PTS Update 42 - Feedback Thread for Scribing (Combat & Skills)

Bashev

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Trinotops wrote: »

Really don't like that the Shield Throw animation can't be bash-canceled. I don't understand why this is the case since it has bash build oriented scripts. Please consider changing this because it's somehow even worse than Power Slam which is also really clunky to bash cancel.

You can bash weave them and this makes Shield Throw interesting.

Bash > Bash > LA > Shield Throw > Bash > Bash > LA > Power Slam / Reverb

^ this can be done in 2 seconds if you're fast enough

Why not?

LA > Skill > Bash > Bash > Bash, LA > Skill > Bash > Bash > Bash

This could be easily done with Pierce armor or Power Slam, I noticed though that some skills can take only 2 bashes and not 3.

Trejgon

Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:
Do the abilities present new ways to play, or create other fun options for you to pick from?

Traveling knife, wield soul, soul burst, and Ulfsid contingency give me a number of potentially fun ideas for builds for my characters. Trample sounded interesting on paper, but in practice has way to long of a cast time for me to find use for it. Additionally casting animation looks weird to me. I did not test the stave grimoires, will edit this post once/if I do.
Smash has been a dissapointment. The cast time comes with jank usual for cast times aproximating 1s duration (which have been mildly annoying me already with dark deal), animation is not only badly described, not fitting towards the name of the grimoire, but also simply does not look very cool.

Do the abilities present allow you to better create a build suited for your playstyle?

Depends on which exactly substyle we are talking about. I see some room for interesting additions for the builds I am playing, but there are still holes for things I'd love to include but the system does not allow.

Do these abilities feel close to existing abilities in terms of power? Please explain your answer.

Varies from ability to ability. Smash seems to be inferior in terms of power to similar abilities of 2h weapons, at least the combinations I did try to test, as a damage ability it deals less than reverse slice (at a greater cost, and cast time), as a shield ability, it looses out on offensive power of brawler, but I guess it gets the benefit there of providing shield to allies.

Traveling Knife and Wield Soul seems to be on expensive side of spammables, but with damage comparable to some class spammables, I am on the fence about the execute script of the wield soul.

Do you have any other general feedback?

I do not like the inconsistency between scripts that share the name and have similar, but slightly different functionality.
For example Druids resurgence, sometimes restore 1k of both resources instantly, sometimes only one, sometimes it does the same amount but over 10 seconds (kinda bad).

More notably Lingering Torment provides near exact same functionality for all grimoires I saw, but for some reason, is allowed to trigger weapon enchants specifically on shield throw, but not on other grimoires.

Additionally, the discrepancy between timers of scripts within same ability works against the system. Signature scripts with over time effects often deliver them over 20s, but the affix bonuses are for 10s. Personally I'd prefer it to be aligned, so that all the durations of the ability is same within single grimoire. If the grimoire provides the nonstacking damage over time, and a named effect I do not want to have to decide between gaps in the named effects vs wasting half the duration of the dot.

moo_2021

Are scripts going to be collected per account like sets, or per character like skills?

Savos_Saren

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xXCJsniperXx7 wrote: »

Have my second Grimoire here to give feedback on, an Elemental Explosion I made for my Ice Warden build on live. I did decide to see what this skill looks like on him unlike my default stam Dk. The specification of frost damage is a big niche Wardens have. This toon runs Ice Heart, Frostbite, Icy conjurer, and Perfected Maelstrom Ice Staff.



