I broke a tank's heart last night. (Werewolf tanking)

moderatelyfatman

I was in a vet dungeon PUG last night with a werewolf tank who commented to the group that they couldn't understand why they were having so much trouble tanking.
I told them about the updates to Tormentor in patch 40/41 which killed werewolf tanking as an option.
It was obvious that the player was very upset at this and I certainly did not enjoy being the breaker of bad news. They told me that they were going to unsub from ESO+ because their favourite build had been destroyed.

I know that this has been covered before but I still don't know why the combat devs did this. Werewolf tanks were a fun niche build and were not used in score-pushing or endgame. PvE wasn't getting overrun by a flood of werewolf tanks which was destroying the tank role. PvP isn't getting overrun by werewolf tanks either.

Literally, no one asked for this change and the end result is that it will cost the game players and subscribers while making the devs come across as out of touch at best, or spiteful at worst.

slt101880b14_ESO

I've noticed a disturbing trend: If another high end MMO (WoW is a good example) has it, ESO will not.
Lock on targeting? Sorry WoW has it so ESO will not.
3 dimensional swimming? Yep ESO wont have it...too much like WoW.
Public Auction House? You guessed it. Must not "copy" WoW.
Defined Class Roles in Dungeons (Tank, Healer,DPS)? Too much like WoW. Need to be different no matter how much its detrimental to the game.
AoE Taunting? WoW has it, so we don't need it..

Those are just a few from just 1 competing MMO.

ESO is spending so much time and effort just to be unique that's its lost sight of the bigger picture.

Over used quote:
"Just because you're unique, doesn't make you useful"

moderatelyfatman

slt101880b14_ESO wrote: »

I've noticed a disturbing trend: If another high end MMO (WoW is a good example) has it, ESO will not.
Lock on targeting? Sorry WoW has it so ESO will not.
3 dimensional swimming? Yep ESO wont have it...too much like WoW.
Public Auction House? You guessed it. Must not "copy" WoW.
Defined Class Roles in Dungeons (Tank, Healer,DPS)? Too much like WoW. Need to be different no matter how much its detrimental to the game.
AoE Taunting? WoW has it, so we don't need it..

Those are just a few from just 1 competing MMO.

ESO is spending so much time and effort just to be unique that's its lost sight of the bigger picture.

Over used quote:
"Just because you're unique, doesn't make you useful"

I'm going to disagree with you on this. My experience with ESO of late has been the opposite where they see features of other games and then make a really lame version of it:

Wow, Final Fantasy 14 and other MMOs allow you to switch to any class or roles on the fly! Lets bring in our own system called the Armory and limit players to 2 slots unless they pay for more.

That Gwent card game in Witcher 3 is a blast! Lets make our own version where it takes 30+ minutes to play the game!

Those Diablo players seem to love the endless dungeons! Lets make our own version of the endless dungeon where the rewards are not worth the grind.

All the while, the most unique aspect of the game that we also love the most (PvP, general Combat, niche builds) are slowly dying.

Sakiri

Wow doesn't do aoe taunts in retail anymore, everything just automatically hits the tank because everything they do has a ridiculous threat modifier on it. Same thing with ffxiv.

GW2 has no real tank mechanism, bosses target whomever has the most toughness, even if it's a dps.

Trash in dungeons isn't too dangerous if people know what they're doing so it's not necessary, but werewolf has no innate taunt and can't use outside skills.

huskandhunger

I feel sorry for that werewolf player. Our pounce used to not have a carnage ability that requires a second cast for the swipe to go off otherwise tormenter could still find use single taunting at least, but it's very onerous now, the poor dear they probably feel the playstyle they loved was destroyed.

JanTanhide

It was fun so it was nerfed. That's what I see when things are changed like this.

AcadianPaladin

I joined others in commenting during the applicable PTS. Tormentor was never a power creep thing since top end tanks didn't use it. Rather, nerfing Tormentor angered the fun, creative few builds that did use it. The nerf means less tanks; given the shortage of tanks to begin with, methinks a poor move.

moderatelyfatman

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I joined others in commenting during the applicable PTS. Tormentor was never a power creep thing since top end tanks didn't use it. Rather, nerfing Tormentor angered the fun, creative few builds that did use it. The nerf means less tanks; given the shortage of tanks to begin with, methinks a poor move.

