PTS Update 46 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities

AdiraLynn

As a Sorc DD, the nerf to Prey really is a kick in the gut. Since the Arc arrived, no one wants a sorc around unless it's a MK build. And honestly, Prey is the only thing going for us sorcs, compared to other classes. We have to use weapon skills to compensate for a lack of strong executes and no aoe damage. I understand the concern of how much damage pets can do, but our pets aren't as annoying as the arcs crazy black tentacles. Please do us sorcs a favor and leave prey alone. It's our only real source of significant damage.

katorga

Merciless Resolve: This ability should no longer bypass certain defensive bonuses and functions, such as Crystallized Shield.

wth, they had it coded to bypass what exactly, how many and which defensive bonuses, what other skills?

Who slipped in Merciless Resolve's projectile from bypassing defensive skills designed for projectiles?

xylena_lazarow

katorga wrote: »

Who slipped in Merciless Resolve's projectile from bypassing defensive skills designed for projectiles?

Probably whoever made Rushing Agony chains undodgeable...

Speaking of which, these two pain points will destroy what's left of build PvP. The double spectral bows from Grim Focus will ruin what's left of smallscale, while Rushing Agony finishes destroying large scale as it's been the past year. Subclassing is going to be an afterthought to all the rule-breaking instant death spam from these two pain points.

SaintJohnHM

The week's update did nothing to fix the huge pile of garbage that multiclassing has given us.

tomofhyrule

I'm still very concerned about the nerfs to DK sustain, especially since a lot of ult gen sets got nerfed as well. The Magma nerf, while justified in that you shouldn't be able to be permanently in Magma form, also feels like the Magma Armor morph is missing something from the Corrosive Armor morph since the radius on applying the damage shield to allies is really small. Essentially, it makes it seem that Corrosive will be 100% the better morph in all circumstances, which is a bit annoying.

I just wish it didn't feel like the devs' plan was "we want you all to subclass, so we're going to make it painful to exist unless you don't!"

But I'm starting to already get nervous for U47 now. The power creep that Subclassing can provide (and really only to min-maxers) will mean that we'll probably have some massive nerfs incoming one people are setting records left and right thanks to their new broken builds. U35's nerfs to rein in power creep were justified, but the way that patch was presented as just nerf after nerf ended up really turning a lot of people off, and the population still hasn't really recovered from that. I can absolutely see U47 or U48 being a "hey, there's too much power creep so we're going to globally nerf everyone" patch.

mrreow

If I were ZOS and I had to do this for some reason I would treat the given combination of trees as separate copy of abilities and then balance these copies progressively as problems arise separately over the year so that the original pure class abilities remain unchanged.

Then I would in the future add some VFX to some popular tree combinations abilities (copies) progressively over the years so that they make sense for example crystal frags with arcanist is a green crystal with runes, dk wings that are mora tentacles etc. Main class would dictate the theme of the abilities vfx and only the most jarring need to be altered.
For example definitely Templar line when playing NB must have these bonus VFX to allow for cohesive theme option. It’s literally the opposite archetype after all

It’s anyone’s guess if the engine allows this easily. Maybe they would already do it as such if it was the case

Still the first solves balance and the second visual consistency

PrinceShroob

tomofhyrule wrote: »

But I'm starting to already get nervous for U47 now. The power creep that Subclassing can provide (and really only to min-maxers) will mean that we'll probably have some massive nerfs incoming one people are setting records left and right thanks to their new broken builds. U35's nerfs to rein in power creep were justified, but the way that patch was presented as just nerf after nerf ended up really turning a lot of people off, and the population still hasn't really recovered from that. I can absolutely see U47 or U48 being a "hey, there's too much power creep so we're going to globally nerf everyone" patch.

Spot on. The way that Pillager's Profit and Pearls of Ehlnofey were nerfed because they gave everyone access to Siphoning (where they buffed the Catalyst passive) was criminal. It feels like we're all Hansel getting fattened up by the witch.

There's already a second endgame brain drain happening--people leaving the game because of subclassing. I'm not sure that the casual players who're going to drip in are a sustainable replacement, particularly if they can all be siphoned (ha) off by an unnecessary remaster of a 20-year-old game or the unicorn of The Elder Scrolls 6.

If the developers continue to make content harder to account for power creep while driving endgame players and PvPers away, how, exactly, do they expect anyone to get to that level if there are no mentors left? Particularly since they seem to allergic to explaining anything about how to play the game--no doubt fearing the casual players who take any build suggestions as an imposition.

necro_the_crafter

ZoS, I will never forgive you for taking my beloved stalking blastbones from me.
Imagine cold-fire themed pyromancer that could be built with Ardent Flame (blue skill styles for breath and whip) and Grave Lords Stalking Blastbones...

