PTS Update 47 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities Changes

pinkpom

I knew the Assassination skill line would be nerfed. However, I did not think the Shadow skill line would be nerfed.

YandereGirlfriend

pinkpom wrote: »

I knew the Assassination skill line would be nerfed. However, I did not think the Shadow skill line would be nerfed.

THIS.

Who was complaining about Dark Cloak in 2025?!

Vaqual

The uniquely hard hitting Grim Focus losing the drawback-free, fully scaling & stackable passive Weapon Damage that eclipsed any other passive bonus: Beautiful.

Banner Bearer Crux Cheat getting the boot: Beautiful.

I appreciate the crack down on overtuned, mindless, passive power.

Storm Calling being streamlined into a DPS-only line: That is an ill omen. Not in favor of this type of change.

The change to Ultimate generation makes sense, that is what your generic buff system is for. But I hope you have considered, what easier access to Heroism buffs will mean for certain sets.

RoA-change: Haven't had a look yet, but sounds like it is going in the right direction.

Dark Cloak: I have given up on this ability a long time ago. It just keeps getting weirder. If I have to choose between block-tapping or lag-desynced stop and go to get my moneys worth, I still prefer to slot something else.

Tannus15

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?





This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

MincMincMinc

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?





This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

You forgot to mention how useless the rest of summoning skill line is for damage compared to one of the best set of the most relevant passives available on assassin.

Tannus15

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?





This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

You forgot to mention how useless the rest of summoning skill line is for damage compared to one of the best set of the most relevant passives available on assassin.

honestly i was intentionally leaving that out. just look at the 2 skills. they are the same skill except one is way worse than the other by every metric.

Just put major resolve on BA so it's in the stam sorc kit again. this is so dumb.

MashmalloMan

What Relentless Focus and Bound Armaments share:

• Require 4 light attacks.
• Gain 2 stacks for a heavy attack.
• 28m range.
• Instant.
• Low cost vs typical spammables.
• Provide Major Savagery/Prophecy.

What Relentless Focus does better:

• Deals 21.1% more damage.
• Stacks up to 10 times, instead of 8, enabling the user to fire the ability 3 times in a row once at full stacks.
• Burst heals based on damage done in melee range, typically for your entire health bar.
• Costs 270 less, completely invalidating Daedric Summoning's Rebate passive for +371 stamina return, which was already invalidated by Assassination's Executioner passive 1k Stam/Mag return on kill.
• +2.5% crit chance for slotting vs 108 w/s damage for slotting, which requires 2 skill lines instead of 1.
• Truely instant, in that it fires in 1 projectile instead of 4 projectiles spaced out over 1.2s (0.3s each), making it much harder to dodge.
• Visually it's not telegraphed nearly as obvious for counterplay with a missable red glow on the user's weapon vs 4 floating daggers above a Sorc's head.

What Bound Armaments does better:

• 5% mitigation for slotting, but the skill line passives as a whole are infinitely worse than Assassination that it's truely the only positive I could mention without completely delving into each passive as a comparison. 5% stamina for example does not compare to 10% crit damage.. etc etc. Even from a defensive standpoint, the burst heal on Focus far exceeds the mitigation you get here.
• Physical damage plays nice with Storm Calling for +5% damage, but again, Relentless does 21% more, so this is a stretch, Focus still does much more.
• Plays nice with damage done instances buffs because it hits 4 times instead of once, but with the nerf to Maelstrom 2 Hander, this is pretty much non existent nowadays.
• Better status effect application uptime, 4 chances instead of 1. This about the only real positive I can think of.

I think it's very clear Relentless Focus is better in almost every way, can we please get some rebalancing done here after this has been an issue for years?

I don't agree with the changes to Major Resolve, but at the very least add Major Resolve to Bound Armaments so Sorc's don't have to pick between a crucial Major Resolve buff or 1 of their defining damage abilities via Bound Aegis and Bound Armaments.

