Update 35 Combat Preview

FrankonPC

The weaving portion is just really, really bad. I don't know how you can say in one sentence that light attack weaving is a staple of the game that makes ESO stand out from a combat perspective...and then in the next sentence curtail it.

this just seems like a self fulfilling prophecy of only catering to newer players with every update, providing no information to help people improve...and when people inevitably don't improve...curtail the game for them even more.

I am all for accessibility things to allow players to enjoy the game, but I just don't understand the use of words like "manipulate", when it's just "light attack/skill, light attack/skill".

Also, all of this time spent the next few patches addressing an overhaul of the combat system while things are as broken as they are currently? I don't understand

honestaly

Zer0oo wrote: »

Maybe instead of removing skill from the game, how about motivating new players to learn how to play the game

Totally.
Go back and add options to target dummies to enable trial buffs on the 6 mil ( so build testing can be quicker), to reset the dummy without an addons. Make cmx a part of the game. Build a light attack weaving tutorial, etc

After that, how about making the 50mil dummy configurable to actually perform like a selectable raid boss at normal, vet and hm difficulty so groups can practice the fights they're proving on.

LuckyGhost

Good changes IMO. Light attacks doing 20% of my damage when I had to utilize 10 abilities and 2 ultimates to claw out the other 80% just felt weird. The highest damage ability in a parse was the basic light attack? Never made sense to me.

Light attacks still accounting for 6-11% of the damage sounds solid enough to be rewarding, and even essential for an optimized build, but not so overreaching as it was before. I don't understand the frustration with bringing down LA dmg a little bit tbh.

Dots lasting longer is very interesting. My necro's spammable wont be barswap? I'll actually get to use a spammable. I'm excited to see how this plays out and what kind of sets and builds we can utilize to take advantage of the changes

Iselin

FrankonPC wrote: »

The weaving portion is just really, really bad. I don't know how you can say in one sentence that light attack weaving is a staple of the game that makes ESO stand out from a combat perspective...and then in the next sentence curtail it.

It's an LA, HA, DOT and HOT nerf... period. Everything else said in that post is just window dressing.

olsborg

One thing you should be careful of @ZOS, is that purges and cleanses will be mucn more powerful with these changes. Classes with access to this is already powerful because of it.
Example: You get attacked by 3 players in cyrodiil and manage to LOS and escape for the time being, but you have 5 dots ticking away at you each with a duration of 20-30 seconds, the next 30 seconds of your life are very vulnerable if you get attacked again. The same situation for a templar for instance...he cast Extended Ritual once and those dots are basicly poof gone.

Cynical_Alchemist

I don't see how these changes will narrow the skill gap. You can reduce the light attack damage to a flat base value, but sets like Relequen, Kinras, and Advancing Yokuda (and many others) will still require us to weave well to get high DPS. If a player struggles with weaving, they will lose their stacks for this type of set, and their DPS values will still be much lower than a more skilled/experienced player.

So the changes may not do what was intended (unless there are lots of set changes coming along with the light attack change - RIP my gold/transmute stocks). It will act to minimise power creep, but that is not how the change is being sold to us.

prof_doom

LuckyGhost wrote: »

Light attacks still accounting for 6-11% of the damage sounds solid enough to be rewarding, and even essential for an optimized build, but not so overreaching as it was before. I don't understand the frustration with bringing down LA dmg a little bit tbh.

I suspect people might say decreasing the amount of damage done by 50% is a not "a little bit", assuming it goes from 20% to 10%.

Outside of that particular debate, I think a lot of people feel like it's just too many major changes for a single patch. Not to mention that the track record for touching weaving isn't a good one.

I don't see anyone really objecting to increasing the buff/debuff timers, and only some minor concerns about whether they're going to properly balance DOT damage around the increased durations they're planning.

I'm just glad I didn't deconstruct my Elf Bane on my MagDK. Might be coming back.