So a few things to point out: 1.) If you treat this as a frost spammable, that cast time needs to be reduced or cut out. A two second delay spammable in a rotation is far too long and such a dps loss. Making it an instant cast or at least .8 second cast time like Crystal Frags makes this a powerful ice spammable alternative. Using it like this would also open up Frost Reach to be used as a proper DoT in the build example. 2.) Restoring magic from hitting targets is great for sustain in this build. Combining it with Blue Betty is a nice little boost to keep your magic up. 3.) Setting off balance with this is better than Dive and its morphs. Plus you don't need to be a Warden to use this so any magic build can use this. 4.) The direct Damage is really high, too high. The Frost Reach I run on live has a 8776 Direct damage (unbuffed) tooltip. That is a 7521 difference between Chilling Explosion and Frost Reach. Now this is certainly because Chilling Explosion has that giant 2 second wind up. Its best then if that 2 second delay is scrapped or reduced that the starting damage value also be nerfed to fall in a close line with Frost Reach.

In general, this is a very good Grimoire to be utilized as a spammable. Once again though, the cost needs to be adaptive to be more manageable in a rotation. The cast time does need to be dropped or reduced down to .8 seconds at least. But, besides those flaws its a good skill we could use.

As a second example of why DoTs in Grimoires needs a big change, here's what this skill looks like with one



Once again DoTs need to have the 20 single target, 10 second AoE treatment plus the Damage over Time specification as I suggested in my last example. I can see this skill being used interchangeably between spammable or DoT as Frost Reach itself can be both. Like In this build I used in the example I could keep Reach as my spam and use Chilling Explosion as a merged elemental combo of Degeneration and The Imperfect Ring. Once more, this is a really capable versatile Grimoire.

This skill cannot be both 10 meters radius (and overloaded with debuffs) and instant cast. It's one or the other.

This is from a PvP POV. Otherwise you will have 40 players on castle walls spamming it on anyone trying to get inside.

For reference, ranged Pulsar is only 6 meters, which is what, IMO, this radius would need to be reduced to in order to trade for being instant cast.

And let's not forget- ZOS is slowly trying to remove ice damage aspects from the Warden's Frost abilities (which doesn't really make sense).

"We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line." (this is from the spoiler note in PTS 10.0.0 under the Warden)

We *want* ice damage with the Warden, though. Are they going to change some of the Animal Companions to ice damage? Icy Shalks? Icy Birds? What's the point of having an Ice Damage passive if you're going to remove ice damage from their Ice Skill line?

moo_2021

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Shield Throw grimoire's Physical Damage focus script doesn't scale with bash damage. This makes it useless for bash builds. Shield Throw should scale with bash damage and wd/sd, similar to Power Slam and Reverb.

how would ranged stun fit here, since you can't hit the enemy by subsequent bash attacks?

and i dont want more stamina skills for my bash build. Need magicka ones to conserve resource. I could use Power Slam for short burst but in BG I'm either constantly bash weaving, gap closing or sprinting, all of which cost a lot of stamina.

Jsmalls

QOL request.

If the scripts consuming soul gems go live (which I expect they will to some extent). Can we PLEASE have Soul gems stack like Poisons do for weapons. 200 stacks will last 15-20 minutes. I really don't want to have 20 slots of my inventory taken up by soul gems.

Please increase stack count of Soul Gems to accommodate this.

ToRelax

After some testing, the Oblivion Damage scripts are definitely an issue when stacked. They are already strong on their own, but by using both together, the cooldown can be halved for a single user. So I would like to ask for a shared cooldown on target enemy players for both effects.

Theist_VII

Firstmep wrote: »

I think Elemental Explosion could be extremely powerful on Necro and Warden since you can set up your Blastbones and Beetles to line up with the explosion. In the case of necro you can even throw in the colossus from range for some crazy aoe.

The templar script seems a bit overturned, and I'm saying this as a templar main. It may seem like a good idea for pve tanks, but for pvp people are going to complain ad nauseum about it for sure.

It’s not a good idea for PvE tanks, armor resistance cap is around 33k to begin with, which you’re going to get to on a Templar pretty easily in heavy armor.

This is definitely a script intended for PvP.

Jsmalls

ToRelax wrote: »

After some testing, the Oblivion Damage scripts are definitely an issue when stacked. They are already strong on their own, but by using both together, the cooldown can be halved for a single user. So I would like to ask for a shared cooldown on target enemy players for both effects.