I'll further suggest the following to clean things up:

• Move Major Savagery/Prophecy from Bound Armaments to Surge and all morphs.
• Move Major Sorcery/Brutality from Surge to Lightning Form and all morphs.
• Move Minor Force to Bound Armaments.
• Add Major Resolve to Bound Armaments, making the morph choice Minor Resolve/Block Buff vs Minor Force/Damage Skill.
• Consider moving Minor Prophecy from Dark Magic to Storm Calling, replace it with a support focussed passive. This would help Storm Calling compete much better with Assassination.

These are all easy fixes for now, but down the line we need major changes to Dark Magic and Daedric Summoning as a whole. They're severely lacking in a subclassing context.

Tonturri

I do not like the Dark Cloak changes and they do not appear to be well thought out. Reducing the duration is a huge healing reduction. It was a 10-13k heal (depending on healing buffs and whatnot) on my 43k HP nightblade at 5 seconds at ~2600/sec for 5 seconds. The 150% buff puts it at 19-20k while standing still (or blocking, in this case), which is...about what Resolving Vigor does on the same build, a skill with no positional or blocking requirements. Without blocking, it's much worse than Vigor. This is a soulcleaver/umbral edge setup, not particularly geared towards tanking or DPS. It's unpleasant that a class, health-based HoT is so weak compared to other options for HoTs and burst healing - warden gets that 13k heal as a burst + a HoT on top of it.

At the very least, I'd hope this skill could be changed to be 5 seconds baseline, as 3 seconds will trim it from 13k/19k to ~8k-12k, which is just absurdly weak for a HoT, not even healing as much as other health based heal or shield skills for tanks. If someone out there is feeling nice, frontloading the HoT a bit so that 50% of the heal is on the first tick, then 25%, then 25% (if it's just going to be 3 seconds), or something to that effect, would be great. A class skill for healing tank builds should not lose out so badly to basically every other burst heal while also being a worse HoT, somehow. Going from 5 seconds to 3 seconds with no change is a 40% nerf to the healing value...

Is there something I'm missing here? It looks like a NB tank's (or high-HP build) main class-HoT is taking a 40% nerf to then require blocking to still be worse than all other available options.

Tannus15

I was so excited for these changes when I misread the patch notes.

@MashmalloMan s suggestions are significantly better than the current changes, but if not that, then at the very least put major resolve on bound armaments AND buff ba damage to the same level as relentless focus.

Hapexamendios

Referring specifically to Grim Focus, Bound armaments etc:

Changing unique bonuses for ones that commonly can be gotten elsewhere is not a welcome change. If the you feel the bonuses are too much, nerf them accordingly but do not take them away for mundane ones.

Tannus15

It's really good that sorc is finally getting major sav / proph. especially since minor proph is now dead because dark magic SUCKS SO BADLY.

But it also sucks that you can now objectively look at these 2 skills and clearly see one is way worse than the other for no reason.
literally no reason.
The only reason is because F sorc. That's why. Because they don't like sorc.

I don't get it.

Last update they wanted to nerf BA damage by 10%. What? Why? Who at ZoS hates sorcerer so much? I don't understand what is going on.

MincMincMinc

Tannus15 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?





This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

You forgot to mention how useless the rest of summoning skill line is for damage compared to one of the best set of the most relevant passives available on assassin.

honestly i was intentionally leaving that out. just look at the 2 skills. they are the same skill except one is way worse than the other by every metric.

Just put major resolve on BA so it's in the stam sorc kit again. this is so dumb.

What stamsorcs are going to use BA? Atleast in pvp stamsorcs are now just wardens with streak since you need the charm sribing skill and shalks for breaches. So at a minimum you are forced to run Animal and stormcalling for streak. Then what you run restoring light for Rune? Ok well now we are back to the old stamsorc dilemma of critsurge needs crit chance, but comically stamsorc has no access to critchance now that you dropped assassin. Funny enough its even more of a slap in the face that hurricane has minor force lol even further demanding you get critchance.

Welp glad I spent all patch finding a more efficient all around build than the Acuity boring waiting room playstyle.....just to end up going back to requiring acuity.

---

Again if zos wants to make more engaging active playstyles they need to incorporate the buffs into the skills.

Hurricane for instance could be a simple tooltip, growing in range, that gives you... guessing here...2% crit per second as it builds. Go a step further and only make it grow when it hits things per second. Suddenly the skill is worth nothing if used incorrectly and worth everything to a good player.

imaslowlearner

You guys forgot to change stone giant from applying stagger to applying major breach.

