How to Fix Arcanist

VoidCommander · May 14

All ZoS needs to do to balance pure Arcanists against Subclassed Arcanists (and in so doing, against other classes as well), is to nerf the hell out of Banner with Crux Generation. You take that away, and suddenly Arcanist is back to dealing damage in line with the other classes.

It is a very simple change that would have a massive positive effect on the balance between True Arcanist classes and everything else. Make the ability only generate a free crux every 10 seconds instead of 5, or better yet change the class mastery to not generate Crux at all.

Treeshka · May 14

Maybe make Class mastery only work if you do not subclass? It is kind of against build freedom though.

VoidCommander · May 14

Treeshka wrote: »

Maybe make Class mastery only work if you do not subclass? It is kind of against build freedom though.

Yeah I don’t think that would work out very well. Sets a bad precedent. I’d like the class mastery to instead consume crux to perform an effect, which would provide an alternative to using Beam as the dps crux consumer.

Soarora · May 14

That’s not true; arcanist has been overpowering the competition in multiple aspects ever since it came out. It’s not banner, it’s that arcanist has overloaded skills and strong passives. Particularly, having a spammable that’s a very long AoE has caused issues where now you can attack multiple things at full power that are far apart at the same time.

randconfig · May 14

VoidCommander wrote: »

All ZoS needs to do to balance pure Arcanists against Subclassed Arcanists (and in so doing, against other classes as well), is to nerf the hell out of Banner with Crux Generation. You take that away, and suddenly Arcanist is back to dealing damage in line with the other classes.

It is a very simple change that would have a massive positive effect on the balance between True Arcanist classes and everything else. Make the ability only generate a free crux every 10 seconds instead of 5, or better yet change the class mastery to not generate Crux at all.

No then you kill all diversity builds that don't use the beam... The problem is THE BEAM, so nerf THE BEAM.

No crux generation during the beam = a simple fix.

MJallday · May 15

does arc need fixing? its fine as it is

what needs fixing is all the other classes that dont hit as hard.

Daoin · May 15

look at the size and power of his/her beam, daddy eso please send in nerfing squad right away ! and sometimes my shoulder hurts from the massive stain of heavy attacking please buff and auto attack. i also have asthma so need one hand on inhaler at all times and its not fair that i have 000.1 variant time lapse between heavies compared to weaving outcomes if i need to take a puff so please auto attack feature. how am i supposed to win trifectas if you cant even fix simple things like this ? and the game cannot be made more inclusive for me and my inhaler !

Silaf · May 15

MJallday wrote: »

does arc need fixing? its fine as it is

what needs fixing is all the other classes that dont hit as hard.

Do you realize that buffing all other classes and npc to keep the difficulty stable and nerfing a single arcanist skill are the same ting with the difference it take way less work to nerf a single skill?

SkaiFaith · May 15

People often forget that not everyone min/max, while changes affect everyone.
I will subclass every character to Herald of the tome but Fatecarver will be my only Arcanist skill. If I lose the crux generation from Banner Bearer I will effectively have no crux at all - WHY?!
Why should my accessibility and roleplay build be nerfed when it is nowhere near OP.
Stop balancing around top 3% players.

Daoin · May 15

no way its not 4% or alot more

SkaiFaith · May 15

Daoin wrote: »

no way its not 4% or alot more

Obviously I'm not saying 3% are Arcanist players. I mean that Arcanist min/maxers are a low percentage.

You could say "all Trial trifecta groups have only optimised Arcanists" and it could even be true, but that wouldn't make up much of the playerbase.

My point is: if something is not broken and neither OP for 95% of the "more relaxed" playerbase, why hammer it?
Top low percent min/maxers will always exist and will always find the next way to break the game - it always happens and always will be. You can't balance based off that.

BananaBender · May 15

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

no way its not 4% or alot more

Obviously I'm not saying 3% are Arcanist players. I mean that Arcanist min/maxers are a low percentage.

You could say "all Trial trifecta groups have only optimised Arcanists" and it could even be true, but that wouldn't make up much of the playerbase.