I agree with you there. At least with the stamden, I can imagine a dev seeing a 150k parse on the bleed builds and panic-nerfing the class into oblivion without understanding what they were doing.
This nerf comes across as simply pure nastiness on the part of the devs.

Erickson9610

We know AoE taunting was featured with the Scribing system, as Vault (the featured Bow Grimoire) has an AoE effect, and one of the effects you can apply to it is "Taunt":



Unfortunately, werewolves cannot use Bow skills (or any non-Werewolf skill, for that matter) so the only way to AoE taunt now is with the Scribing feature, which in 2024 will not be usable by werewolves unless there's a Grimoire made for the Werewolf skill line.

Szalord

I don't see how the change to the tormentor set would have "killed" werewolf tanking. It still allows to taunt the main target, which is where a taunt would be required anyway, because we only need to taunt big targets and bosses.

Erickson9610

Szalord wrote: »

I don't see how the change to the tormentor set would have "killed" werewolf tanking. It still allows to taunt the main target, which is where a taunt would be required anyway, because we only need to taunt big targets and bosses.

It's not completely dead, but it's now far more tedious than it used to be. Pounce and its morphs change into Carnage and its morphs for 5 seconds when cast. Werewolf's skills are expensive — Pounce and its morphs cost 4016 Stamina, while Carnage and its morphs cost 2008 Stamina, half the cost of Pounce.

So, it would cost 6024 Stamina to proc Tormentor on a single enemy using Pounce + Carnage, two GCDs. Alternatively, you could cast Pounce and then wait 5 seconds to be able to cast Pounce again, which would only cost you 4016 Stamina, 5 seconds of downtime, and one GCD. Compare this with Puncture and its morphs, which cost 1148 Stamina (with 2 points into Fortress, reducing 1h+shield skill cost) to taunt a single target, one GDC.

In other words, to cast Pounce + Carnage to taunt one enemy would cost approximately 5.247 times as much Stamina as the One Hand and Shield taunt skill, while Pounce alone would only cost approximately 3.498 times as much Stamina, plus 5 seconds of cooldown between taunting targets. This doesn't even mention how Werewolf doesn't currently receive weapon passives anyway, so passives like Sword and Board (which increases damage blocked) won't work in Werewolf form.

Gray_howling_parrot

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

slt101880b14_ESO wrote: »

I've noticed a disturbing trend: If another high end MMO (WoW is a good example) has it, ESO will not.
Lock on targeting? Sorry WoW has it so ESO will not.
3 dimensional swimming? Yep ESO wont have it...too much like WoW.
Public Auction House? You guessed it. Must not "copy" WoW.
Defined Class Roles in Dungeons (Tank, Healer,DPS)? Too much like WoW. Need to be different no matter how much its detrimental to the game.
AoE Taunting? WoW has it, so we don't need it..

Those are just a few from just 1 competing MMO.

ESO is spending so much time and effort just to be unique that's its lost sight of the bigger picture.

Over used quote:
"Just because you're unique, doesn't make you useful"

I'm going to disagree with you on this. My experience with ESO of late has been the opposite where they see features of other games and then make a really lame version of it:

Wow, Final Fantasy 14 and other MMOs allow you to switch to any class or roles on the fly! Lets bring in our own system called the Armory and limit players to 2 slots unless they pay for more.

That Gwent card game in Witcher 3 is a blast! Lets make our own version where it takes 30+ minutes to play the game!

Those Diablo players seem to love the endless dungeons! Lets make our own version of the endless dungeon where the rewards are not worth the grind.

All the while, the most unique aspect of the game that we also love the most (PvP, general Combat, niche builds) are slowly dying.

I'm getting the POINT of this take, but the information is both opinionated and wrong in a couple instances. You guys are also essentially agreeing but from different points of view lol.

#1 World of Warcraft doesn't let you switch to any class on the fly - final fantasy does though. Role-wise, yes, but ESO does as well! We have the armory system and can switch between tank, healer and dps easier than ever now similar to how you can change talents (specs) in WoW. Also, on PC, we've had the ability to do this w/o the armory system for quite some time now.

The card game is my least favorite content in ESO - but given the resources at the time that they had available (COVID), I gave this one a pass.

I personally have been loving Infinite Archive. Being able to earn a mount in-game and all of the class-based style pages has been a blast. I've collected almost 5/7 of the class style pages at this point and think the mount is sick. The game is finally starting to move in the direction of more accessible, earnable rewards, but they need to expand this to every aspect of the game and not bar it behind infinite archive, which absolutely isn't everybody's cup of tea.