MashmalloMan

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?





This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

You forgot to mention how useless the rest of summoning skill line is for damage compared to one of the best set of the most relevant passives available on assassin.

honestly i was intentionally leaving that out. just look at the 2 skills. they are the same skill except one is way worse than the other by every metric.

Just put major resolve on BA so it's in the stam sorc kit again. this is so dumb.

What stamsorcs are going to use BA? Atleast in pvp stamsorcs are now just wardens with streak since you need the charm sribing skill and shalks for breaches. So at a minimum you are forced to run Animal and stormcalling for streak. Then what you run restoring light for Rune? Ok well now we are back to the old stamsorc dilemma of critsurge needs crit chance, but comically stamsorc has no access to critchance now that you dropped assassin. Funny enough its even more of a slap in the face that hurricane has minor force lol even further demanding you get critchance.

Welp glad I spent all patch finding a more efficient all around build than the Acuity boring waiting room playstyle.....just to end up going back to requiring acuity.

---

Again if zos wants to make more engaging active playstyles they need to incorporate the buffs into the skills.

Hurricane for instance could be a simple tooltip, growing in range, that gives you... guessing here...2% crit per second as it builds. Go a step further and only make it grow when it hits things per second. Suddenly the skill is worth nothing if used incorrectly and worth everything to a good player.

To your point and mine (about swapping buffs around) it never made sense for CRITICAL Surge to provide Brutality/Sorcery in the first place. I think it's time they move that out in favour of Savagery/Prophecy.

Can you imagine how much easier and fluid it would be to build for Sorc if the line that asks the class to crit as much as possible included Major and Minor Crit buffs instead of spreading them out to the other 2 lines? Think about it, Assassination has everything it needs in 1 place, crit DMG, Crit chance, Major/Minor Crit, spammable, execute, burst, DPS ultimate, gap closer vs gap maker. It's insane. The only thing it misses is survivability (Surge vs Siphoning Skills), but that's slowly being stripped away from us apparently.

And while my suggestion still moves minor force to BA, it's much less required than having major/minor crit and Minor force being in 3 lines, I'd take those 2 in 1 place in a heartbeat. If they really wanted force there too, give it to Fury for slotting seeing as how it's useless for more than 80% of a fight given how low the execute threshold is and how fast those phases end up being. The skill is terrible anyway.

That said, I just want this mess fixed as fast and a simple as possible before we're stuck with this for years. So please, move Minor Force to BA, add Major Resolve, then figure out the rest after. Add Major Savagery to Lightning Form instead of Surge for all I care even if Surge makes more sense or if I want Minor Force in Storm Calling.

MincMincMinc

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?





This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

You forgot to mention how useless the rest of summoning skill line is for damage compared to one of the best set of the most relevant passives available on assassin.

honestly i was intentionally leaving that out. just look at the 2 skills. they are the same skill except one is way worse than the other by every metric.

Just put major resolve on BA so it's in the stam sorc kit again. this is so dumb.

What stamsorcs are going to use BA? Atleast in pvp stamsorcs are now just wardens with streak since you need the charm sribing skill and shalks for breaches. So at a minimum you are forced to run Animal and stormcalling for streak. Then what you run restoring light for Rune? Ok well now we are back to the old stamsorc dilemma of critsurge needs crit chance, but comically stamsorc has no access to critchance now that you dropped assassin. Funny enough its even more of a slap in the face that hurricane has minor force lol even further demanding you get critchance.

Welp glad I spent all patch finding a more efficient all around build than the Acuity boring waiting room playstyle.....just to end up going back to requiring acuity.

---

Again if zos wants to make more engaging active playstyles they need to incorporate the buffs into the skills.

Hurricane for instance could be a simple tooltip, growing in range, that gives you... guessing here...2% crit per second as it builds. Go a step further and only make it grow when it hits things per second. Suddenly the skill is worth nothing if used incorrectly and worth everything to a good player.