Ragnarok0130

tomofhyrule wrote: »

randconfig wrote: »

So it seems very clear to me, as a veteran player, that they've always been working towards enabling more creativity and fun in the game, unlike in the past, and that there is a want/demand from the playerbase overall for this, as my own experiences shows.

One of the big problems people are having though is that this addition of more freedom is coming at the expense of others.

Example: My main is a tank. His whole theme is dragons, fire, rock, etc. I built him around those ideas because that was what I liked. He's also lawful good in my mind, and I made sure to do the TG and DB quests on my alts because my lawful good paladin-of-fire-and-rock is not the right person to do evil things.

With Subclassing... well, that doesn't change him much. I want him fire-based. Why would I give up one of my fire lines to take on something else? Good, so I don't need to take it.
...except, there are other players who are now saying "hey, I can combine my Necro with the Earthen Heart line and basically print ultimate, and then the DK Battle Roar passive lets me just have infinite sustain!"

So what happens? Nerfs. And instead of nerfing "Players who take skill line X and skill line Y," we just get the individual lines nerfed. So because other people are building their characters in a certain way, I get my sustain nerfed by over 50%. That... kinda sucks. Sure, I could get that back, by... oh - I'd need to give up my fire-themed skills and likely make my lawful good character part Necromancer. So my choices are to have my character now be a shell of himself, or to throw out the entire story I've built for him over the years.

That's why some people are feeling that, while Subclassing is giving the freedom to build your character however you want, you're basically being coerced into building your character a certain way. If everything is getting nerfs because of the chance of interactions between Skill Lines X and Y, that means that characters who only have one or the other but not both are only getting nerfs where they didn't need them.

Subclassing itself is not bad, and I'd actually like to see more freedom with Subclassing - go ahead and make it so you can trade all three lines! Go ahead and make it so it doesn't level slower and require more skill points! Go ahead and take more than one line from a Class! But there needs to be a mechanic to not make Subclassed builds be so obscenely more powerful than the pure classes that we've had for 11 years, and that (to many peoples' surprise) some players actually enjoy having a consistent theme.

Precisely. I don't understand why ZoS can't do a form of "Battle Spirit" that says if subclassing is present nerf skill effectiveness by X so the pure classes aren't gutted due to subclass skill interactions. We shouldn't be forced to subclass because our classes were nerfed into the ground because of subclassing skill synergies....if we are then "play how you want" is little more than marketing lip service.

sans-culottes

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

randconfig wrote: »

So it seems very clear to me, as a veteran player, that they've always been working towards enabling more creativity and fun in the game, unlike in the past, and that there is a want/demand from the playerbase overall for this, as my own experiences shows.

One of the big problems people are having though is that this addition of more freedom is coming at the expense of others.

Example: My main is a tank. His whole theme is dragons, fire, rock, etc. I built him around those ideas because that was what I liked. He's also lawful good in my mind, and I made sure to do the TG and DB quests on my alts because my lawful good paladin-of-fire-and-rock is not the right person to do evil things.

With Subclassing... well, that doesn't change him much. I want him fire-based. Why would I give up one of my fire lines to take on something else? Good, so I don't need to take it.
...except, there are other players who are now saying "hey, I can combine my Necro with the Earthen Heart line and basically print ultimate, and then the DK Battle Roar passive lets me just have infinite sustain!"

So what happens? Nerfs. And instead of nerfing "Players who take skill line X and skill line Y," we just get the individual lines nerfed. So because other people are building their characters in a certain way, I get my sustain nerfed by over 50%. That... kinda sucks. Sure, I could get that back, by... oh - I'd need to give up my fire-themed skills and likely make my lawful good character part Necromancer. So my choices are to have my character now be a shell of himself, or to throw out the entire story I've built for him over the years.

That's why some people are feeling that, while Subclassing is giving the freedom to build your character however you want, you're basically being coerced into building your character a certain way. If everything is getting nerfs because of the chance of interactions between Skill Lines X and Y, that means that characters who only have one or the other but not both are only getting nerfs where they didn't need them.

Subclassing itself is not bad, and I'd actually like to see more freedom with Subclassing - go ahead and make it so you can trade all three lines! Go ahead and make it so it doesn't level slower and require more skill points! Go ahead and take more than one line from a Class! But there needs to be a mechanic to not make Subclassed builds be so obscenely more powerful than the pure classes that we've had for 11 years, and that (to many peoples' surprise) some players actually enjoy having a consistent theme.

