PTS Update 44 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities

tsaescishoeshiner

The lack of Magicka Recovery makes Shadowy Disguise cost more and be sustainable for not as long. So, what if it gave you a big Magicka Recovery boost for a few seconds after being active for long enough? Then it would encourage you to be invisible for a second or two every now and then in order to have more sustain to keep going invis.

Or, it could get a cost reduction to your next cast each time you deal or take direct damage.

Zormac

The taunt addition to Focused Charge is terrible. It was a great gap closer for PVE magplars and a great way to trigger the Crusader set. I'd move the bonus Major Protection duration + Taunt to Toppling charge only and keep Explosive Charge as it is in the Live server (increased damage + AoE stun).

The toggle for Shadowy Disguise feels really bad right now, especially with the 0 magicka recovery. In the current Live build, the magicka recovery allows for much longer cloak times, rewarding proper timing. These changes lead to running out of magicka before the engagement, or being completely unable to use cloak to disengage, greatly affecting magblades.

Lastly, I'd love to see the "while slotted on either bar" treatment coming to more skills, especially Mage Light/Expert Hunter, Guard, and Daedric Summoning pets. It would bring these skills in line with others of similar functionality and reduce the need for redundant skill slotting.

loosej

This is more of a feedback on the classes/abilities part of the patch notes, not the changes themselves, but this seemed like the appropriate thread.

I have to say that I do appreciate all the developer comments that come with a lot of the class/ability changes. It feels like with recent updates, more effort is being put into them, and most (if not all) changes that aren't bugfixes come with an explanation that goes beyond "we wanted more pew pew for class <x>". As far as communication goes this is great, it means we don't have to ask "why?" during week 1/2 of pts, and can go straight to providing arguments why not if we disagree with a change.

Additionally, one comment that caught my eye was this:

Last update we shook up this morph to try and add some love to the damage dealing Necromancer, but we ran low on time to really iterate on a full-bore damaging effect.

Running low on time, especially with the way update cycles are set in stone for this game, is normal. And just telling it as it is does more good to a company's image than pretending to be perfect, in my opinion at least. Less hiding behind marketing speech, and more transparency like this please. Patch notes are supposed to be a factual document first, not promo material.

LukosCreyden

Sad to see that Necro's Gravelord Sacrifice remains untouched. Either change the animation so you don't have the visuals of blowing yourself up, or change the skill to an offensive one again.

Tommy_The_Gun

The point that was brought up in other threads about cloak changes are pve vs pvp situations and stam nb vs mag nb situations. This would require to be looked at in order to well... make cloak accessible for all builds.

With current costs per second of shadowy disguise being toggled on, the skill will become too short to be useful even in pve and kinda inaccessible for stamina builds in particular. NB, regardless of the build & type of content (stam, mag, hybrid, pve, pvp) was always able to sustain cloak for a duration that made the skill usable. And this was since day 1 for the whole game live span so far (10 years).

People are basically worried that ironically, an attempt to make the shadowy disguise skill more accessible will make the skill pretty much exclusive only for handful of heavy magicka focused builds. So it is kinda the opposite effect.

Also, people seem to agree that the change is far too drastic and kinda out of nowhere for a 10 year old stuff. It feels like a forced revolution rather than evolution.

Oldaraness

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

The point that was brought up in other threads about cloak changes are pve vs pvp situations and stam nb vs mag nb situations. This would require to be looked at in order to well... make cloak accessible for all builds.

With current costs per second of shadowy disguise being toggled on, the skill will become too short to be useful even in pve and kinda inaccessible for stamina builds in particular. NB, regardless of the build & type of content (stam, mag, hybrid, pve, pvp) was always able to sustain cloak for a duration that made the skill usable. And this was since day 1 for the whole game live span so far (10 years).

People are basically worried that ironically, an attempt to make the shadowy disguise skill more accessible will make the skill pretty much exclusive only for heavy magicka focused builds. So it is kinda the opposite effect.

Also, people seem to agree that the change is far too drastic and kinda out of nowhere for a 10 year old stuff. It feels like a forced revolution rather than evolution.

Totally agree!

BlueRaven

The nb cloak nerf, why does it feel like my solo pve nb thief is the one who is being the most targeted by this nerf? I just don’t understand why the spec-role that has the least interaction with other players seems the target of this nerf.