I also did testing and saw the opposite, assuming you're talking about the AoE and single target soul ability. The cooldown seemed to be present across both abilities.

I'll try again today.

ToRelax

Jsmalls wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

After some testing, the Oblivion Damage scripts are definitely an issue when stacked. They are already strong on their own, but by using both together, the cooldown can be halved for a single user. So I would like to ask for a shared cooldown on target enemy players for both effects.

I also did testing and saw the opposite, assuming you're talking about the AoE and single target soul ability. The cooldown seemed to be present across both abilities.

I'll try again today.

That's what I meant. Definitely seeing them on different cooldowns in my log.

Theist_VII

Our Templar Class Mastery is too heavily loaded for PvP and does NOTHING in PvE.

I would suggest a rework completely. Take away the snare and resistances, and make it more interesting!

Erickson9610

Before the PTS, I listed some potential ideas for Grimoires for the Werewolf skill line, since Werewolf players currently have no access to any Scribing skills:

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I'll list a few ideas for potential Werewolf Grimoires:

• Bite — A simple biting attack, much like the one Werewolf Behemoth has.
  • Focus Scripts: Physical Damage, Bleed Damage, Disease Damage, or Taunt
  • Signature Scripts: Class Mastery, Damage Over Time, Snare, Extend Werewolf Transformation, or Healing
  • Affix Scripts: Interrupt, Breach, Maim, Resolve, or Expedition
• Rampage — A channeled attack where the user swipes with their claws four times and then bites twice, similar in a sense to Puncturing Strikes; this ability reuses the animation that NPC werewolves sometimes use. Maybe this ability deals more damage for each subsequent hit (like Rapid Strikes), or has execute scaling damage.
  • Focus Scripts: Physical Damage or Bleed Damage
  • Signature Scripts: Class Mastery, Damage Over Time, Snare, or Extend Werewolf Transformation
  • Affix Scripts: Interrupt, Maim, or Breach
• Hunter's Grounds — A ground AoE effect, similar to Cleansing Ritual. The idea is to make this skill thematic to Hircine and The Hunting Grounds.
  • Focus Scripts: Magic Damage, Poison Damage, Pull, Immobilize, Healing, or Damage Shield
  • Signature Scripts: Class Mastery, Damage Over Time, Snare, Healing, Extend Werewolf Transformation, or Defiance (Purge)
  • Affix Scripts: Expedition, Resolve, Courage, Intellect and Endurance, Breach, or Magickasteal

I'll follow up later with more refined feedback and suggestions, now that we have access to the PTS and a full list of all available Scripts. Please consider the underlying concepts of these ideas as potential candidates for one or more Werewolf Grimoires, because Werewolf players would like to participate in Scribing, too.

DrNukenstein

I think Contingency could use some tweaks to make it on par with the new hyper spammable and give it an actual purpose

-Make it grant it's chosen major/minor buff on cast and open up Msorc and Mbrut for it
-give it a more clutch trigger. could be under 50% health, under 50% highest resource, or if you get stunned

Stridig

Maybe I missed a post somewhere but is scribing meant to be character bound? Will it be purchasable for alts or do all characters need to do the quest? I'm guessing each character will need to do the quest since I don't see an actual skill line for scribing.

Erickson9610

Stridig wrote: »

Maybe I missed a post somewhere but is scribing meant to be character bound? Will it be purchasable for alts or do all characters need to do the quest? I'm guessing each character will need to do the quest since I don't see an actual skill line for scribing.

Scribing doesn't have its own skill line. Rather, the scribed skills are added to their parent skill lines (such as Vault being added to the Bow skill line) once you have purchased that Grimoire for that specific character.

chessalavakia_ESO

Stridig wrote: »

Maybe I missed a post somewhere but is scribing meant to be character bound? Will it be purchasable for alts or do all characters need to do the quest? I'm guessing each character will need to do the quest since I don't see an actual skill line for scribing.