Precisely. I don't understand why ZoS can't do a form of "Battle Spirit" that says if subclassing is present nerf skill effectiveness by X so the pure classes aren't gutted due to subclass skill interactions. We shouldn't be forced to subclass because our classes were nerfed into the ground because of subclassing skill synergies....if we are then "play how you want" is little more than marketing lip service.

Well said. At this point, it feels less like “play how you want” and more like “play as you want—as long as you subclass.” That’s not freedom. It’s conditional flexibility wrapped in PR. And for those of us who actually like our original class kits, it’s starting to feel like we’re being punished for not keeping up with the patchwork.

Eratas_Dualitas

Thank you for the subclasses but now that they are here, the Oakensoul Ring, vital for accessibility, simplifing combat for players with disabilities, enabling meaningful engagement without complex rotations. Yet, the ~10k DPS boost lags behind community-reported gains of ~50k DPS (125k to 175k) in optimized builds, per YouTube and social media. This disparity risks sidelining players reliant on the ring from cooperative content.

To balance its Monster Set trade-off and PvP dynamics, I propose enhancing it outside of Battlespirit. This would uphold ESO’s inclusivity, empowering all players, especially those needing accommodations.

necro_the_crafter

Eratas_Dualitas wrote: »

Thank you for the subclasses but now that they are here, the Oakensoul Ring, vital for accessibility, simplifing combat for players with disabilities, enabling meaningful engagement without complex rotations. Yet, the ~10k DPS boost lags behind community-reported gains of ~50k DPS (125k to 175k) in optimized builds, per YouTube and social media. This disparity risks sidelining players reliant on the ring from cooperative content.

To balance its Monster Set trade-off and PvP dynamics, I propose enhancing it outside of Battlespirit. This would uphold ESO’s inclusivity, empowering all players, especially those needing accommodations.

Due to how liitle had been changed in the game itself, oakenbuilds should be able to clear any content they already are able to.

DPS gains of subclass specs is a result of shortsighteness of zos, and im pretty sure we will see it hammered down with a sledge in next few patches to the point where picking chessiest skill lines to dps would be the only option to clear harder content.

LukosCreyden

Either fix Grave Lord Sacrifice so that the animation isn't a lazily repurposed attack animation, or change the entire skill.
Did you sack all your animators? Must've been before U35 hit, what with the abominations that came out with THAT mess of a patch.

sarahthes

PrinceShroob wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

But I'm starting to already get nervous for U47 now. The power creep that Subclassing can provide (and really only to min-maxers) will mean that we'll probably have some massive nerfs incoming one people are setting records left and right thanks to their new broken builds. U35's nerfs to rein in power creep were justified, but the way that patch was presented as just nerf after nerf ended up really turning a lot of people off, and the population still hasn't really recovered from that. I can absolutely see U47 or U48 being a "hey, there's too much power creep so we're going to globally nerf everyone" patch.

Spot on. The way that Pillager's Profit and Pearls of Ehlnofey were nerfed because they gave everyone access to Siphoninh (where they buffed the Catalyst passive) was criminal. It feels like we're all Hansel getting fattened up by the witch.

There's already a second endgame brain drain happening--people leaving the game because of subclassing. I'm not sure that the casual players who're going to drip in are a sustainable replacement, particularly if they can all be siphoned (ha) off by an unnecessary remaster of a 20-year-old game or the unicorn of The Elder Scrolls 6.

If the developers continue to make content harder to account for power creep while driving endgame players and PvPers away, how, exactly, do they expect anyone to get to that level if there are no mentors left? Particularly since they seem to allergic to explaining anything about how to play the game--no doubt fearing the casual players who take any build suggestions as an imposition.

This is the argument I was having on Reddit today.

The person arguing with me told me they hope all veteran players quit because of the changes, so zos can focus on their real customers.

YandereGirlfriend

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I'm still very concerned about the nerfs to DK sustain, especially since a lot of ult gen sets got nerfed as well. The Magma nerf, while justified in that you shouldn't be able to be permanently in Magma form, also feels like the Magma Armor morph is missing something from the Corrosive Armor morph since the radius on applying the damage shield to allies is really small. Essentially, it makes it seem that Corrosive will be 100% the better morph in all circumstances, which is a bit annoying.

I just wish it didn't feel like the devs' plan was "we want you all to subclass, so we're going to make it painful to exist unless you don't!"