Necrotech_Master

increase duration on buffs - good

increase duration on dot - good

reducing dmg on dot - bad

light and heavy attack nerfing - probably going to end very bad


will likely have more opinion on it when it reaches PTS

Galiferno

saf227_ESO wrote: »

This is a welcome change. I'm sick & tired of perfect weaving be the end-all and be-all of damage in ESO. I practice for hours on end, tweak builds & rotations, and still top out around 70K dps. That's it. I've worked & tried & done my best and that's what I can do. And because of that, I'm told by numerous groups I liked to play with that I'm not good enough to participate in the activities I'd like to.
It's been very disheartening to play the game, and frankly I would have left years ago, except for all the friends I've made in the game. But I still miss the opportunity to do things I'd like.
I look forward to this change and thank the developers for recognizing the need for it.

But how will this help you get into those activities? Your damage is going to drop because the weaves you do hit won't hit as hard and players who can weave without issues will still hit 100k+ parses. I think it's just gonna make "gatekeeping" even more severe.

Aiphaton

Galiferno wrote: »

saf227_ESO wrote: »

This is a welcome change. I'm sick & tired of perfect weaving be the end-all and be-all of damage in ESO. I practice for hours on end, tweak builds & rotations, and still top out around 70K dps. That's it. I've worked & tried & done my best and that's what I can do. And because of that, I'm told by numerous groups I liked to play with that I'm not good enough to participate in the activities I'd like to.
It's been very disheartening to play the game, and frankly I would have left years ago, except for all the friends I've made in the game. But I still miss the opportunity to do things I'd like.
I look forward to this change and thank the developers for recognizing the need for it.

But how will this help you get into those activities? Your damage is going to drop because the weaves you do hit won't hit as hard and players who can weave without issues will still hit 100k+ parses. I think it's just gonna make "gatekeeping" even more severe.

Dont tell that ZoS

Dagoth_Rac

Why do all of this at once? It flies in the face of software development principles that go back decades. Why not make the light attack change and see where you stand? Then in a future update, if you don't like where player numbers are, try the buff change. In a later update, if you don't like where player numbers are, try the DoT change.

Having too many moving parts changed at once is terrible design. It increases the odds of unintended problems, and makes it harder to isolate the source of problems, creating issues that are harder to find and harder to fix and take longer to fix.

davapoole

there is no where in the help files that explain light attack weaving. or nothing i can see apart from a single mention on a load screen. so how, apart from guilds and online, do new players learn about this in the first place. surely it would make more sense to add at least some explanation about the mechanic into the tutorial so new players are told about it at the start and therefore start to learn it from day one. that i think would be the most sensible improvement to new players dps and the more casual player. if you dont know about it at the start you have so many other things to get your head around and also mention it in the help files also possibly

propertyOfUndefined

These changes sound awesome, and I have a feeling they’ll greatly benefit the silent majority.

Can’t wait to try things out!

TechMaybeHic

olsborg wrote: »

One thing you should be careful of @ZOS, is that purges and cleanses will be mucn more powerful with these changes. Classes with access to this is already powerful because of it.
Example: You get attacked by 3 players in cyrodiil and manage to LOS and escape for the time being, but you have 5 dots ticking away at you each with a duration of 20-30 seconds, the next 30 seconds of your life are very vulnerable if you get attacked again. The same situation for a templar for instance...he cast Extended Ritual once and those dots are basicly poof gone.

Eh. As is on a templar main, I don't bother with ER any more because it hurts the group if there's plague break, and replacing it with just a HOT takes care of most DOTs. Only really miss it when 1 on 1 vs a DK and that set that seems to be popular now as well as broken.

Really; they could use watering down the HOTs, reduce stacking, then just double the DOT duration without touching the damage per tick, and then maybe purges would be needed and powerful but countered still by PB.

Furcas00

I understand you're trying to narrow the gulf here between high end and low end players, but I think all you're really accomplishing here is punishing the high end players for being good at the game.

The issues with weaving I see are:

1. A bit of latency + human reaction delay means possibly missing your 400 ms weave window. Packet loss, input lag, and jitter shrink this window without any ability of the user to control it short of "get better PC and internet".

2. Queuing the skill too fast after the LA while the GCD is still going means missing the LA. The skill clips the LA.

3. There isn't an in game representation of the GCD turned on by default (you can enable the script, or download an addon).

4. No indication that the LA has fired off at all if you do it right. The sound and animation are drowned out in the ocean of effects going on in content where it's relevant. Even the damage numbers are likely obscured by other damage numbers.


