Update 35 Combat Preview

haelgaan

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

This in turn reinforces a need to glue your eyes to your action bars, taking you out of the action happening on screen.

So true. I am watching my timers and trying not to stand in red. If there is something else happening on screen, it is not evident to me.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

previously, a damage over time effect would deal 1.5× the damage of a “spammable” attack (such as Surprise Attack) over its duration of 10 seconds, or 0.15 relative damage per second.

this makes sense - the slightly higher return on damage makes it worth while to not cast a spammable and instead cast the DOT

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Now, damage over time effects will deal 2× the damage of a spammable attack over its duration of 20 seconds, increasing its damage per cast while reducing its relative damage per second to 0.1.

You've lost me on the logic, here. if you make the DOT roughly equal avg DPS to a spammable, then it sounds like you've just taken away the justification for casting any DOTS instead of a spammable. Takehome is that we should only cast spammables now, and forget DOTS?

FrankonPC

Borelock762 wrote: »

Good. Should level the playing field. All these *** running perfectly scripted macros with ani cancel might actually have to learn to play. Ive seen several streamers run a block cancels, and other ani cancels on everyone of their macros. I get hit with some questionable trash i usually whisper them and the response is one of two always.... i use a controller or they link their twitch lol. With the servers being better its even easier to see now. Aside from the desync that constantly happens cyro is almost playable.

"learn to play!" says the guy that thinks these sorts of things need scripts to do.

LadyLethalla

The sky is falling!

DeathStalker

Aldoss wrote: »

You might get ridiculed... But you might also meet your next best friend. You won't know if you don't try.

You make a point. I will think about what you said. Good day to you

CP5

So this particular parse came to mind when reading the post rationalizing the light and heavy attack 'standardization.'

103k dps, no light attacks or heavy attacks at all. I'd say 103 is "truly effective," and not 1 light attack was needed to make it happen. The only part of that observation that's correct is their reason for increasing skill durations, but heres the issue. Inexperienced players either spam one skill, be it something like arrow spray or poison arrow, aka not standard spammable skills, or they only do light attacks. What impact then would there be on players who find themselves sourcing all their damage from light attacks if you reduced their damage?

And then the duration increase on skills? I once jokingly thought, after the increase in combat prayer's cost (justified by raising its healing which was something that pve healers missed out on since most of it went into over healing anyway) is that ZOS could octuple the duration of healing springs but also octuple its cost, and thought it insane. ESO's combat is mobile, so reducing the damage a character who layers multiple dots can do through those skills, and increasing the cost of having a longer segment of those skills 'miss' will not be a pleasant experience. In that healing springs example, that change would be fantastic if the fight was static since you would be saving time casting, but if you have to move every second that aoe had left is now effectively wasted, so I'm sure people who do end game content where their enemies move, pve and pvp alike will love this change.

But this is not for those players, fine, but do you have any idea how many of the pugs I see in dungeon runs using any of those skills? If I see someone pre-buff before a fight they're in the top 10% of players skill wise from what I've seen. Simply using a buff, what does it matter if you increase its duration if people aren't even using it to begin with? The gap exist not because end game players are utilizing only the most optimal sets with perfect weaving, it's because they use all the tools at their disposal, buffs, dots, sets that actually line up with their role. Go ahead and log some pug runs and see how many people have a random mish-mash of sets well after level 160, watch what they do and see they aren't using barely any of their skills.

It all just comes down to the game not trusting players to try and never putting them in situations where they have to. I remember one quest boss, in the town in northern Reapers March, where I had to fight 2 elite enemies at once, and died. The death recap suggest I use rune cage, I did, and I won. I was in a position where I had to explore what options I had and use them, and that's what the players at the 'floor' mostly are struggling with. They need to actually start using skills and sets before changes in those areas will help them, unless you're willing to tear down the entire game to fit their playstyle.

Tannus15

Who is this for?
Really, I don't understand who this is meant to benefit.

As far as I can see this is a straight up nerf to dps which will affect everyone, it's not going to "bring up the floor" or any of that, it's just a nerf.

You want to address PvE power creep? Nerf stampede and maelstrom 2h. it's far out performing every other setup at the moment. In fact the numbers look quite reasonable if people are using bow or destro back bar.