To your point and mine (about swapping buffs around) it never made sense for CRITICAL Surge to provide Brutality/Sorcery in the first place. I think it's time they move that out in favour of Savagery/Prophecy.

Can you imagine how much easier and fluid it would be to build for Sorc if the line that asks the class to crit as much as possible included Major and Minor Crit buffs instead of spreading them out to the other 2 lines? Think about it, Assassination has everything it needs in 1 place, crit DMG, Crit chance, Major/Minor Crit, spammable, execute, burst, DPS ultimate, gap closer vs gap maker. It's insane. The only thing it misses is survivability (Surge vs Siphoning Skills), but that's slowly being stripped away from us apparently.

And while my suggestion still moves minor force to BA, it's much less required than having major/minor crit and Minor force being in 3 lines, I'd take those 2 in 1 place in a heartbeat. If they really wanted force there too, give it to Fury for slotting seeing as how it's useless for more than 80% of a fight given how low the execute threshold is and how fast those phases end up being. The skill is terrible anyway.

That said, I just want this mess fixed as fast and a simple as possible before we're stuck with this for years. So please, move Minor Force to BA, add Major Resolve, then figure out the rest after. Add Major Savagery to Lightning Form instead of Surge for all I care even if Surge makes more sense or if I want Minor Force in Storm Calling.

The problem again is zos made this change with the notion of pure classes.....there is subclassing now so the same philosophy isnt going to work. (yes I am rehashing for those only reading this post). Each skill line needs to become a coherent thought on its own.

The second portion is what is zos's vision? Well if they wanted people to run one damage, one tank, one support line.....they would have limited subclassing as such. A sorc for example could only trade storm for assassination or Aedric or Animal. Considering they did not restrict us this way, the intention is for damage to run 3 damage skill lines, tank to run tank, and support to support. The trinity is being forced to extremes.

I am also just worried, as is every sorc player it seems, that zos simply won't think up a cohesive skillset. Crit surge requires crit. So somewhere else in the kit should be critchance. IDEALLY not on critsurge because that just makes it standalone and does not promote theorycrafting what to combine it with

PeacefulAnarchy

Passives should not be named buffs, especially not with cooldowns

I'll leave the opinions on whether ult gen is too high and whether changing these passives was a thing that should be done to others. My complaint is about how these specific changes make the passives muddy and difficult to work with, and in a lot of cases worthless.
The point of passives is to do something unique for a class/weapon line that makes it gives it its own unique play styles and balance. When passives are unique, you can still build however you want and know the passives serve only to augment your power. Yes, some passives have proc conditions, but what they give is a power someone without those passives doesn't have.

With only a couple of exceptions (that I'll talk about below) the above has been the case with nearly all passives.

Now we have this: 4.5 seconds with a 6 second cooldown, 3 seconds with a 4 second cooldown, 3 seconds with a 4 second cooldown, 6 seconds with an 8 second cooldown, 15 seconds with a 16 second cooldown, 6 seconds with an 8 second cooldown.

There are two problems here:
1. Minor heroism is a reasonably accessible buff that is easy to have 100% uptime on. Heroism potions have been reasonably common in high end groups, a bunch of scribing skills allow you to have minor heroism in various ways, and a handful of sets grant minor heroism. Those are a lot of options your passive is now conflicting with.
2. The above wouldn't be so bad if it gave you a choice: use these skills/sets/potions or use your passives instead, except we have problem number 2. All of the above provide 100% uptime on minor heroism, none of these passives do. That means your choice is: get it only from your passive and a lower uptime, or use one of the options above and make your passive completely useless.

If you felt ult get was to strong and unique ult gen shouldn't be a thing, then you should have done one of the following:
A)reworked all these passives into something completely different.
B ) If you wanted them to be similar to before but with less power in combination, you should have made a brand new buff, call it classic heroism that generates 1 ult per second for whatever appropriate duration and cooldown.
C) If you must keep it the way it is, then at least remove the cooldown so that the passives can get 100% uptime. The cooldown was only there before precisely because they were unique and instant buffs. If you're changing it to a duration buff there's no reason for a cooldown.