It appears to be a hybrid setup.

Completing the quest line unlocks perks that allow all of your characters to get scribing drops and lets all of them buy items from the scribing vendor.

However, you need to start the scribing quest line to get any of the abilities and getting the vendor requires completing one of the doors.

The scribing drops appear to unlock on a character basis and might have cooldowns on drops.

ZDunlain

Neatle wrote: »

As always, i'm concerned with your decisions to create extremes to remedy imbalance instead of fixing imbalanced abilities you've already done this with Onslaught and Corrosive Armor which ignore every single points of armor investment a tank has to make including sets, abilities and heavy armor pieces:

Arcanist damage shields ultimate, Magsorc damage shields were a problem? well.. there you go (Trample is an AoE btw):


also this:


has led us to this:

this could be an AoE spammable deflecting a direct attack every time you use it.. a potential spammable

edit:
Also, an AoE dispel on the ground, removing up to 3 AoEs, is not normal

You should stop adding 10 new differents mechanics with a brand new system, you're burning steps

To reach that damage, are you on a full offensive build or just a normal PvP build?

Neatle

That's the sheet dps with a basic magsorc build (~50k mag), i didn't even have major brutality/sorcellery on and i was vamp 3
reaching higher damage tooltip is perfectly doable in pvp conditions

mmtaniac

Templar script + sea serpent and templar finally can build home in one place. Your movement speed are 10%.

Theist_VII

mmtaniac wrote: »

Templar script + sea serpent and templar finally can build home in one place. Your movement speed are 10%.

They don’t stack, so you can build all movement speed on jewelry and run Celerity and move around at almost normal speed with all of the medium armor passives, in full divines with Rallying Cry, with around 55,000-60,000 armor and 6,500-7,000 spell damage.

It’s going to be a problem next update, mark my words every Templar next patch is going to be running it in PvP, and it will further kill the class build diversity because you will be forced into a specific mythic, using a specific ability you can activate every 4 seconds, with Rallying Cry.

Our class mastery needs to be completely changed, and if it doesn’t get reworked into something else, our baseline on Templar will be dependent on it, because it will be so powerful that it will be the standard that every PvP Plar is held to.

mmtaniac

Ok than. So templar will become tank in light armor ok

jcaceresw

I imagine this Vault ability will speak horror volumes on PVP when used to bypass the keep walls, specially when used from a cliff like in Bleaker's Outpost or Fort Farragut.

Trinotops

It would be nice if the duration of Major Sorc/Brut on Wield Soul was increased to 20 seconds. Really all I wanted out of Scribing was a replacement for Degeneration, but 10 seconds is too short for it to fill that role (if not using it as a spammable). Also the destro staff ability is too impractical to use solely for Major Sorc/Brut as well because it's interruptible and has to hit for you to get the buff.

RaptorRodeoGod

Trinotops wrote: »

It would be nice if the duration of Major Sorc/Brut on Wield Soul was increased to 20 seconds. Really all I wanted out of Scribing was a replacement for Degeneration, but 10 seconds is too short for it to fill that role (if not using it as a spammable). Also the destro staff ability is too impractical to use solely for Major Sorc/Brut as well because it's interruptible and has to hit for you to get the buff.

I feel that same about Major Savagery/Prophecy

Bo0137

I love what you built with the scribing system but at the same time I wish they were less "action packed" and more a "grounded". And that they were less "look what I can do" and more "this is an ancient spell I learned".

I think the correct word is "flashy". They look too flashy and modern and complex.

For example. The weapon skills. They look more like a combat move rather than a spell itself. Yes, I get that they are weapon skills but I think they are too... how can I say... Action oriented?

What I would like to see more: simpler, one cast spells. Casting a simple fireball, opening a portal, self-casting buffs, summoning a daedra... And the spells should be more fantastical, magic-driven.