What's more is you've done this light attack nerf before and everyone hated it. Everyone. It was so bad you guys ditched it and moved on. I guess, here we go again. Congrats, you've spent a whole heap of dev time doing it all over again and everyone will hate it again and I guess this time it will go live and you'll wonder why people stop playing.

What are you thinking?

Luke_Flamesword

So less damage per second for DOTs it's another hard nerf for dk class, just after couple months of some power?

Tannus15

haelgaan wrote: »

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

This in turn reinforces a need to glue your eyes to your action bars, taking you out of the action happening on screen.

So true. I am watching my timers and trying not to stand in red. If there is something else happening on screen, it is not evident to me.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

previously, a damage over time effect would deal 1.5× the damage of a “spammable” attack (such as Surprise Attack) over its duration of 10 seconds, or 0.15 relative damage per second.

this makes sense - the slightly higher return on damage makes it worth while to not cast a spammable and instead cast the DOT

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Now, damage over time effects will deal 2× the damage of a spammable attack over its duration of 20 seconds, increasing its damage per cast while reducing its relative damage per second to 0.1.

You've lost me on the logic, here. if you make the DOT roughly equal avg DPS to a spammable, then it sounds like you've just taken away the justification for casting any DOTS instead of a spammable. Takehome is that we should only cast spammables now, and forget DOTS?

no, for a single GCD a dot will do more damage than before, so you want as many dots as possible, however they will last longer so you'll cast them less which means more spammable GCD and less damage per second from dots.

so on live you cast a dot 6 times per minute doing say, 10k damage per cast, 1k damage per second.
on pts you'll cast a time 3 times per minute, doing 15k damage per cast, 750 damage per second

so less damage per second, less casts per minute

according to this a spammable will do 7.5k damage per cast. so the extra spammable damage will balance the dot damage loss making the whole exercise pretty redundant.

in the above example the "live" version does 60k damage per minute.
the "pts" example does 45k damage per minute + 3 spammables (22.5k) making it 67.5k total

Jaimeh

Tannus15 wrote: »

Who is this for?
Really, I don't understand who this is meant to benefit.

As far as I can see this is a straight up nerf to dps which will affect everyone, it's not going to "bring up the floor" or any of that, it's just a nerf.

The early/mid game player who wants a slower rotation, with less APM, and who wants to not be punished so much for missing LAs, (and not have as stark a dps difference with the higher players) is my guess as to who ZOS gears this towards, but it's a wrong way to go about increasing the floor. Plus, it will hurt those players who only do overland and do it by LA/HA attacking, and also the top end-gamers who go for scores, titles, and speedruns. The correct way to raise the floor is to teach core combat concepts and mechanics to players early on in their playthrough (this is all assuming that casual players *want* to improve, which is a big assumption, because ZOS has spoiled the players with their 'play-as-you-want' philosophy and made them entitled to want rewards while in low effort/RP builds). There was a good comment above saying how they dedicated a 10-minute tutorial to teaching the card game, while LA weaving is only mentioned in a 5 sec loading screen. Also, separating PvP from PvE, so changes that benefit one mode don't inadvertently harm the other would go a long way as well, healing is a good example, and something that will be negatively impacted for PvE, while it's needed for PvP.

Dagobertfuk

@Gilliamtherogue

The casuals dont even have a chance to get more skill, because since the changes to cadwells Silver + Gold with One Tamriel the difficulty niveau makes majority of the playerbase think that the overland difficulty got designed to be as BOT friendly as possible.

There is no way to improve the skill level because its the same boring experience wich doesnt require any real lvl of decent skill from lvl 1-50. And the frightening truth is, the better the gear gets, the easier it even will be.

Congratulations. You created the easiest game in the history of gaming related to overland wich is also the biggest skill brake of any game.

And with lvl 50 those people hit a wall, when they try to do veteran content. But they cant because the lvling experience before didnt prepare them at all for it. And you wonder why the gap between casual and veteran is that big. I cant stop laughing.

Actually the game just starts giving people a chance to get better with lvl 50 and vet content.

And nerf dmg of light attacks wont change anything. You just archieve that people are even less motivated to learn weaving.