But I'm starting to already get nervous for U47 now. The power creep that Subclassing can provide (and really only to min-maxers) will mean that we'll probably have some massive nerfs incoming one people are setting records left and right thanks to their new broken builds. U35's nerfs to rein in power creep were justified, but the way that patch was presented as just nerf after nerf ended up really turning a lot of people off, and the population still hasn't really recovered from that. I can absolutely see U47 or U48 being a "hey, there's too much power creep so we're going to globally nerf everyone" patch.

Yeah, Magma is a dead morph now thanks to the IA cheesers.

Also, Justice For Stalking Blastbones.

randconfig

My Personal Unaddressed Pain Points:

1. Necromancer corpse mechanic is micromanagement hell now (was bad before, reduced duration and max cap of 5 corpses in PvP kills it and the class mastery). All consumer abilities are more unreliable, some unusable (Animate Blastbones) in PvP.
2. Animate Blastbones continues to need a buff, was unreliable and way too expensive of an ultimate cost before, but now it may as well have been deleted from the game. So there goes my Necromancer main's Blastbones playstyle.
3. Arcanist Beam can generate full crux while channeling to be spam cast and was buffed by 8%, meanwhile Tentacular Dread doesn't even work properly with Inspired Scholarship (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/674297/bug-arcanist-tentacular-dreads-33-not-applying-when-inspired-scholarship-generates-a-crux/p1?new=1) and is way weaker than the beam....
4. Dragonknight sustain was nerfed too hard, and the Earthen Heart skill line feels useless (e.g. Stonefist is an interesting ability, but pretty useless on ranged dps due to stupidly high costs and not procing the Helping Hands passive)
5. Templar Nova ultimate is objectively weaker in every way compared to an ultimate like Meteor for solo players, and despite having a loud boom/impact animation, it deals no damage on impact. Just feels bad to use unless you're in group content and someone actually uses the synergy. It's sad because there's no other ranged class ultimate for Templar, and the beautiful animation for this one is rarely shown.

Zyaneth_Bal

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

ZoS, I will never forgive you for taking my beloved stalking blastbones from me.
Imagine cold-fire themed pyromancer that could be built with Ardent Flame (blue skill styles for breath and whip) and Grave Lords Stalking Blastbones...

Could that be the intent behind blue fatecarver

StarOfElyon

randconfig wrote: »

My Personal Unaddressed Pain Points:

1. Necromancer corpse mechanic is micromanagement hell now (was bad before, reduced duration and max cap of 5 corpses in PvP kills it and the class mastery). All consumer abilities are more unreliable, some unusable (Animate Blastbones) in PvP.
2. Animate Blastbones continues to need a buff, was unreliable and way too expensive of an ultimate cost before, but now it may as well have been deleted from the game. So there goes my Necromancer main's Blastbones playstyle.
3. Arcanist Beam can generate full crux while channeling to be spam cast and was buffed by 8%, meanwhile Tentacular Dread doesn't even work properly with Inspired Scholarship (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/674297/bug-arcanist-tentacular-dreads-33-not-applying-when-inspired-scholarship-generates-a-crux/p1?new=1) and is way weaker than the beam....
4. Dragonknight sustain was nerfed too hard, and the Earthen Heart skill line feels useless (e.g. Stonefist is an interesting ability, but pretty useless on ranged dps due to stupidly high costs and not procing the Helping Hands passive)
5. Templar Nova ultimate is objectively weaker in every way compared to an ultimate like Meteor for solo players, and despite having a loud boom/impact animation, it deals no damage on impact. Just feels bad to use unless you're in group content and someone actually uses the synergy. It's sad because there's no other ranged class ultimate for Templar, and the beautiful animation for this one is rarely shown.

Agreed. I would share my spoilered suggestion posts again if I had them right now.

Darkness734

Werewolves Roar morph that speeds up heavy attack doesnt apply the speed boost on the first heavy attack.its been broken since......, ummm how long has the game been out again?

randconfig

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

ZoS, I will never forgive you for taking my beloved stalking blastbones from me.
Imagine cold-fire themed pyromancer that could be built with Ardent Flame (blue skill styles for breath and whip) and Grave Lords Stalking Blastbones...

Honestly, I would accept blighted blastbones if they would just give us the original stalking blastbones style. The green one is ugly imo.

FoJul

randconfig wrote: »

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

ZoS, I will never forgive you for taking my beloved stalking blastbones from me.
Imagine cold-fire themed pyromancer that could be built with Ardent Flame (blue skill styles for breath and whip) and Grave Lords Stalking Blastbones...

Honestly, I would accept blighted blastbones if they would just give us the original stalking blastbones style. The green one is ugly imo.

Red blastbones would go so hard.