I also don't like the change to Catalyst, but it's not as bad because a) it doesn't have a cooldown and b) Major Heroism is a rarer buff that is also stronger. As such this passive retains power and some amount of uniqueness, although the combat conditions make it much more annoying to use than currently, and because it doesn't compete with any of the other buffs listed here it seems like an unnecessary change.

For comparison, the currently existing named buffs.

Other than the class unique minor buffs, which make sense because they are a group utility skill that has only the passive as a source, there were only 3 passives that gave named buffs.
1. Bow - Hasty Retreat: Major Expedition for 4 seconds after you use Roll Dodge
2. Shadow - Shadow Barrier: Casting a Shadow ability grants you Major Resolve for 12 seconds
3. Winter's Embrace - Icy Aura : Attackers at max stacks are afflicted with Major Maim for 3 seconds

The first also feels like a really weak passive, given that expedition has a bunch of sources but at least it has no cooldown.
The second is a very common buff, but it at least has a decent duration and no cooldown, so you can keep it up easily.
The third is in a weird place because it's a debuff with few sources, and procs through stacks. It also has no cooldown, though building stacks seems convoluted.

I don't think these existing named buff passives are all that great either, but they at least allow you to use them at will and provide viable alternatives to other sources of those buffs.

YandereGirlfriend

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Passives should not be named buffs, especially not with cooldowns

I'll leave the opinions on whether ult gen is too high and whether changing these passives was a thing that should be done to others. My complaint is about how these specific changes make the passives muddy and difficult to work with, and in a lot of cases worthless.
The point of passives is to do something unique for a class/weapon line that makes it gives it its own unique play styles and balance. When passives are unique, you can still build however you want and know the passives serve only to augment your power. Yes, some passives have proc conditions, but what they give is a power someone without those passives doesn't have.

With only a couple of exceptions (that I'll talk about below) the above has been the case with nearly all passives.

Now we have this: 4.5 seconds with a 6 second cooldown, 3 seconds with a 4 second cooldown, 3 seconds with a 4 second cooldown, 6 seconds with an 8 second cooldown, 15 seconds with a 16 second cooldown, 6 seconds with an 8 second cooldown.

There are two problems here:
1. Minor heroism is a reasonably accessible buff that is easy to have 100% uptime on. Heroism potions have been reasonably common in high end groups, a bunch of scribing skills allow you to have minor heroism in various ways, and a handful of sets grant minor heroism. Those are a lot of options your passive is now conflicting with.
2. The above wouldn't be so bad if it gave you a choice: use these skills/sets/potions or use your passives instead, except we have problem number 2. All of the above provide 100% uptime on minor heroism, none of these passives do. That means your choice is: get it only from your passive and a lower uptime, or use one of the options above and make your passive completely useless.

If you felt ult get was to strong and unique ult gen shouldn't be a thing, then you should have done one of the following:
A)reworked all these passives into something completely different.
B ) If you wanted them to be similar to before but with less power in combination, you should have made a brand new buff, call it classic heroism that generates 1 ult per second for whatever appropriate duration and cooldown.
C) If you must keep it the way it is, then at least remove the cooldown so that the passives can get 100% uptime. The cooldown was only there before precisely because they were unique and instant buffs. If you're changing it to a duration buff there's no reason for a cooldown.

I also don't like the change to Catalyst, but it's not as bad because a) it doesn't have a cooldown and b) Major Heroism is a rarer buff that is also stronger. As such this passive retains power and some amount of uniqueness, although the combat conditions make it much more annoying to use than currently, and because it doesn't compete with any of the other buffs listed here it seems like an unnecessary change.

For comparison, the currently existing named buffs.

Other than the class unique minor buffs, which make sense because they are a group utility skill that has only the passive as a source, there were only 3 passives that gave named buffs.
1. Bow - Hasty Retreat: Major Expedition for 4 seconds after you use Roll Dodge
2. Shadow - Shadow Barrier: Casting a Shadow ability grants you Major Resolve for 12 seconds
3. Winter's Embrace - Icy Aura : Attackers at max stacks are afflicted with Major Maim for 3 seconds

The first also feels like a really weak passive, given that expedition has a bunch of sources but at least it has no cooldown.
The second is a very common buff, but it at least has a decent duration and no cooldown, so you can keep it up easily.
The third is in a weird place because it's a debuff with few sources, and procs through stacks. It also has no cooldown, though building stacks seems convoluted.