With all those changes like small casttimes to ultimate to prevent animation canceling or the increase of ability durations just will archive that people will use spammables for a longer period of time to look even more like a bot.

Its just a skill brake wich doesnt help anyone to get better and its like a punch in the face of every veteran player wich constantly sharpen their skill.

Those casuals stay casual because over the years you take them more and more chances to improve while the veterans wich played this game since release, get just dumped again because they give you valuable feedback wich you dont listened to and will prolly be more inactive than before because the game doesnt challenge them anymore enough.

If those changes are gonna be so bad as it looks, i guess that i have to quit the game and search some other Ashes of Creations waiting room.

CE_Nex

I do not appreciate the way this post seems to villify endgamers, as if they are to blame for the powercreep present in the game.

...a continuation of the attempt to quell some of the obscene damage production at the high end. Let’s start by breaking apart some of the fundamental realities of ESO today.

What do you mean by obscene? Is it unsightly that groups and players are optimizing the item sets and abilities that you designed and implemented despite consistent feedback and data from numerous cycles of PTS? Was Nazaray, Turning Tide, Coral Riptide, Depths of Whorl and the significant increase in damage they provide the fualt of the players?

Currently, to be truly effective in ESO’s combat, you need to learn to manipulate something that is known as “weaving,”...

Manipulate? You mean utilize? Utilize a feature you implemented and have consistently reinforced through sets like Relequen, Kinras, Advancing Yokeda, Harpooner's Wading Kilt and so many, many more. This statement seems to be tailored to distance ZOS from the concept of weaving, as if it's totally the consequence of the players who "manipulate" it to realize high damage output.

I can fully appreciate and support the effort of reducing the skill gap between players. But please do not try to subtly paint endgamers as the issue. This is so disheartening.

Tannus15

Jaimeh wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Who is this for?
Really, I don't understand who this is meant to benefit.

As far as I can see this is a straight up nerf to dps which will affect everyone, it's not going to "bring up the floor" or any of that, it's just a nerf.

The early/mid game player who wants a slower rotation, with less APM, and who wants to not be punished so much for missing LAs, (and not have as stark a dps difference with the higher players) is my guess as to who ZOS gears this towards, but it's a wrong way to go about increasing the floor. Plus, it will hurt those players who only do overland and do it by LA/HA attacking, and also the top end-gamers who go for scores, titles, and speedruns. The correct way to raise the floor is to teach core combat concepts and mechanics to players early on in their playthrough (this is all assuming that casual players *want* to improve, which is a big assumption, because ZOS has spoiled the players with their 'play-as-you-want' philosophy and made them entitled to want rewards while in low effort/RP builds). There was a good comment above saying how they dedicated a 10-minute tutorial to teaching the card game, while LA weaving is only mentioned in a 5 sec loading screen. Also, separating PvP from PvE, so changes that benefit one mode don't inadvertently harm the other would go a long way as well, healing is a good example, and something that will be negatively impacted for PvE, while it's needed for PvP.

this
THIS
TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO PLAY THE GAME

You want to increase the "new player experience"
Put damage enchants on damage set BY DEFAULT.
The default gear setup in this game is terrible for DPS.

Robust / Arcane with stam / mag regen is literally the worst.

How can it be that the correct answer to being having terrible setups and builds is to make the stats not matter anymore

You What?!?!?

The problem is that you made the game punish you for NOT stacking everything into one attribute. That's a problem. Anyone that ISN'T a tank putting stats in health is doing it wrong.
Anyone who puts stats into mag AND stam is doing it wrong.
This is a GAME PROBLEM.
This will not be fixed by tweaking light attack numbers. It won't! You guys have designed a system that works a particular way and then FORGOT TO TELL PEOPLE HOW IT WORKS and wonder why they don't do right.

Photosniper89

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings!

It’s almost time for the next update, and that means it’s time to share some of the reasoning behind the upcoming big shake-ups. This update brings a massive slew of balance adjustments all at once to hopefully reduce the need of large sweeping changes in subsequent updates, since some seemingly minor changes affect a huge part of the game’s combat. The main focuses in Update 35 are twofold: improving accessibility to the game’s combat by increasing the duration of outgoing ability effects (such as damage over time, buffs, and debuffs) and a continuation of the attempt to quell some of the obscene damage production at the high end. Let’s start by breaking apart some of the fundamental realities of ESO today.