ZhuJiuyin

Soul Harvest needs nerfs.
If ZOS thinks that players quickly accumulating Ultimate Abilities will disrupt the balance, and specifically nerfs PVE sets such as Ehlnofey and Pillager for this purpose, then Soul Harvest will disrupt the balance even more in the future, because this skill has no cooldown, and you can gain 10 Ultimate points by just killing an enemy.
In subclassing, Soul Harvest will make other Ultimate Abilities cast faster, especially in situations with a lot of adds, such as SEhm and LChm, the power increase it produces will be much greater than Ehlnofey and Pillager.
You may even see a person using Languid Eye or Shooting Star every 10-15 seconds.

ZhuJiuyin

https://youtu.be/_y5P6_rxBtY?si=3P7K_u9xDTGKYcQi

From the 19th to the 35th second of the video, we can see that when facing a large number of adds, it only takes about 15 seconds to launch an Ultimate, because Minor Heroism and Soul Harvest allow me to quickly obtain enough Ultimate points.
Of course, Dawn's Wrath's Restoring Spirit also reduces ultimate consumption, but the biggest problem is that Soul Harvest greatly increases the speed at which players obtain ultimate points. This was not a problem before U46, but after U46, due to subclassing, Soul Harvest will become a must-have front column, because no other skills or buffs can obtain so many ultimate points so quickly, not to mention that Assassination provides so much Critical, Critical Damage and Weapon and Spell Damage.

cuddles_with_wroble

randconfig wrote: »

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

ZoS, I will never forgive you for taking my beloved stalking blastbones from me.
Imagine cold-fire themed pyromancer that could be built with Ardent Flame (blue skill styles for breath and whip) and Grave Lords Stalking Blastbones...

Honestly, I would accept blighted blastbones if they would just give us the original stalking blastbones style. The green one is ugly imo.

Revert jabs and flurry while we at it

xylena_lazarow

The passives for Nightblade Assassin tree are just as nuts as the double spec bows. In particular they give absurd amounts of crit chance compared to any other source of crit chance in the game, or compared to how much any other class passive contributes to a single stat like that. It's like if they suddenly added 600 weapon damage to Ardent Flame.

Turtle_Bot

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The passives for Nightblade Assassin tree are just as nuts as the double spec bows. In particular they give absurd amounts of crit chance compared to any other source of crit chance in the game, or compared to how much any other class passive contributes to a single stat like that. It's like if they suddenly added 600 weapon damage to Ardent Flame.

It's crazy how the class that wants to stack as much crit damage as possible, constantly gets new (and more) crit chance buffs added to its kit, while the class that wants crit chance (and has abilities that synergize/depend on crit chance to function) can't get any crit chance added to it's kit, not even the major crit chance named buff, that's been in the game since launch...

xylena_lazarow

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

can't get any crit chance added to it's kit, not even the major crit chance named buff, that's been in the game since launch...

They could attach the double bar crit chance buff to Crystal Shards and it would still pale compared to spec bow.

Turtle_Bot

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

can't get any crit chance added to it's kit, not even the major crit chance named buff, that's been in the game since launch...

They could attach the double bar crit chance buff to Crystal Shards and it would still pale compared to spec bow.

That just proves how broken NB's DPS line (and spec bow in particular) is. The literal strongest DPS buff in the game cannot make an already decently strong skill be on par with an ability that comes with a regular DPS buff that is given out like candy.

BasP

I realize that this PTS cycle is over, but could you please consider buffing Mages' Wrath for the next update? It's quite bad (at least for PvE) at the moment.





In my parse above Merciless Resolve did 103K damage on average, with a maximum hit of 132K. Both hits of Mages' Wrath's combined only did 87K on average however, with a max of 113K. Why does an execute ability deal less damage than a regular ability?

Now I get that Mages' Wrath deals AOE damage, so it should deal less damage versus a single target than other execute abilities like Assassin's Blade or Radiant Destruction, but it's just not worth taking up a skill slot right now (especially when you take into account that a lot of builds will have access to those stronger execute abilities due to subclassing).

I personally think it'd be great if the execute scaling started at 25%, similar to Impale and the Warden's bear, and if either the skill's base damage or the proc's damage would be increased somewhat.

silentxthreat

okay i tested a few things on the ptr for subclass and i must voice how bad spec bow crits are for the game. I stacked as much crit resist as possible 7 inpen plus rally and crit resist cp with 30k resists and still got smacked for 19k spec bow crit. if this goes like everyone will run assassin subspec for a little while before quitting out of frustration of constant one shots.

we need to tone down the crit damage