TDVM

Necro still needs improvement, he still needs to recycle a few abilities. Necro needs abilities with life stealing and other things. Necro was supposed to be a class that debuffs everyone, so make it a class that will have a lot more debuffs for enemies than the other classes

Jaavaa

A Toggle for cloak is really bad. Why not 33% more cost for every cloak, like dodgeroll or streak?

sirinsidiator

As a NB since beta, I agree that this change to cloak is unwanted. Please consider other ways to make it more accessible.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of ideas I came up with on the spot:

• Add better audio/visual cues to indicate that cloak is about to run out and needs to be refreshed
• Make the ability more forgiving by having it queue up the next cast when it is activated in the right moment
• Change the cloak out effect to be gradual over a second instead of instant
• Add toggle cloak as a setting instead of forcing it on everyone
• Add some repeatable training quest, focused on teaching young nightblades how to properly use the ability in its original form

For me the cloaking mechanic is one of the most fun and rewarding parts of the game. It is a skill you need to learn not just with ingame points, but by spending time on getting it right. Taking that away is in my option not the right choice.

wolfie1.0.

If the Clark changes go through then it should at least use the resource that characters have the most of and consume and stop the regen on that resource. Something that new classes can better utilize.

Also, please do us a favor in the dev comments. IF your making a change like this please don't say things like "we have something planned for the future but we can't tell you yet" it's baiting for players because it tells us you have something but it's not ready, and then we all wonder what else is comming but it never happens... it's not exactly helpful.

Also, if something is comming down the line that uses this new cloak, why make the cloak change now and not when more interactions with it are available?

As far as the class as whole, I almost feel like you should just split the class in two. Make a soul stealer class and make an assassin class and retire Nightblades as a class entirely. It just feels like in an effort to allow the class to do everything, it now does nothing.

As for the templar tank changes. I don't like gap closures acting as a taunt. Tanks need mobs to come to them, not the other way round. The only reason tanks were using gap closures previously was because there was a set that aoe pulled mobs to the tank, and acted as an aoe taunt. If you wanted to give them a ranged taunt then javelin would have been a better choice to use. All this is really going to result in is that there will be another skill that damage dealers will use that will cause tanks headaches and heartburn.

Faint_One

NB：Lotus Fan not good as it expected，teleport skill force you to keep a short distance with your primary target，so you will lose damege radius Away for it，also short duration dot makes a little conflict with NB’s assassin will skill，and more not so important

Necro：Ghostly Embrace hit good total damage with good effects，but you can even hardly hit target each twice，especially third one create a corpse but the play style force Necro close to target，and also we hope target hit by first and second area，so better to judge it

ZeroAxis

Ready to toss my opinion in the hat on cloak, along with a spattering of other things.

After seeing it in action, it is pretty evident that there is a virulent lack of time spent playing within the PvP landscape. If time was spent at peak hours in either CP campaign, devs would have a far better understanding of what is actually broken. This is more of a nerf in disguise, as per usual, but at least it was put out in the open.

Players are asked to test things out but feedback does not seem to be weighed as heavily as it should be. Some of your top tier players and streamers spend a lot of time testing and their voices go unheard. A great, more recent example would be Hardened Ward. I suggest that you listen to your players on this and some of the other class changes in this patch.

The counter plays to stealth are there in abundance. Not to mention that: half of the time regular stealth doesn’t actually work, most of the time we are stuck in combat, and all of the time we are facing stacks of heals and shields that are absurd while people who claim cloak is a crutch are crutching on broken set/mythic/CP combos to be nearly invincible and only have to use two or three buttons to be lethal tanks. So really, we were already balanced, right?

If you want the game to just be an all out brawl, thats totally fine. New players will come, some old ones will go. I can still run my Nightblade, or maybe go back to Warden, with no sweat on my back. But for other players, this is a very bizarre attempt at “balance” that isn’t actually balancing anything.

Quick Side Note: people saying that add ons are not giving alerts is hilarious since there are actual videos of it out there and we see it on a daily basis in PvP, stealth or not. Many skills do have a sound and cast time and that are enough to dodge them or block. Heavy attacks do not.

This change definitely makes NB trickier for the casual players and those who use their class’ unique kit to play it as it was designed. In PvE, as well.

Time will tell on this one.

“Nightblades are adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on stealth, blades, and speed, Nightblades thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting to their luck and cunning to survive.”