Weaving

Currently, to be truly effective in ESO’s combat, you need to learn to manipulate something that is known as “weaving,” which refers to the act of squeezing multiple actions into the global cooldown window. Doing so drastically increases your agency and output, and it is a staple of the game that we’ve come to embrace, as it helps our combat feel different and exciting to participate in once you learn the ins and outs. However, the impact of weaving leads to a massive gap in performance where players who cannot interact with it as effectively are left miles behind those who can. While this is partially unavoidable and an important part of what makes the mastery of ESO or any activity utilizing a similar system particularly satisfying, we want to do what we can to shorten that delta. The closer the gap between the low and high end, the easier it is to create content that can accommodate a wider audience, while making more natural progression points for those looking to improve. To this end, we’ve started to look at the impact that one of the most common and important forms of weaving has in ESO: Light and Heavy Attack weaving.

Coming in Update 35, we’re reducing Light and Heavy Attacks’ impact in damage production by adjusting their damage to deal a flat amount, regardless of stats. We have spent a considerable amount of time investigating the baseline experience that a new player would have with these attacks, using that as our starting point for how much damage they do moving forward. The aim is to not harm the low-end experience, and target only the higher end. In doing so, we hope to reduce the difference of damage potential in a way that retains the satisfaction of learning to weave, where the impact is still felt, but to a much less degree than before.

For reference, in many of ESO’s high-end experiences and activities, the average build sees roughly 15–20% of their overall damage coming from Light Attacks alone, which is a huge contribution to the delta of power we see. While testing these adjustments internally, we’ve seen a reduction of 6–11% to overall damage, which allows for a much smaller and healthier gap while still retaining the sense of mastery and expression of that mastery with weaving.

With this adjustment, we’ll also be making a significant number of changes to item sets, passives, and buffs to ensure classes remain balanced in damage production, while also trying to do a better job allowing builds to amplify these actions (we’ve heard your cries, Heavy Attack build lovers, and we want better for you) without introducing unhealthy gameplay between PvE and PvP.


Combat Effects

The other area we have spent a considerable amount of time on for this update is the uptime of effects in ESO, as these are another huge way to improve your combat capabilities. Outside of weaving, the main limiter of your effectiveness in combat is your ability to output events, such as damage, healing, shielding, etc., which is bound by activating abilities, which in turn are bound within the global cooldown system. Activating an ability from your action bar locks out your other abilities for one second, so, a way to circumvent this system is to utilize actions that add power or extra events without your need to continuously activate them. These are often seen as buff and debuff abilities, or damage and healing over time abilities. Keeping as many of these abilities up as long possible dramatically improves your combat potential, creating another area of mastery and potential of power deltas.

Currently, many of these abilities fall within a 10-second window, meaning to maximize your efficiency, you must activate them once every 10 seconds. With 10 total active ability slots at your disposal, this often creates a situation where you want to load up almost every slot with one of these abilities, adding to your combat output for each duration-based effect you utilize. Between this and the engagement of weaving, this creates a reality where high actions per minute (APM) is required to be effective, as well as a robust rotation to keep as many of these effects up as possible. This in turn reinforces a need to glue your eyes to your action bars, taking you out of the action happening on screen. While this can create exhilarating combat experiences where you need to constantly monitor different activities on screen, it can also be overwhelming and particularly challenging for you to do so at the rate required to be effective.

As such, coming in Update 35, we are increasing the duration of many of these effects in game, primarily damage over time, buffs, and debuffs. By extending the duration, we hope to reduce the stress of many combat rotations, allowing for you to focus more on the action in front of you rather than the action of juggling buffs and debuffs on your ability bar and making the game far more accessible.

Since many of these effects currently add a tremendous amount of power per cast over their duration, simply increasing their duration would merely inject a significant amount of power into the game, where this is already in excess. To combat this, we’re adjusting many of these values to account for their increased duration; there will be overall increase of effectiveness per cast, while reducing their effectiveness per second while active. This should reduce the ceiling potential of many builds, while improving their baseline experiences where many players will have an easier time keeping these effects active. In simpler terms, we’re reducing the damage potential for these abilities per second, while increasing their total output overall.