I don't think these existing named buff passives are all that great either, but they at least allow you to use them at will and provide viable alternatives to other sources of those buffs.

They could easily change all of the class ult passives to use Major Heroism and they would retain their power, I think.

Like you say, Major Heroism is still exceedingly rare (outside of Trample, cough) and so any source is better than no source, whereas Minor Heroism fights with tons of other, frankly better, sources, which basically nullify them of any value.

Even if it is a Pearls-style super short duration of Major Heroism for some of them, like 2 ticks over 3 seconds for 6 total ult, that still feels much better than what this Minor Heroism spam brings to the table.

Basically everybody but NB (surprise, surprise!) lost their class passive entirely.

francesinhalover

Awesome changes
Id still remove that 8% buff beam got last patch but outside of that everything looks fine.

First of all id like to ask for a molten whip seething fury duration buff from 15sec to 20sec because it's really hard to keep this passive up using arcanist.

here's the skill Molten whip

Lash an enemy with flame, dealing 2323 Flame Damage. If you strike an enemy that is is immobilized or stunned, you set them Off Balance. Whenever you activate a different Ardent Flame ability while in combat, you gain a stack of Seething Fury, increasing the damage of your next Molten Whip by 20% and your Weapon and Spell Damage by 100 for 15 seconds. This effect stacks up to 3 times. (please 15sec to 20 sec)

other than that

Players that like their gameplay to be a bit easier will just try to get all damage over time skills to the same durations that way there isnt so much barswapping. A nice number being 20 seconds.

the issue is the popular arena weapon set skills are all 10-15 seconds... could we get a 20 sec rework on endless hail, elemental blockade, stampede?
Some other skills that could use 20 sec or at least 15 sec durations on their morphs spear shards, boneyard

Thank you

Kaliki

About the Ultimate generation changes for the Templar passive Prism:
“Prism: Now grants Minor Heroism for 1.5/3 seconds with a 4 second cooldown, rather than 1/2 Ultimate with a 4 second cooldown.”
I think this will be a significant nerf for the following reasons:

• The Patch notes seem to be wrong. On live, the passive grants 3 Ultimate every 6 seconds which is not the same as 1/2 Ultimate every 4 seconds..
• The above means that we were previously able to get optimal use out of the passive by casting a Dawn’s Wrath ability every 6 seconds (e.g. Power of the Light), now we would have to cast one every 4 seconds. Most people are only casting a DaWr ability every four seconds when in the execute phase (Radiant Glory/Oppression), otherwise, the duration of many Dawn’s Wrath abilities is much too long to be casting one every 4 seconds. Only those using Solar Flare as a spammable will get full usage out of the passive now.

Yudo

Removing the bonus max magicka from sorcerer Bound armor is not just a damage nerf, the shields are yet smaller.
This is significant and should not be underestimated. Maybe Aegis should keep the resources if BA is the target here.

Faulgor

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Other than the class unique minor buffs, which make sense because they are a group utility skill that has only the passive as a source, there were only 3 passives that gave named buffs.
1. Bow - Hasty Retreat: Major Expedition for 4 seconds after you use Roll Dodge
2. Shadow - Shadow Barrier: Casting a Shadow ability grants you Major Resolve for 12 seconds
3. Winter's Embrace - Icy Aura : Attackers at max stacks are afflicted with Major Maim for 3 seconds

You forgot Sacred Ground in Templar's Restoring Light skill line, which grants Minor Mending.

danko355

I’m really disappointed with these changes. It feels like ZOS isn’t looking at the data, Shadow is already the least used skill line in PVE, so why nerf it further? There’s nothing unique about it, it has the weakest heal, and now it’s even less viable. If you check the stats, I bet barely anyone is using Shadow for tanking, and after this patch, even those few will drop it completely.

Siphoning is in the same position. Nightblade is now the worst class for any support role, it offers nothing unique. Catalyst is irrelevant when Major Heroism is available elsewhere, like from Trample.