This was the class description. Gonna have to change that up. Might I suggest a revamp to:

“Nightblades were adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble if they had a high enough magicka pool, were not using blades, and not stuck in combat all the time. Relying on.. something… Nightblades thrived on misfortune, trusting to nothing to survive unless they ran a rallyblade build.”

zammo

KenaPKK wrote: »

Shadowy Disguise feels completely different to use and is significantly nerfed.

I understand wanting to make cloak more accessible/understandable to new players, but this change is confusing and enraging experienced nightblades. I haven't found one yet who enjoys or is indifferent to this change.

Instead of dumbing down the ability and nerfing NB sustain, how about teach newer players how to use the existing mechanics?

Learning and mastering mechanics = fun.

Kena back playing again?

Sedare38

As an NB main in PVP, in a mostly NB guild, and a dabbler in PVE, I'm gonna have to say this is a change no one who plays the class asked for. [snip]

Cloak needs to be a spammable without a ramp cost. Cloak needs the dot suppression back that you, ZOS, removed WITH ZERO PATCH NOTES AS TO WHY OR THAT IT WOULD BE HAPPENING. In a world of long range detect pots, sentries gear, exploits, and kitchen sinks, cloak does not need a toggle and in fact is the one ability that needs some kind of miniscule detection avoidance upon cast even if for 1 second per cast, but that's a separate topic.

Cloak does not need a toggle that drains magicka making stam leaning nb's near pointless unless forced to use 2h for rally heal while alternating between that and siphon attacks spam to keep magicka up. Nor does it need a toggle that doesn't let you cross the field of battled undetected to get to targets because the toggle is just crouch 2.0 and you'll be detected even while "in cloak" or you ran out of magicka mid-way.

With current cloak you can time the duration to your regen tick, you can actually use your brain to know how many cloaks you have in your pool and you know use strategy as the game used to require and still should instead now being comprised of over damage mitigation/over healing ball group bots Zamboni-ing their way across the field or keep or running circles in towers.

You've also just killed off one-bar nb builds who don't rely on a heavy magicka pool + siphon attacks and rally. GG

Remove this change.

/flame-on

[Edit for Baiting]

StarOfElyon

Nilandia wrote: »

I'll admit to being disappointed that both morphs of Focused Charge will now apply a taunt. Though they weren't amazing for damage, at least two different situations showed them to be quite useful.

In Dreadsail Reef, it's fantastic against Sail Ripper. The mini boss frequently ports to the opposite side of the arena and begins channeling lightning. The combination of gap closer and interrupt helps to get into position while also preventing damage to the group as a whole.

In Infinite Archive, later arcs introduce shards of Tho'at, including blobs which use Seeking Spheres. These blobs need to be interrupted or they do ramping damage to the players. It's very common to have a good number of adds at any one point, making it difficult to find the precise one which needs to be interrupted. Explosive Charge is perfect here, as it's an AOE interrupt, as well as giving Major Protection for a bit more survivability when we're likely to be surrounded by adds.

At least let us keep one morph that doesn't have a taunt so that it can be useful when we're not the tank.

Seems like this change to Focused Charge only benefits Xynode's build. I don't use that skill in my Templar tank. I would rather have better crowd control.

madmufffin

I don't really see a thread for set changes, but since it's DK exclusive, I'll consider it a class change. Nerfing Pyrebrand is one thing, but I don't understand how making the set completely unusable after one patch is what is being decided on as the best path forward. It's doing 45% of what it previously was on the dummy. That's not going to limit the impact of the set but just put it in the dumpster to never be seen from again. Everyone is just going to once again go back to rele/runecarver, and the cool set that was released will just join the hundreds of other sets in the pile of completely unusable trash sets.

ssewallb14_ESO

Sun Shield:

So here's the thing with tank shields, they work best when:

A. The class has limited healing, as in Hardened Ward
B. The shield does something useful other than shield, as in Igneous Shield
C. Rare mechanics with extremely high incoming direct damage.

Plar has two strong health scaling hots, one which also provides near mandatory sustain and resistance buffs, and the other which provides Templar's unique group buff from procing Illuminate, and generates a little ulti. You can just add the master's sword and shield if you actually need more healing than that. That's more than fine for 99% of the game, so rather than use a skill that just shields, I'm gonna be reaching for Living dark, or backlash, as I'm plenty survivable but also procing the useful support passives in the Dawn's Wrath line.