My point is: if something is not broken and neither OP for 95% of the "more relaxed" playerbase, why hammer it?
Top low percent min/maxers will always exist and will always find the next way to break the game - it always happens and always will be. You can't balance based off that.

Could there even be anything that is OP for the more relaxed playerbase? How strong would something even have to be to be OP for casual players?

The thing is that vast majority of casual players do not care. Changes in the meta wont affect them one bit, because they don't look at builds or guides let alone patch notes or balance changes. I lost count of the amount of people asking why their blastbones was firing the wrong way months after they changed it into GLS. Balancing around casual players makes no sense, because by definition majority of them don't care what's good and what's bad, mostly just what's fun and looks good, or they just stick to the build they have been using for years no matter what changes they make. There isn't a cohesive casual playerbase who have even remotely similar views in terms of the balance, so what's there to even balance around?

On the other hand the end game community does care about balance, there is way more cohesive understanding about balance, usually backed up by hours of testing and number crunching.

Daoin · May 15

BananaBender wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

no way its not 4% or alot more

Obviously I'm not saying 3% are Arcanist players. I mean that Arcanist min/maxers are a low percentage.

You could say "all Trial trifecta groups have only optimised Arcanists" and it could even be true, but that wouldn't make up much of the playerbase.

My point is: if something is not broken and neither OP for 95% of the "more relaxed" playerbase, why hammer it?
Top low percent min/maxers will always exist and will always find the next way to break the game - it always happens and always will be. You can't balance based off that.

Could there even be anything that is OP for the more relaxed playerbase? How strong would something even have to be to be OP for casual players?

The thing is that vast majority of casual players do not care. Changes in the meta wont affect them one bit, because they don't look at builds or guides let alone patch notes or balance changes. I lost count of the amount of people asking why their blastbones was firing the wrong way months after they changed it into GLS. Balancing around casual players makes no sense, because by definition majority of them don't care what's good and what's bad, mostly just what's fun and looks good, or they just stick to the build they have been using for years no matter what changes they make. There isn't a cohesive casual playerbase who have even remotely similar views in terms of the balance, so what's there to even balance around?

On the other hand the end game community does care about balance, there is way more cohesive understanding about balance, usually backed up by hours of testing and number crunching.

and yet here we still are in worse shape eso has been in in all of history and standing in the face of another mass culling. with a few carrots for the faithful to follow being thrown out yet again

BananaBender · May 15

Daoin wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Daoin wrote: »

no way its not 4% or alot more

Obviously I'm not saying 3% are Arcanist players. I mean that Arcanist min/maxers are a low percentage.

You could say "all Trial trifecta groups have only optimised Arcanists" and it could even be true, but that wouldn't make up much of the playerbase.

My point is: if something is not broken and neither OP for 95% of the "more relaxed" playerbase, why hammer it?
Top low percent min/maxers will always exist and will always find the next way to break the game - it always happens and always will be. You can't balance based off that.

Could there even be anything that is OP for the more relaxed playerbase? How strong would something even have to be to be OP for casual players?

The thing is that vast majority of casual players do not care. Changes in the meta wont affect them one bit, because they don't look at builds or guides let alone patch notes or balance changes. I lost count of the amount of people asking why their blastbones was firing the wrong way months after they changed it into GLS. Balancing around casual players makes no sense, because by definition majority of them don't care what's good and what's bad, mostly just what's fun and looks good, or they just stick to the build they have been using for years no matter what changes they make. There isn't a cohesive casual playerbase who have even remotely similar views in terms of the balance, so what's there to even balance around?

On the other hand the end game community does care about balance, there is way more cohesive understanding about balance, usually backed up by hours of testing and number crunching.

and yet here we still are in worse shape eso has been in in all of history and standing in the face of another mass culling. with a few carrots for the faithful to follow being thrown out yet again

Exactly, but it's not because they have listened to feedback from end game players, because well, they haven't. Ever since U35 they haven't listened to any feedback, especially from end game players. All the latest patches have just been them deciding something and sticking to it no matter how much feedback they get. Subclassing got pretty much zero changes despite it being the largest feature they have made ever in this game.