The better solution I think overall is to do the following:

1. Allow a LA and a skill to be queued simultaneously and independently during the GCD. Extend the window of activation to 500 ms at minimum, but allow it to be adjusted to 750 ms based on user latency. This gives us all a little more breathing room to pull it off, and more importantly eliminates the problem of having to respond precisely the instant the gcd ends to be truly effective.

2. Put in a proper implementation of the GCD on the in game addon bars and preferably get rid of the antiquated addon bar design while you're at it and replace it with what fancy action bar does. This lets people make more effective decisions on the fly and at least makes the GCD more visible.

3. Ideally, put in an indicator for the GCD that can be moved. It's unlikely most high end players are looking at the bar much, and having an in your face built in GCD tracker is pretty useful for a game so heavily influenced by it.

4. Give some better feedback on when light attacks, heavy attacks, and even skills fire off. Whether that's simply a number on screen, a better indicator in the floating combat text, a little LA/HA icon that animates when they go off, or the monster yelling ow you stubbed my toe there needs to be BUILT IN indications of this.


As far as skill windows and short duration things go, they typically feel less than fun from a gameplay perspective in my opinion. Short duration buffs that you constantly have to watch a bar, a buff icon, or some other UI element for instead of actively playing the game are one of the absolute worst parts of MMOs. Games with somewhat better/different combat systems have moved on from this or designed where they occur naturally and don't need to be constantly watched. My suggestions:

1. Take a page from FFXIV's book here. They normalized buff and debuff windows to work around 30, 60, and 90 second timers. That doesn't necessarily mean adopt those timers exactly, but standardization is useful here. This lets you build bars and characters around windows rather than keeping constant vigilance of the whack a mole thing we got going on lately. You still end up hitting the same amount of keypresses, but you hit different ones instead and more "active" abilities as opposed to buffs/dots.

2. Reduce the number of abilities tied to buffs/debuffs/dots. Keep them all, but instead implement the maintenance into the class passives such that performing your rotation correctly means they maintain uptime. I wouldn't go with 100% into the passives, but shifting the ratio around will improve the "watch the action bars" situation.

3. Extend out group buffs to 1 minute. This does mean being on a buff window cycle, but I find that to be a more preferable solution than constantly playing whack a mole with them. This has an interesting interaction with mechanics for me as well since it may mean that I incorporate different abilities to address mechanics that are on a different timer.

4. Normalize the debuff types moreso. Instead of 3 different abilities that all provide a flame dot plus fire enchants too, switch this up so that there's a flame, lightning, ice, bleed, and poison dot. Now abilities apply one of those, and not multiple types of one. You can then implement the skill portion in maintaining stacking debuffs -- maybe they go to 3 stacks on some classes, lengthen in duration on recast, or increase in intensity. Perhaps a nightblade can increase a bleed dot's damage twice after the initial hit, but the duration does not refresh.

5. Normalize group buffs. Move away from the idea of having to bring a specific class for a specific buff and then lengthen the durations. Combine crit and damage buffs into single buffs instead of weapon and spell damage/critical. The idea of an MMO is to play with your friends, and more importantly play what you enjoy rather than maybe what is meta or brings the most to the raid in terms of buffs/debuffs. Bring the player not the class should, in my opinion, be the mantra for every game. Yes, roles are important, but telling me I need 2 necromancers to maintain vulnerability and that other solutions aren't as good seems so archaic to me in 2022. It's even more strange in an elder scrolls game where flexibility is probably one of the most important features of ES games since Arena.

p00tx

There are a few things to touch on here:

1) Please consider leaving ground based skills untouched. Many fights in this game are highly mobile which requires dynamic reapplication of skills in new locations in response to those mechanics. Decreasing the dmg/healing per second of ground based skills would cause a noticeable decrease in output in those instances. Most of the newest content employs these highly mobile mechanics, which is coincidentally the content that requires the most dmg/healing output to clear successfully.

2) ESO's sets, skills, and CP trees are all tools that everyone has access to already, and those tools can be used successfully or not. The end result comes down to the work an individual puts in to master the use of these tools. Competitive players will always figure out ways to make their tools output as much as possible, while casual players will use those tools in whichever way feels the most comfortable or intuitive to them. Neither way is wrong or right. Giving a tool a different "look" won't change the wielder of the tool or their intent while using it. This is not the way to minimize the skill gap. On that note, there is no reason to minimize the gap. Having a robust, competitive endgame community is fantastic for player retention. It gives people something to work toward over a longer period of time, rather than making the game an easy one-off that can be forgotten once a player quickly completes all of the content.

