patch? How about the live patch? What is the benefit? The gap is just growing wider

Because you can replace the GCD you used for Trap with a higher dps alternative.

Don't worry next patch ZOS will realize everyone hits the 225% crit damage cap so easily that they shifted to 80-90% crit rates, and ended up doing more damage than before. I fully expect crit rate nerfs capping rate at 70-75% or lower.

Vevvev

wolvensol87 wrote: »

So I'm a tad confused on the whole mist from change is it just the damage reduction going away for it and the morphs? or is the DPS and healing from blood mist also only going to work in PVP only?

Damage reduction will only apply to player based damage. The other effects of Mistform still apply, but the issue is the ability is the damage reduction. Essentially it has been removed from PvE entirely with this change as the bonus effects are out classed by other abilities that are more cost effective and don't lock you out of blocking, sprinting, light/heavy attacking, etc.

MudcrabAttack

katorga wrote: »

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

I don’t understand all the praise of the crit damage cap, and how it’s good that barbed trap can be dropped.

Like saying “Thanks for removing my character’s feet, now I don’t need those pesky shoes anymore”. The crit cap is dropping stamina potential. Now that sets like berserking warrior are available to mages, it’s only raising mage potential

Serious question now, why run stamina at all in trials in this coming patch? How about the live patch? What is the benefit? The gap is just growing wider

Because you can replace the GCD you used for Trap with a higher dps alternative.

Don't worry next patch ZOS will realize everyone hits the 225% crit damage cap so easily that they shifted to 80-90% crit rates, and ended up doing more damage than before. I fully expect crit rate nerfs capping rate at 70-75% or lower.

What higher dps alternative? Trap deals 90000 damage per cast while passively adding 3% weapon damage while adding 10% crit damage multiplier. Perhaps minor force is gone for Khajiit stamina, but it’s still around for the rest, including mages.

YandereGirlfriend

MECHA_STREISAND wrote: »

Thought I would add some extra thoughts after a couple more hours experimenting..

1 - I honestly can't tell any difference in long-term sustain as a stamina DK - it still kinda sucks

2 - Carve increasing to 12s DoT is brilliant - thanks so much!

3 - This might be controversial, but I LOVE the crit damage cap. Finally being able to drop Barbed Trap from my rotation without suffering a big DPS hit is brilliant, as IMO it was a joke that every single build had to use it. Freeing up CP to use a different slottable than the two crit damage buffs is also very welcome, as again - it was a bit of a joke.

I saw a lot of complaints about Khajit being pointless now with the crit damage cap, and I was very worried about it, but I think that's actually going to be far from the case. You don't need Barbed Trap, you don't need any CP slottable, and certainly as a stam DK the losses are more than balanced out by focusing on crit chance and weapon damage instead. I'm creeping up on 100k now which is very nice to see

The only problem I can see is SUSTAIN - you shouldn't have to use Lava Foot, hit every synergy, 100% uptime your potions, drop every ultimate, and STILL find yourself running out of stamina. With all of the above done perfectly, you shouldn't ever run out! I'm still experimenting, but as far as I can tell this needs some more work.

ETA: Quick note that my point about utility in my previous post 100% still stands - while I have found damage improves it has been due to Seething Fury stacks increasing to 10s and using Carve a LOT more now that it stacks well. I'm still very scared that this patch will make StamDK a great "nothing" DD that still has no use in a Vet Trial group, so will be 100% redundant. Stone Giant needs to be exclusively a DD ability and do a little more damage, OR you need to give StamDK some kind of unique desirable utility in group situations. If that isn't implemented in this patch I'll be very disappointed.

Have you tried using Charged as your weapon trait? It's going to be a dip in damage but if it allows you to sustain comfortably it might be a nice alternative. Ditto for going out of your way to include Poison Damage abilities.

The unfortunate aspect is that, while Poison is set up to be the Stamina equivalent of Flame, there is simply a dearth of actual Poison Damage abilities available in the game. So while a magDK can go for a viable 100% Flame Damage rotation, the same can't really be said for a stamDK.

But, if you use as many Poison DoTs are as you can, then they will each have a ~17% chance to proc Poisoned on any given tick of damage.

Fabi95 wrote: »

The Templar fixes are very appreciated. It would be also great if the following would be considered for positive balance changes:

There are some huge disparities for quite a few Templar passives compared to other classes. For instance the "Restoring Spirit" passive needs rework since it's dated: "Reduces the Magicka, Stamina, and Ultimate costs of your abilities by 5%."

Let's compare this with the two following two Sorcerer passives:
Unholy Knowledge: "Reduces the Health, Magicka, and Stamina costs of your abilities by 6%"
Power Stone: "Reduces the cost of your Ultimate abilities by 15%"

The cost reduction for normal abilities is 1% higher, and Sorcerers also get a whole 10% extra reduction for all ultimates on top. This is extremely huge! And it makes the "Restoring Spirit" passive with it's humble 5% reduction very outdated, especially because Templars already struggle with sustain anyway. The Dawn's Wrath passive called "Prism" does not compensate here. 3 ultimate every 6 seconds for casting a Dawn's Wrath ability does unfortunately not come close to the flat 15% ultimate cost reduction for Sorcerers. On top, Sorcerers have extra passives for recovery already and a conversion skill.

My suggestion would be to increase the "Restoring Spirit" passive to at least 8%, this would be a great balanced value (this would need testing of course). Also reworking the "Enduring Rays" passive to include some sort of recovery bonus would be very needed, as a 2 seconds extension on some skills feels underwhelming. Please consider some of the recent feedback in the class feedback thread as well: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/416459/class-rep-templar-feedback-thread For consistency, I'm going to add this post there too. Thank you in advance for considering!

I fully agree with you about improving Spear Shards. Giving it the same unlimited synergy treatment as Orbs seems like a perfectly fair and easy solution given that it is a class ability and, all things being equal, class abilities should ideally be stronger than generic abilities.

However, on the topic of the ultimate cost reduction passive of Sorcerer vs. Templar - it is actually very balanced.

This is so because Sorcerers have zero ultimate-gen passives in their kit whereas literally every other class has at least one ultimate-gen passive. Typically, the passives for the base game classes are balanced around 0.5 ult/sec if you're hitting them on cooldown. If you add that 0.5 ult/sec to the base game classes and then divide the time-to-cast for an ultimate it will basically mirror the 15% cost reduction that Sorcerers receive because, while their total cost is lower, their rate of ultimate gain is also lower.

Of course, both ultimate-gen and cost reduction have their strengths and weaknesses and you can min/max your build (especially in PvP) to leverage this. Also bear in mind that the Sorcerer passive is comparatively weak against low cost ultimates and is also subject to diminishing returns if you have additional sources of ultimate cost reduction. However, ultimate generation is always useful and it can be leveraged by traits such as Decisive.

TLDR; Spear Shards needs a buff but the Templar ultimate cost passive is fine as it is.

Davedipy04

**Volatile Armor Should Be Doing Fire Damage** Firstly lets talk about the animation of being hit by volatile armor, you're literally on fire... flames and everything. Also since most DKs in PvP do not run a large amount of recovery this would help DK's sustain through the combustion passive, in PvP and also in PvE (DK tanks etc...). Its very odd that it does magic damage when that doesn't fit the class in the least. It would make way more sense for volatile to do fire damage and it would help both Stamina and Magicka DKs that tiny bit more.