Gray_howling_parrot

Erickson9610 wrote: »

We know AoE taunting was featured with the Scribing system, as Vault (the featured Bow Grimoire) has an AoE effect, and one of the effects you can apply to it is "Taunt":



Unfortunately, werewolves cannot use Bow skills (or any non-Werewolf skill, for that matter) so the only way to AoE taunt now is with the Scribing feature, which in 2024 will not be usable by werewolves unless there's a Grimoire made for the Werewolf skill line.

I think many have come to the conclusion that even though they stated that AOE taunting via Tormentor is not "part of their vision for tanking," that more than likely there was some coding issue going into scribing (potentially?) that they had to re-work given that, as you said, we're likely to see AOE taunting via a variety of scribing skills. BUT, who knows? Maybe when scribing makes its way into class skills, vampire, werewolf, etc. we'll see that functionality again! Kinda surprised they're not touching werewolf or vampire given the skill lines that they ARE adding to.

Erickson9610

Cooperharley wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

We know AoE taunting was featured with the Scribing system, as Vault (the featured Bow Grimoire) has an AoE effect, and one of the effects you can apply to it is "Taunt":



Unfortunately, werewolves cannot use Bow skills (or any non-Werewolf skill, for that matter) so the only way to AoE taunt now is with the Scribing feature, which in 2024 will not be usable by werewolves unless there's a Grimoire made for the Werewolf skill line.

I think many have come to the conclusion that even though they stated that AOE taunting via Tormentor is not "part of their vision for tanking," that more than likely there was some coding issue going into scribing (potentially?) that they had to re-work given that, as you said, we're likely to see AOE taunting via a variety of scribing skills. BUT, who knows? Maybe when scribing makes its way into class skills, vampire, werewolf, etc. we'll see that functionality again! Kinda surprised they're not touching werewolf or vampire given the skill lines that they ARE adding to.

Yeah, I was surprised when they included Soul Magic, but not the other World skill lines like Vampire or Werewolf. Maybe because they weren't included in the first year of the system, potential Vampire and Werewolf Grimoires will be better, as the system will have had time since introduction to improve?

sneakymitchell

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Szalord wrote: »

I don't see how the change to the tormentor set would have "killed" werewolf tanking. It still allows to taunt the main target, which is where a taunt would be required anyway, because we only need to taunt big targets and bosses.

It's not completely dead, but it's now far more tedious than it used to be. Pounce and its morphs change into Carnage and its morphs for 5 seconds when cast. Werewolf's skills are expensive — Pounce and its morphs cost 4016 Stamina, while Carnage and its morphs cost 2008 Stamina, half the cost of Pounce.

So, it would cost 6024 Stamina to proc Tormentor on a single enemy using Pounce + Carnage, two GCDs. Alternatively, you could cast Pounce and then wait 5 seconds to be able to cast Pounce again, which would only cost you 4016 Stamina, 5 seconds of downtime, and one GCD. Compare this with Puncture and its morphs, which cost 1148 Stamina (with 2 points into Fortress, reducing 1h+shield skill cost) to taunt a single target, one GDC.

In other words, to cast Pounce + Carnage to taunt one enemy would cost approximately 5.247 times as much Stamina as the One Hand and Shield taunt skill, while Pounce alone would only cost approximately 3.498 times as much Stamina, plus 5 seconds of cooldown between taunting targets. This doesn't even mention how Werewolf doesn't currently receive weapon passives anyway, so passives like Sword and Board (which increases damage blocked) won't work in Werewolf form.

Feral pounce maybe way to go for substain. Reason why I use stam recovery on my werewolf tank. Cause you be dodging time to time cause no shield psssive

Foxxal

Yeah I've onboarded a lot of players that wanted to use werewolf and vampire builds and having to tell them that they just don't exist in any meaningful capacity is really not fun and we've had a lot of people just drop the game because of it. I'm looking forward to scribing as a way to fix many of the old issues classes are suffering from, but that really doesn't impact either of the monster skill-lines and they could do with a revamp and in-built options for taunts etc.

ssewallb14_ESO

Since the combat team was restructured, the combat has been designed around a set of broad standards and design criteria.

That criteria either completely supersedes or doesn't consider at all:

A. Maintaining actually existing play styles
B. Whether or not adherence to said criteria is actually beneficial in individual cases.