3) Be very cautious about the feedback you use when planning these radical overhauls. You only really hear the very casual players who tend to be the vocal majority on the forums, or the highly competitive players who release media content with their opinions or gameplay. There is a huge silent majority who resides somewhere in the middle, completing content and enjoying the game with a comfortable amount of skill/knowledge, but no drive or desire to engage in bleeding edge competitive play. The gap you keep describing is full of these players, which would seem to indicate there is no actual gap, but a wide and varied presence across the entire spectrum.

3) This announcement is almost verbatim the same combat announcement from about 3 years ago. The devs then proposed the same adjustments to skill timers for the exact same reasons, and we ended up with a dot meta across all classes, and damage went through the roof. The next patch, they reduced dot dmg to help offset the oversight, and dmg plummeted. End gamers then figured out how to work with the newer sets, and dmg went back up, higher than before. This is likely to go roughly the same way.

5) If I've learned anything over the many years I've played this game, it's that change is unavoidable. I'm not sure if it's acceptance, or some weird type of Stockholm syndrome making me say this, but I almost enjoy the changes, since they keep the game fresh and give me something new to learn every year and provide new challenges. I have no problem with yet another radical skill overhaul, as long as it's done carefully and thoughtfully, with all potential consequences carefully considered and hopefully adjusted for. That means taking into consideration the current content and its difficulty (please don't nerf them any further or they'll become boring), current sets and their existing proc timers which run concurrent with specific ingame skills/buffs/debuffs, such as the Master's Resto and the way it functions with Healing springs.

I apologize for the wall of text. There was a lot to go over, and I expect more observations and concerns will come to light as more players read about these changes.

washbern

This, i feel is a double-edged sword. While these changes lower the learning curve, i think it needs mentioning that many people don't prefer to play Stamina Templar using just jabs for 90% of the fight. Obviously i will need to see the proposed changes in action but this makes me a bit concerned that my DK will place his DOTs and then twirl around with his whip attack for half the fight.

Maybe also while you are there changing stuff, can you please add customization to some of the class abilities? Caus Tentacle floating brain of the wardens is just gross. Sorc pets also take up the whole screen sometimes. DK fire abilities look less threatening than a kid with a lighter. Pretty please?

svthomas

Another update with absurd changes that will do nothing to help gameplay, force an entire player base to relearn/unlearn combat fundamentals, and further alienate the dedicated player base who’ve kept this game afloat for all these years. I’m done.

Draxys

Please stop being “nanny” devs. No matter how much you try to give a leg up to most of the players near the “damage floor”, you will almost certainly do hardly anything to help them along, while hurting the experience of competent players. Notice I said “competent”, not “high skill”. It does not take much to be competent at this game, and to gather the knowledge necessary to complete most content. The players near the bottom of the barrel have done nothing to become one of those competent players, so why in the world would you shake up and dumb the game down for the rest of the player base? The low skill players won’t even notice the changes and will remain low skill, but competent players sure as hell will notice, and it sounds like it won’t be fun or engaging.

Edit- I would include many disabled players in the competent category. You can have a disability but learn to do what you can in the game to be effective. The bottom of the barrel players I referenced are people who are perfectly capable of being better, but don’t know how, don’t want to be better, or don’t know any better. And those are problems that require solutions OTHER than trying to raise the skill floor via mechanics.

Remathilis

Magio_ wrote: »

Some content will and should only be cleared by the very best. People need to learn to accept that.

Also ESO players: the endgame community is dying and PVP is a ghost town. Why isn't ZoS doing something to convince players to do vet content and PvP?

Faulgor

I'm worried about my light attack/Empower builds, but looking forward to the changes to sets (mainly the Maelstrom Destro staff). Otherwise this is a very welcome change.

The DoT nerf on the other hand I'm unsure about. "Normal" builds will compensate by being able to use more spammables, but DoT-focused builds look like toast. I hope there are some interesting changes to skills and gear that give me some hope here.