Basically, you’ve nerfed all three Nightblade skill lines for no reason, making the class nearly useless for tanking or healing in PVE. If you want to play a “pure” Nightblade, it’s just a weaker option now. This isn’t just unnecessary, it’s a step backward for class diversity

f047ys3v3n

My thoughts:


1)

Storm Calling

Lightning Form: This ability and its morphs now grant Minor Force while active, rather than Major Resolve.

(No developer reasoning is given for this change)

This wrecks a couple of tank builds I have and I don't think you devs understand that for PVE, Storm Calling is only interesting as a tank skill line. You may have intended it as a dps line, and it does have dps passives, but none of it's abilities do enough damage to be slotted for PVE dps. Two of them, streak and mages wrath, are great pvp abilities but useless in PVE as one is utility and the other is far insufficient in dps to warrant slotting as an execute. The pure dps ability, Lightning flood has been nerfed to the point that it is too weak to be useful for anything (I remember when it was the best DOT in the game BTW). People may have slotted it back when they were confined to just the Sorc dps kit because it was the ground AOE they had but they sure shouldn't now when you have access to good abilities in other class skill lines. The last two abilities, the good ones in PVE, are crit surge and boundless storm. These are a proc heal and a source of major resolve that also reliably procs that heal. The combination of these two makes for a good tank skill line or some defense for a solo build for things like maelstrom or vatashran. Without the major resolve, I think the usefulness of this skill line in PVE is diminished. The skills work best if they work together for defense, and they do that best if they can be your source of major resolve. Sorry if you wanted Storm Calling to be a dps line, Maybe you shouldn't have eviscerated Lightning flood a couple years ago. It's a shame to ruin these nice storm calling tank builds. I was really enjoying them with the multi-classing.

2) Grim focus changes:
Yea, a passive, back barred 400 weapon and spell damage was super OP. I guess major spell crit is a good substitute buff. BTW, why do some abilities grant their passive on either bar but others only one one bar. I'm just saying, mage light would like to know.

3) Banner / arcanist class mastery changes:
I expect you know banner is dead now right? I guess it served it's purpose. People had to grind to get the class scraps and assemble the new OP dps thing and now we nerf it and throw it away. At a huge, -40% regen cost, it was a one trick pony anyway. It only worked because channeling is cheap and using it meant you could do more of that and cast less other pricey skills. Good riddance I guess. It was a cheesy thing anyway. Do less stuff, get more dps, and if anything went wrong you were out of luck as you didn't have any resources to afford a shield or roll dodge. Bottom line, with banner + multiclass passives you got +20 or 30% dps on arcanist+nightblade subclasses and now you will be back to where you were. I should note that beam arcs were not the highest parses I have seen in the last patches. Those were equally nerfed nightblade based high ulti regen and crit chance concoctions that were really only good for dummy destruction. I expect that even mega nerfed back to the early arc days, most of us will probably still play arc though. That is mostly a reflection on how poorly most classes dps rotations work together and how much cleave dps you need because of fight design especially on hard modes.

EnerG

Zos im a big believer in reducing the power creep that happens over time but I cant get behind any of this. It just seems so heavy and inconvenient for anyone who dares to not subclass.

Vaqual

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I'll further suggest the following to clean things up:

• Move Major Savagery/Prophecy from Bound Armaments to Surge and all morphs.
• Move Major Sorcery/Brutality from Surge to Lightning Form and all morphs.
• Move Minor Force to Bound Armaments.
• Add Major Resolve to Bound Armaments, making the morph choice Minor Resolve/Block Buff vs Minor Force/Damage Skill.
• Consider moving Minor Prophecy from Dark Magic to Storm Calling, replace it with a support focussed passive. This would help Storm Calling compete much better with Assassination.

I think this is too greedy. The result will be 1 additional key Major Buff and Minor Buff giving to Storm Calling, making it a too potent one-stop shop for DPS. With the weapon damage on Grim Focus gone, Amplitude is anyway putting the skill line in a decent spot, comperatively.
Yes, if both lines gives Major & Minor Savagery they become more mutually exclusive, but at the same time also boringly similar, since both buffs would not even be morph dependent, but just passively available. Idk if it was a typo, but sneaking in the Minor Resolve on Bound Armor also adds another extra buff, compared to live/PTS. Asking for 3 Buffs to passive power in the guise of a restructuring is pretty much going straight against what they are trying to do in this patch.