Contrast that with DK, where their shield provides their unique buff, can be a sustain tool through helping hands, and provides a very situational but useful semi-spammable shield to the group.

Also, and someone sweatier than me can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in case C defensive stance is always BIS as block mitigation scales really well with very high direct damage.

A simple fix would just be to put Sun Shield in the Dawn's Wrath line, or simply allow the shield to proc Illuminate. This way it would be tossup between the shield and other skills that can proc Dawn's Wrath passives.

Cominfordatoothbrush

Please reverse the changes to pyrebrand. Nuking its single target damage when it only marginally over performed sets that hit multiple targets like runecarver just doesn't make sense. Let IA sets actually stay useful in PvE. There is really no use case for the set of it goes live like that

monkidb16_ESO

Having played a bit with the new cloak on PTS there are a few issues:

I don't think this implementation is adressing the correct issues, the proposed changes will make the ability better for high-end players who use it to proc passives, but absolutely gut it for low-end players who use it to avoid combat.

But assuming this is the way forward:

There are still some DoTs that a NB can apply that kick them out of stealth. Elemental Susceptibility being the most prominent one. Please disable any applied DoTs from uncloaking the NB.

The penalty of high cost plus stunted magicka is absolutely overkill if you compare it to other sources of stealth.
Either keep the pulsing magicka cost but only stunt your magicka while moving (similar to sneak) or sharply reduce the pulsing magicka cost (similar to Vamp).

CameraBeardThePirate

Grave Lord's Sacrifice is still really bad. I'm glad the skull bug was fixed, but it still doesn't do nearly enough to warrant dropping your best damage ability (Blastbones).

On top of just being a bad buff, it's also still horrendously clunky. You can still Line-of-Sight your own buff. You can still get your buff denied by enemy stuns.

The buff either needs to increase in numbers, add some sort of DoT itself, or increase class healing as well. It's an underwhelming buff that isn't very user friendly, so it never gets slotted.

VinnyGambini

BlackHammer225 wrote: »

This is purely from a PvP standpoint for Templar.

First I want to say I appreciate what you guys are doing with Templar in general with the improvements I just want to bring up a subject I hope you guys don't overlook.

Backlash and its morphs Purifying Light and Power of The Light have not been performing well in Pvp as a delayed burst damage ability. The ability requires the player to reach an X amount of damage to receive the 200% increase to the displayed damage you will do if not reached.

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Billium813 wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Backlash hits like a wet noodle. Most players that use it do not check combat metrics. They use it more out of habit than calculation.

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[*] Yeah, I am one of those players. I just can't stop trying to force PotL.
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[*] It rarely ever pops for more than 4k for me though. On average, it hits for about 2k. Most of the time it's disappointing.

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Ever since U36 PTS Backlashes copied damage has been changed and the threshold has been increased to an impossible number to reach in PvP. Please can the threshold be reduced or changed?

The magical, X number is 36k. No more, no less. 36k damage - this is extremely easy to reach in PvE, and extremely hard to reach in PvP. This should be either changed to 45k PvE and 20k PvP, OR as I suggested, let is scale with number of dmg HITS you did, so you have to hit 20 times for max dmg - this synergizes very well with jabs, because they hit 3 times.

Benzux

People are very obviously latching onto the cloak change, but as a PvE player, I'm personally more concerned with the change to Lotus Fan. I use it on my Magblade as a DoT and on my NB healer and tank as a way to supply Minor Vulnerability to the group, and I'm just gonna say that I do not want to be casting it more frequently, especially not every 5 seconds, even if it is supposedly more "rewarding".

Supposedly the change is to bring it more in line with Acid Spray and Burning Talons, which in my opinion is a horrible choice, as those skills are pretty terrible in my experience. Burning Talons might have PvP applicability that I'm not aware of, but even then I'd imagine that Minor Maim from the other morph would be more useful there than a measly 5 second DoT, no? Same goes for Lotus Fan, but it's even worse since it's a teleport ability with a 0.4s cast time. Playing my NB tank or healer is going to feel really awkward if I have to spam that every 5 seconds just to be able to keep a decent uptime on Minor Vulnerability, and it'll kill the skill for any PvE magblade hoping to use it as a DoT that can reliably proc Minor Vulnerability (in solo situations). Twisting Path is already a terrible-feeling AoE DoT with its awkward 12 second duration clashing with literally every single other DoT available being either 20, 15 or 10 seconds (the latter of which we could do away with tbh, I dislike the existing 10 second DoTs since I feel like I have to refresh them way too often and sometimes end up forgetting when I'm in the middle of my rotation), so I guess I'll finally just drop both of the class DoTs from my Magblade and rely on generic DoTs instead. What's a class fantasy again?