Casul

Just like the PvP thread,

Bummer.

Magio_

LuckyGhost wrote: »

Good changes IMO. Light attacks doing 20% of my damage when I had to utilize 10 abilities and 2 ultimates to claw out the other 80% just felt weird. The highest damage ability in a parse was the basic light attack? Never made sense to me.

That's because you used 11 instances Light Attacks and each individual skill only a few times... ugh

Remathilis wrote: »

Magio_ wrote: »

Some content will and should only be cleared by the very best. People need to learn to accept that.

Also ESO players: the endgame community is dying and PVP is a ghost town. Why isn't ZoS doing something to convince players to do vet content and PvP?

Clearning Vet Trials and getting TriFecta runs are not the same thing. Try again.

Alchimiste1

LuckyGhost wrote: »

Good changes IMO. Light attacks doing 20% of my damage when I had to utilize 10 abilities and 2 ultimates to claw out the other 80% just felt weird. The highest damage ability in a parse was the basic light attack? Never made sense to me.

Light attacks still accounting for 6-11% of the damage sounds solid enough to be rewarding, and even essential for an optimized build, but not so overreaching as it was before. I don't understand the frustration with bringing down LA dmg a little bit tbh.

Dots lasting longer is very interesting. My necro's spammable wont be barswap? I'll actually get to use a spammable. I'm excited to see how this plays out and what kind of sets and builds we can utilize to take advantage of the changes

show proof.

show your cmx of your light attacks doing 20% of YOUR dps

HoundofTara

Year after year of “lowering” the ceiling by nerfing the aspects of the game that require personal improvement and skill but leaving issues like overturned damage sets in the meta patch after patch to drive chapter sales. [snip] All dungeons have been laughably easy with no incentive to do the “hard”modes, long gone are the days of personalities and skins earned by being a learned player.
Now unlockables are in favor of the low skill player base, entering a dungeon is all it takes to get your reward now, sometimes just finishing it on vet nets you a skin, wouldn’t want to incentivize people to try to better themselves now would we? People’s inability to learn should hurt the veteran player base ever year right zos?
You need to realize the reason why the games player base is getting lower is because ever year since Elswyer we have gotten nothing to improve the combat or keep the game interesting, no new classes no new skill lines, tons of bad sets, no new weapons, nothing. Just features for people that don’t care for combat. Antiquities was decent and added good sets but again that’s devolved into Oaken soul, another one of your attempts to help the bottom of the player base get to the rooftop.
Tribute? Would have been way more accepted if we had a new class or skill line to go with it, but hey we get a trash dot change, longer buffs because the base line players can’t understand to reapply them when they run out and a nerf to weaving!
[snip]

[edited for bashing]

Dietche

To my esteemed cohorts in Tamriel;

ESO started with a dream held by a small group of people that broke away from the coming corporate overlords that Blizzard was getting in bed with. They saw the writing on the wall as original dev's and coders for WOW, and wanted to make a game that was pure. Free of corporate culture doublespeak.

Seeing this, WOW players flocked to ESO in droves and have never left, becoming veteran players in the process. Through thick and thin we have been here, day in and day out, and even give our time for FREE to help find bugs in the PTS to show our dedication to this past-time we hold dear, and the friends we've made in our journeys.

This means that you need to keep in mind that veteran players are long-term business clients. Week after week, month after month, year after year, you can rely on their orders and their patronage, after cultivating that relationship over time. This is the way successful business with loyal fans and loyal clients operate.

But large corporations do not care about such things. They can afford not to. They just want steadily improving new subscriber numbers month over month, regardless of the unsub's, because those bad numbers are rarely looked at during meetings in boardrooms. So they churn wheels only trying to lure the clients who now represent the bottom of the barrel in terms of players and paying customers. They play for a month and are never heard from again.

ZOS getting in bed with MS was supposed to herald a new era for ESO. Instead now all we see are changes that are extremely short-term and nearsighted in their nature, at the expense of those that have dedicated themselves to walking in lockstep alongside those original founders of our beloved game and even moreso: our beloved franchise.