For example, previously, a damage over time effect would deal 1.5× the damage of a “spammable” attack (such as Surprise Attack) over its duration of 10 seconds, or 0.15 relative damage per second. Now, damage over time effects will deal 2× the damage of a spammable attack over its duration of 20 seconds, increasing its damage per cast while reducing its relative damage per second to 0.1. In accordance with this, many healing over time effects will have their values adjusted to ensure they do not overperform when compared to damage over time, while still being impactful in PvE environments.

Both areas required an extensive pass of existing class ability and passive power to ensure they remain balanced with one another afterward. As such, the PTS patch notes will have a sizable amount of number tweaking. We recognize this will create a lot of changes in how you optimize your builds and how you play them, but it is our hope that by the end of the transition to these standards, the game will be more enjoyable and accessible to everyone.

After these adjustments are live, we are going to focus on any resulting balance issues for the next few updates, hopefully reducing the chaotic nature of change for a brief period after the initial turbulence. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the discussions that come out of this, as well as the initial feedback over the upcoming PTS cycle. Since the scale of these changes is large in nature, please understand it may take more time for adjustments to come since changing one standard affects many specific abilities.


We hope this helps provide some clarity of our goals with the upcoming changes you’ll see and aids in bracing yourself for the number of changes coming as well. We know this is never an easy process, and we appreciate your patience and tolerance as we try to improve the game that you (and we!) love. May your roads lead you to pleasant journeys, and we look forward to seeing you in Tamriel!

TL;DR

5 people in the class got A's, 20 got B's and 15 got C's.

The teacher scaled the grades so now 5 people have A+, 20 have A-, and 15 have B+.

SGT_Courtney

If you want to bring down the ceiling then aim at the ceiling. Implement a DPS cap to whatever PVE monsters you deem necessary just like you put a cap on crit and pen. Could do the same thing to players when they enter PVP. Just limit how much overall DPS a player or monster can take. Maybe a built-in auto self heal if they start taking over a certain amount of DPS? Maybe add a small delay so bombers can still get their sadistic kicks.

Then you can add whatever the hell you want to the game as long as it doesn’t make it too easy for players to hit the new DPS cap and there you go, you’ll never have to worry about this again and in the future if you want to adjust the ceiling go nuts.

TitanEidolon

Iselin wrote: »

I find it totally amazing that so many in this thread seem to be buying the idea that this hurts experts and helps lower end players. Just think it through.

snip

It's a DPS nerf for those of you thinking that now you'll be able to do the vet runs you couldn't do before. YOU ARE NOT GETTING BUFFED.

Rude awakening incoming.

When I run vet trials, we have three or four people who parse 80-100k, And we have a handful of people who are in the 30s or 40s or less. This works. Average DPS is great and we can all run with people we like. If you nerf the top end DPS across the board, we won't be able to afford to bring the lower DPS with us anymore. We're going to have to raise the minimum requirement for our runs

Tannus15

here is another example of terrible game design.

only 1 gear trait increases dps, and that's divines, and only that works if you have one of the damage mundus.

think about that for a moment. there are 9 traits for armour, and of those, 8 do nothing for dps.

think about how particular builds are for this game and how unlikely it is that people are going to know this without guidance.

and the solution to this, is to Ignore The Stats.

Insane.

Ezhh

Yes, there is a damage gap between the floor and ceiling. Maybe this will make it a little smaller but in the end... what would that mean?

The players who do not want to invest time in learning how to do things won't suddenly find their experience of the game improved. They will not suddenly be accepted into HM groups or suddenly be able to more efficiently farm trials for equipment. This is because they will still be players who do not want to invest the time to learn what is needed for this. And that's okay. That is not a problem. People who do not want to put in effort to reach a certain skill threshold still have plenty of content and a normal difficulty mode and there is NO problem with that.

There also shouldn't be a problem for those of us who have come to love the game for the more fast paced rotations and higher skill threshold it currently has. Watering down gameplay for us won't in any way help those who do not want to play like us. It will just hurt us, and quite possibly undo the goodwill so many people I know have started feeling on the back of the release of such an interesting new trial.