GloatingSwine

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

CoolBlast3 wrote: »

Make it so it affects abilities of -all- classes, but that on subclassed lines it only affects DoT class abilities. On necro it still affects all however. This way you reduce its effectiveness in the case of Arc beam and other broken combos, whilst still allowing for DoT play-ability in subclassing

This is already how it works. Sacrifice affects all DoTs and all Necro class abilities. This includes DoTs from other classes already.

It should still get a buff though.

I'm not sure GLS needs a big numbers buff, it is quite a good bonus to DoT based builds. I think it needs to just happen when you press the button not press the button to raise the skeleton who will jump on you after 3-4 seconds maybe if you haven't moved. It's the only buff skill in the game that you have to precast before it finishes cooldown (usually at about 4s remaining) to sustain the buff and it always feels awkward.

(But then I guess "feels awkward and annoying to use" is the Necro class identity)

Liukke

Thanks, basically the DK is even more dead.

Not only got sustain skills nerfed with the subclass, now its ulti gen is dead since everybody has heroism anyway...between potions and skills we have 100% uptime and yet you've modified passives so that they have a longer cooldown than activation time...

Sorry people but, were you all bad at math? Like, has any of you the skills to count up to more than three and realise that some things just DON'T work?

You haven't nerfed things, you just killed all the ultimate passives you've listed, what for?

I have the sneaky feeling some of the devs want to play the game but they suck so much that they are bringing everything down and level it up so even idiots can feel skillful

Seriously, what's the point of nerfing the highland set? Who uses it in real serious runs if not those FEW cases?
A set that works in a FEW cases should indeed be more powerful, and yet now you made it as bad as the rest...why should people even bother now?

Why do we have to bother doing anything in the game since playing with skills equals nerf in the next patch?

Stop sucking at the game and making it worse for everyone, what the hell.

P.s.
It takes one second to look at the leaderboards to realise that the Arcanist has not an edge, but an entire blade over everyTHING else. Instead of reworking skills that give you huge damage, self shield, self healing in a single package you're screwing all the others.
I get it, bringing down the arcanist means losing 80% of the new casual players that joined in the last few years...somebody needs a pair here.

SkaiFaith

Oh man...
I really appreciate the changes up until now but I can foresee pages of "NERF BEAM!1!" Like last cycle.

To me it's perfectly fine as is but IF it is going to be touched I would just tone down the crux damage bonus while buffing (yes) the base damage so that it remains relevant now that banner bearer doesn't give more than 1 crux - if a player wants to subclass and scribe and use one bar there is very little if not any space for crux builders; buffing base damage would help, and reducing crux damage bonus would reduce the ceiling.

EDIT: Many say Beam has huge AoE but I think what they're missing is that the actual width of the beam is "the nerf" in itself by design - you only damage enemies in a straight line, and if they are a bit to the left or a bit to the right of the line of the beam they don't take damage at all.
Again, no need to nerf.

RaptorRodeoGod

Feels bad to have unique ultimate passives changed the same thing because they were "too strong" when utilized together.

Would be nice if they were scrapped all together & replaced with a named buff that stacked stronger the more of your original class skill lines you kept. That way, something new & unique is given to compensate for what was taken away.

Liukke

RaptorRodeoGod wrote: »

Feels bad to have unique ultimate passives changed the same thing because they were "too strong" when utilized together.

Would be nice if they were scrapped all together & replaced with a named buff that stacked stronger the more of your original class skill lines you kept. That way, something new & unique is given to compensate for what was taken away.

But that's the problem, they were never "too strong".
They were as strong as you were good...good player, strong skills.

I know I'm a beam hater but that's exactly what is "too strong".
A three button combo to deliver absurd damage, especially in AoE, while being protected by a reasonably big shield, with little to no brain needed...[snip]
I can solo vet dungeons with my oakensoul build, and I suck at this game, I have no incentive to become any better x_x

[Edit for Trolling/Baiting]