One of their standards is no AOE taunts, and that's why Tormentor was removed. Whether or not people enjoyed the playstyle for years, or whether or not there was any benefit to the game is secondary to the all-mighty spreadsheet.

moderatelyfatman

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Since the combat team was restructured, the combat has been designed around a set of broad standards and design criteria.

That criteria either completely supersedes or doesn't consider at all:

A. Maintaining actually existing play styles
B. Whether or not adherence to said criteria is actually beneficial in individual cases.

One of their standards is no AOE taunts, and that's why Tormentor was removed. Whether or not people enjoyed the playstyle for years, or whether or not there was any benefit to the game is secondary to the all-mighty spreadsheet.

I wouldn't mind the devs using a spreadsheet if the information was based on how much damage the classes were doing in actual content (ala FF14).
Sadly, things have gotten so bad that this data is no longer possible because people are flat out avoiding classes now in vet content because of the low dps.

edward_frigidhands

How would this change kill tanking for werewolf builds? The change to Tormentor makes it so only one target can be taunted and that is exactly how it works for all tanks with or without Tormentor.

I have a non-werewolf tank that works the same way it always has, taunting one target at a time.

While I understand this adjustment is a definite nerf I don't see how it is different from how any other tank functioned before the patch or right now.

Perhaps there is something I am missing?

BejaProphet

I believe the argument is that the werewolf ability triggering tormentor cost too much to cast repeatedly. As a result an ordinary tank single taunts but is able to taunt a lot. A werewolf tank triggering tormentor could not possibly sustain a high taunt demanding situation.

I think that’s what werewolf tanks are saying, I’ve not played one myself.

Trejgon

Erickson9610 wrote: »

We know AoE taunting was featured with the Scribing system, as Vault (the featured Bow Grimoire) has an AoE effect, and one of the effects you can apply to it is "Taunt":

Correction: we speculated about AoE taunting being featured with the Scribing system, because AoE grimoire had taunt script.

AoE skill having taunt element does not mean it will be automatically AoE taunt, it could still be only taunting first target to be hit, or by some other criteria.

During Amsterdam life event ZOS has once again reiterated no aoe taunts (just as the patch notes dev commentary for tormentors), and people who playtested the grimoires during this event all confirm that all the tauts, even on AoE abilities, only taunt one target.

Cooperharley wrote: »

I think many have come to the conclusion that even though they stated that AOE taunting via Tormentor is not "part of their vision for tanking," that more than likely there was some coding issue going into scribing (potentially?) that they had to re-work given that, as you said, we're likely to see AOE taunting via a variety of scribing skills. BUT, who knows? Maybe when scribing makes its way into class skills, vampire, werewolf, etc. we'll see that functionality again! Kinda surprised they're not touching werewolf or vampire given the skill lines that they ARE adding to.

Many people here have jumped to conclusion, based on early preview showing AoE grimoire having ability to slot taunt secondary script, that scribing will have AoE taunt, and therefore tormentor was nerfed to sell scribing. What they ignored is the fact that nothing at the time was actually known on how this script will work, and that if this was the case (tormentor nerfed to sell the feature back) the whole dev commentary of "we do not want AoE taunts, it is supposed to be deliberate, personal action" would be extremely dumb move on ZOS part.

And since then new information was provided, showing that even AoE scribing abilities, with taunt script slotted will not do AoE taunt, and the recent amsterdam presentation have featured multiple ZOS devs on scene, repeating once again "no AoE taunts, no"

As for curses not being included in first round - ZoS have stated that for the first round of scribing abilities, they wanted everyone to be able to benefit from them. Curses grimoies would be restricted to having that particular curse, so I guess that goes against that, but is still likely to arrive at later date, when they start adding grimoires for other skill lines as well.

Dragonredux

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

How would this change kill tanking for werewolf builds? The change to Tormentor makes it so only one target can be taunted and that is exactly how it works for all tanks with or without Tormentor.

I have a non-werewolf tank that works the same way it always has, taunting one target at a time.

While I understand this adjustment is a definite nerf I don't see how it is different from how any other tank functioned before the patch or right now.

Perhaps there is something I am missing?

Pierce Armor costs 1350 Stam
Clench is Ranged and cost 3050 mag
Inner Fire is Ranged and cost 1620 mag
Brutal Pounce costs 4016 Stam (8032 with Brutal Carnage proc unless you let it fall off).

There's probably more but that's probably a big reason there.