Some problems/thoughts:

• Increasing DoT length but lowering dps means shorter fights will be more difficult on DoT builds - A skill gets its full use in any fight that ends just after the skill does. The longer a skill lasts the more likely it is that a bigger chunk of it is left unused after your enemy is defeated. This is actually more likely to harm less experienced players who don't know how to judge when it's worth reapplying a DoT.
• If DoTs will last 20 seconds as suggested, pure DoT builds might no longer work (10 skills max, if they last 20 seconds each... doubt it will work quite like this but if it does the numbers mean the death of pure DoT builds.) Do we lose a playstyle and have fewer options?
• If this applies to HoTs, I guess the expectation is weaker overall HoTs and then more Prayer (or other burst heal) spamming? Some classes only have Prayer as a group burst heal and the price on that was raised recently so that spamming it got more costly. (Think about things like Falgravn HM and DSR's Maelstrom, where there are damage ticks and the strength of HoTs can really matter, because you just can't spam a burst heal every single second but you still need to produce a minimum amount of healing per second. This might just turn into needing to slot more HoTs, making things more complicated to manage. This could get painful for less experienced healers, especially in more mobile fights where they might need to reposition HoTs frequently so gain less from increase duration).

I'm not going to talk about the light attack changes for now beyond saying they make me very unhappy.

This is all before even mentioning the fatigue that comes with the rules being changed so frequently. At this point I am really starting to feel the burn-out. Some might say this means it's time to find myself a new game, and maybe it is, but I still get excited by new trials and new dungeons, even by new overland maps to explore. I'm just worn down by needing to change and re-learn my builds over and over and over again. So are a lot of people in my trial groups.

Please reconsider these changes.

James-Wayne

Light attack nerfs.... FINALLY!!!

REJOICE PLAYERS ON HIGH PING!!!

Tannus15

James-Wayne wrote: »

Light attack nerfs.... FINALLY!!!

REJOICE PLAYERS ON HIGH PING!!!

I have high ping, i'm in Melbourne. this isn't going to help you. it's not hard to weave with 250+ ping.

Jaraal

The most disturbing part about the whole thing is that we seem to have been in a paid beta for eight years. Eight years, and they are still trying to figure out how basic combat should work.

Games should become more complex and engaging over time, to keep dedicated players logging in. But the modus operandi here of late seems to be the conglomeration and simplification of core functions. We’ve been told that it’s for performance reasons….. but no mention of that in this latest update. However, it seems logical that making LAs and HAs do standardized damage, and reducing the number of times skills are cast would have a definite effect on server calls.

I wonder why no mention was made of that?

icAirborne

James-Wayne wrote: »

Light attack nerfs.... FINALLY!!!

REJOICE PLAYERS ON HIGH PING!!!

I’ve nearly always played this game at a constant 300-400 ping and I can tell you that it never impeded my ability to light attack weave.

An unstable connection aka highly fluctuating ping will effect it, but that also effects your ability to cast skills too and just play the game in general so doesnt help anything.

Tldr is that LA patch doesnt change anything special for high ping players

madman65

The new servers have been struggling with the calculations in large groups (ie Trials, PVP groups) which I can clearly see when there is lag or banding from environmental interaction. I was in vCR+2 last night and the Voltanic Overload was announced on me but didn`t appear until the screen was almost full the blue color. If ESO keeps taxing these servers with more and more calculations and timers then we will start getting a very poor gaming experience.

James-Wayne

Tannus15 wrote: »

James-Wayne wrote: »

Light attack nerfs.... FINALLY!!!

REJOICE PLAYERS ON HIGH PING!!!

I have high ping, i'm in Melbourne. this isn't going to help you. it's not hard to weave with 250+ ping.

I'm in Perth on 390 ping, the furthest from the US server you can get. Weaving is not possible at that rate because the attack dont register fast enough. When I was in Germany many years ago I played on EU with 90 ping and could very easily weave without missing light attacks.

Trust me I've been playing this game for 8 years, its a thing.

Tannus15

James-Wayne wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

James-Wayne wrote: »

Light attack nerfs.... FINALLY!!!

REJOICE PLAYERS ON HIGH PING!!!

I have high ping, i'm in Melbourne. this isn't going to help you. it's not hard to weave with 250+ ping.