Now we have a corporate culture that wishes to use wholly ineffective methods towards a stated goal of fostering the whims of casuals at the expense and ire of their long-term and most supportive of clients. These changes won't help the casuals, they will only make their bad habits even worse. These changes won't solve the high-end players being supposedly over-powered either. These changes will only hurt =both= casuals and veterans alike, and will also hurt the financial prosperity of the game, in short order.

You want a solution to casuals under-performing and veterans being over-powered?

Here's just *one* SUPER simple solution that fixes everything all at once:
1> buff white and green gear stats that casuals acquire early on by 10%
2> nerf purple and gold gear stats that veterans acquire later on by 10%
3> don't touch basic mechanics

Problem. Solved.

And, you won't irk those that have spent thousands of dollars over the last 8-9 years as loyal customers.
And, you will make new players have a wow-whizz-bang feeling as they start out, hooking them forever.
--Dietche

Anony_Mouse

If we take a step back and look at the objective here, it seems you are trying to address some of the challenges currently seen in the combat system, for newer players or lower dps players [ "improving accessibility to the game’s combat "]. How can this be addressed? Sure, you can look at "closing the gap" by making adjustments to weaving and DoT times. As you can see already from the thread, this isnt proving to be a popular approach.

Alternatively, you could look at it from a different perspective;
How can you improve on new player's introduction to the complexity of the ESO combat system?

Personally, I think if you want to improve the damage of lower end players, you could make a big impact by making a better combat introduction.

Take it all the way back to the combat intro. It currently teaches how to heavy attack and set off balance, but that's about it.
Let people start off with 3 class abilities already unlocked so when it comes to the combat tutorial, you can teach about light attack weaving as well.

Then once the player is past the intro/tutorial (or whatever the first part of making a new character is called), have training camps in the base game, like in Craglorn for example, with an NPC teaching more and more advanced combinations and reward people for going there. Achievements, leads, skill points, prizes or whatever. Something to encourage people to go.

Have it like a place where you can keep coming back to, to practice. If you’re brand new and/or have no guild, you currently have next to no access to being taught how to be come better and how to progress your combat skills. Or to any form of practice dummies.

Unless you run into a helpful person in a Normal Random Dungeon, you are at a strong disadvantage.
I was recently in a Normal DLC pug where CP1500+ players did not know how to interrupt a boss so we carried on wiping till I explained what the red lines meant... if those basic skills or knowledge is missing, there is something more fundamentally wrong with the introduction to combat in the game which has nothing to do with Light Attack weaving or DoT times.

Maybe help the new players instead of changing what already works for the experienced players?

joseayalac

Light attack and Heavy attack damage should be impactful, it would not make sense to hit with a weapon and not do more than a scratch.

It's important to see the bigger picture of game mechanics and how combat needs to make sense flavorwise for it to feel engaging.

Adjusting things by looking at parse numbers will leave us with a game that feels too far away from fantasy combat and more like a spreadsheet combat system. (It wouldn't be attractive for new players, and most players for that matter).

Probably you could make them cost a bit of resources or make LAs and HAs use a global cooldown like other skills. This would fix your animation canceling problem while respecting the essence of the game.

WrathOfInnos

Would is be possible to give buffs and DoTs a variety of different durations? This would allow players to choose if they want to juggle short DoTs or just apply long ones and spam their instant attacks. There has already been a trend over the years to extend durations on most skills, going from 6-8s to about 10-15s, and IMO it has negatively impacted the flow of combat.

You also have to consider that longer duration doesn't always add damage. Bosses tend to move out of ground effects or go into phases of immunity. This was already observed as an issue with Eruption before it's cost was changed to allow moving the location with less punishment.

A solution would be to allow some classes and skills to keep short durations, while others go to the longer versions requiring less micromanaging. Different builds/classes playing and feeling completely different is a good thing, we should embrace that and give players the choice.

Didgerion

Iselin wrote: »

Bad weavers will still weave badly compared to good weavers. All you're going to accomplish with these changes is that you're going to lower every players DPS and will do nothing to close the gap between the low end and high end players.

Especially, as others have already said, the really low end players who tend to often do nothing but pew pew bow light attacks. You're going to end up making their contribution to groups even worse than it already is.

This^

When the new players are out of juice (and they run out of juice quickly) the only thing they can do is light and heavy attack....
aaand the floor is falling again.