Renato90085

Is only me or they changed nb killer blade sound?
i love old:(

LadyLavina

Way to kill the nightblade class in a pvp sense, ZOS lol

spaceghost8

ZOS what happened with grave lords sacrifice? When it was changed the notes said it wasn’t a final change and you were still working on it… 2/3 patches later no changes?

Since Necromancer is modelled after Molag Bal, wouldn’t it be nice to give them cold fire?

Bring back the older version of the magica blast bones and give it cold fire damage… say if the damage tool tip is 10k make 5k be fire and the other 5k be ice

And do the same thing for ricochet skull, boneyard, skeletal arcanist, mystic siphone, hungry scythe and make renewing undeath or intensive mender damage skills since they are largely unused and make them do cold fire damage as well… maybe change the visuals as well to complement the cold fire aesthetic

Still the new corpseburster set would’ve been S tier if it had a lingering damage over time effect similar to pillar of nirn… this wouldn’t have changed its current role, spamming detonating siphon would still be an option, just not the only viable play style

And oh give corpseburster the cold fire damage type as well

CameraBeardThePirate

spaceghost8 wrote: »

ZOS what happened with grave lords sacrifice? When it was changed the notes said it wasn’t a final change and you were still working on it… 2/3 patches later no changes?

This. The patch notes this ability was introduced in stated that the dev team would be "Keeping a close eye on this" and that the ability "hasn't quite hit its mark yet". Despite this, the only changes we've seen to this ability are bug fixes and a small quality of life change that everyone who's used the ability thought the ability needed from the get-go.

It's pretty ridiculous that Necro's best ability was gutted and then seemingly abandoned in terms of balance changes.

IncultaWolf

Grave Lord's Sacrifice still needs adjustments. At least a small damage increase or make it buff class heals as well. Right now blighted blastbones is still the better morph choice.

MashmalloMan

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Grave Lord's Sacrifice is still really bad. I'm glad the skull bug was fixed, but it still doesn't do nearly enough to warrant dropping your best damage ability (Blastbones).

On top of just being a bad buff, it's also still horrendously clunky. You can still Line-of-Sight your own buff. You can still get your buff denied by enemy stuns.

The buff either needs to increase in numbers, add some sort of DoT itself, or increase class healing as well. It's an underwhelming buff that isn't very user friendly, so it never gets slotted.

I still wish they went with some version of my original pitch. I'm obviously biased, but I think it solved every goal they had when redesigning the ability while also being something players would actually enjoy slotting vs how it is now, where it's clunky, doesn't warrant enough damage, and still forces a high complexity rotation by replacing Blastbones 3 GCD minigame with Flame Skull as the exact same 3 GCD minigame.

Make it make sense?

It regularly feels like ZOS makes big changes, states they're intending additional changes to that change in the future, and that they're watching feedback, only to wait years for any actual followup. LOOKING at you hybridization in regards to food, potions, poisons, mundus stones, and original class redundant minor group buffs.

Here was the original idea:



I quite like the addition of guaranteed Diseased with Major Defile (always procs the aoe part no matter the required 4s cooldown), but I would still consider a dynamic cost, GLS proccing mini Blastbones to create corpses and deal damage, unlocking itself from Flame Skull, while also spawning them on your target instead of needing it to hit yourself for the buff.. I also don't really care if it's flame or disease damage, but I know some people do due to Encratis or Vampirism debuffs.

MashmalloMan

I posted this in the Grimoire Focus thread, but I'll mention it here too.

Thank you for changing this to permanent pets, it is a lot more intuitive and makes no pet sorc a little bit more competitive.

That said, you completely forgot the Class Signature Script for Sorcerer, it still gives healing if you have a temporary pet like Storm Atronach instead of aoe shock damage. Please correct this before live. It makes no sense that the passive, and class set were updated for calculated reasons you listed above, only to disregard the class specific signature script that functions parallel to them.