I'm in Perth on 390 ping, the furthest from the US server you can get. Weaving is not possible at that rate because the attack dont register fast enough. When I was in Germany many years ago I played on EU with 90 ping and could very easily weave without missing light attacks.

Trust me I've been playing this game for 8 years, its a thing.

i know people in perth who have significantly lower than 390 ping, you should be more like 300. i suggest changing your ISP.

VaranisArano

Jaraal wrote: »

The most disturbing part about the whole thing is that we seem to have been in a paid beta for eight years. Eight years, and they are still trying to figure out how basic combat should work.

Games should become more complex and engaging over time, to keep dedicated players logging in. But the modus operandi here of late seems to be the conglomeration and simplification of core functions. We’ve been told that it’s for performance reasons….. but no mention of that in this latest update. However, it seems logical that making LAs and HAs do standardized damage, and reducing the number of times skills are cast would have a definite effect on server calls.

I wonder why no mention was made of that?

Think of ESO less as a game that's still in beta, and more of an MMO that needs to periodically shake up the meta in major and minor ways in order to prevent players from getting too comfortable, growing bored, and leaving the game.

This is pretty standard Horizontal Progression stuff, which has been ZOS' modus operandi since they abandoned vertical progression with One Tamriel.

The Devs aren't figuring out how basic combat should work with the goal of creating a static finished product like, say, Skyrim. With Skyrim, you buy the game and they make back their costs, so you can make and ship a finished product (until its time to milk the Anniversary editions). With an MMO, they need constant player engagement to support their costs, so they are in the business of changing up how basic combat works in order to keep the game from becoming static.

Trundik

Tannus15 wrote: »

here is another example of terrible game design.

only 1 gear trait increases dps, and that's divines, and only that works if you have one of the damage mundus.

think about that for a moment. there are 9 traits for armour, and of those, 8 do nothing for dps.

think about how particular builds are for this game and how unlikely it is that people are going to know this without guidance.

and the solution to this, is to Ignore The Stats.

Insane.

I use infused and impenetrable in pvp :S But yes, this is bad design. I mean sets have same problem.

MindOfTheSwarm

Luke_Flamesword wrote: »

So less damage per second for DOTs it's another hard nerf for dk class, just after couple months of some power?

The nerf to DoT’s is going to be felt most in the hardest content. Especially Vet Arenas. Imagine Vet Vateshran final boss, but now the damage you deal to all the trash is going to take longer. DoT’s were a boom on that boss, now I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again unless I go for a cookie cutter Pale Order ring build. Something I haven’t done.

ccfeeling

Increase buff debuff duration, weaving speed, so can dev bring back the original difficulty of dlc dungeons, you dev nerfed them to the ground for those baby cryers.

Alpha_AC

@ZOS_Gilliam When are you guys going to realise that at some point, it's on the players to get better at the game?

MrGhosty

I would classify myself as a casual, I've dipped my toe into endgame stuff but running the same fights over and over and over just for an incremental improvement doesn't really float my boat. I also have multiple characters with some using very odd combos so that I can play with a little bit of everything. I mention these things to give some context to my feedback, I don't like the idea of them nerfing LA damage in a bid to bring the floor and ceiling closer together. Stuff like Oakensoul is the preferred route (not concerning its pvp implications) because it allows me to take a subpar build that I've chose for the "look" of it and make it competitive enough that I wouldn't feel like I was punishing people I got grouped with. I don't like weaving because it makes the character animations look jerky and part of the reason I play is to see cool stuff happen on screen, but when I go into harder content where other people are relying on me to do my part I still try my best to make them happen.

I would rather they focus their efforts on properly tutorializing LA weaving, implement some UI functionality to make it trackable (like calling the weaves "combos" and have a combo counter on screen so you can easily gauge your upkeep) and adding gear sets that are very useful/attractive to newer players or quirky builds but don't become meta. PvP is another goose entirely and should be balanced separately.

I think there is still much to be done to better help newer players or those in the middle, but LA weaving nerf doesn't feel like it's going to help us filthy casuals as promised. It's also going to have the fun knock on effect of further dividing us in this silly blame game where we get blamed by vets for dumbing down their game experience, when all most people want is to be able to experience more that the game has to offer. Give us better tools/teaching to guide us into those encounters please.