Erickson9610

Dragonredux wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

How would this change kill tanking for werewolf builds? The change to Tormentor makes it so only one target can be taunted and that is exactly how it works for all tanks with or without Tormentor.

I have a non-werewolf tank that works the same way it always has, taunting one target at a time.

While I understand this adjustment is a definite nerf I don't see how it is different from how any other tank functioned before the patch or right now.

Perhaps there is something I am missing?

Pierce Armor costs 1350 Stam
Clench is Ranged and cost 3050 mag
Inner Fire is Ranged and cost 1620 mag
Brutal Pounce costs 4016 Stam (8032 with Brutal Carnage proc unless you let it fall off).

There's probably more but that's probably a big reason there.

Carnage costs half as much Stamina as Pounce does, so Brutal Pounce + Brutal Carnage would only cost 6024 Stamina. Carnage alone costs 2008 Stamina:

GrizzlyTank

Foxxal wrote: »

Yeah I've onboarded a lot of players that wanted to use werewolf and vampire builds and having to tell them that they just don't exist in any meaningful capacity is really not fun and we've had a lot of people just drop the game because of it. I'm looking forward to scribing as a way to fix many of the old issues classes are suffering from, but that really doesn't impact either of the monster skill-lines and they could do with a revamp and in-built options for taunts etc.

Does almost feel that they should have conceided on the ww/vampire thing and just made them their own classes from the go.

Or drop the class system altogether and make it so that one character can swap between them a-la ffxiv.

Rageypoo

I just farmed all the stickerbook items to try this build out, and now i'll never get to experience it.

I wear this game sucks the fun out of things more often than not.

Drammanoth

As far as terianthropy is concerned (man-beast), we could get other strains of it. Werebears, wereboars, were... shark? - those three extra strains would be perfectly enough to not only refresh the werewolf theme, but also to give us some variety as far as transformations are concerned. Bear could be the tank, boar another dps and shark... healer?

GrizzlyTank

Sigh... Aggro is such a backward mechanic in these games.

The goal of the tank is to keep enemies organized. While the goal of the DD it to well, dish out as much damage as possible. Now enter aggro, especially when the tank is given insufficient of it and you just end up with a situation where the DD suffers for doing their job even if the tank is playing as they should.

slt101880b14_ESO

GrizzlyTank wrote: »

Sigh... Aggro is such a backward mechanic in these games.

The goal of the tank is to keep enemies organized. While the goal of the DD it to well, dish out as much damage as possible. Now enter aggro, especially when the tank is given insufficient of it and you just end up with a situation where the DD suffers for doing their job even if the tank is playing as they should.

That's cute, how you think DD cares about group mechanics. These are the same parasites that que up as fake roles just to hijack groups and speed run.

sneakymitchell

slt101880b14_ESO wrote: »

GrizzlyTank wrote: »

Sigh... Aggro is such a backward mechanic in these games.

The goal of the tank is to keep enemies organized. While the goal of the DD it to well, dish out as much damage as possible. Now enter aggro, especially when the tank is given insufficient of it and you just end up with a situation where the DD suffers for doing their job even if the tank is playing as they should.

That's cute, how you think DD cares about group mechanics. These are the same parasites that que up as fake roles just to hijack groups and speed run.

Yea find it funny when one calls out the other for low dps in a normal dungeon. Like if everyone is a dps pulling big numbers some one or others will score less dps cause they have to do a rotation. But nowadays it’s just arcanist stack rune and just beam

moderatelyfatman

sneakymitchell wrote: »

slt101880b14_ESO wrote: »

GrizzlyTank wrote: »

Sigh... Aggro is such a backward mechanic in these games.

The goal of the tank is to keep enemies organized. While the goal of the DD it to well, dish out as much damage as possible. Now enter aggro, especially when the tank is given insufficient of it and you just end up with a situation where the DD suffers for doing their job even if the tank is playing as they should.

That's cute, how you think DD cares about group mechanics. These are the same parasites that que up as fake roles just to hijack groups and speed run.

Yea find it funny when one calls out the other for low dps in a normal dungeon. Like if everyone is a dps pulling big numbers some one or others will score less dps cause they have to do a rotation. But nowadays it’s just arcanist stack rune and just beam

I find in random normals I get better dps using Oakensoul on my templar because in a 2-bar build everything dies to arcanist beams before I can switch back to my front bar.

Theist_VII

Fingers crossed! 🤞