The video from 2014 has some great great examples. Oak-flesh, muffle, summon atronach, lightning bolt...

The ES franchise also has previous iterations I find amazing. Levitate could be adapted to ESO - do not make players fly (that would be terrible), make their running animation "float" and give them movement speed and evade chance; Ilusion spells that control mobs and NPCs (maybe players for a shorter duration);

Or don't adapt these old spells at all. But we need more fantasy involved.

I agree that ESO is more action oriented but at the same time I miss these old (yet classic) RPG spells elements.

I would rank the skills like this:
Soul magic ones: amazing;
Assault: it is flashy but the skill concept makes sense because it is a war skill line;
Weapon ones: even more flashy; no fantastical elements at all (specially the destruction staff one, which is the magicka one and is actually a staff pirouette).

At the same time, I understand this first patch is the start of the scribing system and that there will be plenty more spells in the future. My personal taste is not so pleased with the weapon spells but I understand why you decided on bringing the weapon skills first, on a balance of the gameplay side.

My suggestion for the future is spells with more modest casting animations, yet built with more fantasy, that they are less flashy and more "grounded".

propertyOfUndefined

I absolutely love everything about scribing. For people like me, this will make the game fun and interesting again.

Hope ESO's future sees more focus on features like this...

Kalam0n

Do the abilities present new ways to play, or create other fun options for you to pick from?
- I really love Trample and Vault. They absolutely deliver on this front.

Do the abilities present allow you to better create a build suited for your playstyle?
- Vault in particular is giving me something I've always wanted on my bow characters, which is an easy way to get back out of melee range. This mobility has absolutely been missing from the bow playstyle and my bow warden is just soo much more fun to play with Vault in the kit.

Do these abilities feel close to existing abilities in terms of power? Please explain your answer.
- In general the new abilities feel slightly more powerful, but I would argue they are just helping to shine a light on underperforming abilities.

Do you have any other general feedback?
- The leap back from Vault can feel a little clunky and it does seem to move my character more than 15m in a lot of cases. Not the worst, but I'm trying to use it in conjunction with sub assault, so it's weird when it looks like the second batch of shalk do not connect after landing from Vault (since I should still be well within range). It also seems that Vault is not triggering the proc from Unleashed Terror - is this intended? I would have assumed that Vault would trigger UT.

Lapin_Logic

The mount trample is an awesome concept, however I would love to have a skill that utilises our "non combat pets" imagine cutting dive but i could use my goodest boy to run past and chomp my foe or my illusion imp dragon swoop past them.

Not only would it give value to Non combat pets for the permanent residents of Cyrodiil and IC but it could allow for more character building/RP, for instance my warden adopted the horse "Fadeel" and the dog "Giblets" as his faithful travel companions.

ZDunlain

Telos_Tim wrote: »

mmtaniac wrote: »

Templar script + sea serpent and templar finally can build home in one place. Your movement speed are 10%.

They don’t stack, so you can build all movement speed on jewelry and run Celerity and move around at almost normal speed with all of the medium armor passives, in full divines with Rallying Cry, with around 55,000-60,000 armor and 6,500-7,000 spell damage.

It’s going to be a problem next update, mark my words every Templar next patch is going to be running it in PvP, and it will further kill the class build diversity because you will be forced into a specific mythic, using a specific ability you can activate every 4 seconds, with Rallying Cry.

Our class mastery needs to be completely changed, and if it doesn’t get reworked into something else, our baseline on Templar will be dependent on it, because it will be so powerful that it will be the standard that every PvP Plar is held to.

The problem will be the sustain and more if you need to spam the ability every 4sec, and as we know, templar recov are bad bad bad.

JerBearESO

So far I'm seeing the playerbase overwhelmingly suggesting everything be made the same as what we already have for the sake of balance, at which point...why even bother?

.................