Upcoming U47 PTS changes, based on feedback

Emeratis

I want to thank you for the communication. Really good to see conversations being had and concerns being heard.

I have a question and potential concern though and would like to ask for clarity. For the shared ult cooldown, is it going to go based on first passive procced or would it go for the most value (or will it not matter because you plan to have all those passives that share a cooldown have an equalized value along with the above adjustments)? Because right now some skills grant varying ult. An example from a friend, if a character has transfer which grants 2 ult every 4 seconds and corpse consumption which grant 10 ult every 16 seconds, how is priority of the ult gen determined?

I like the changes above better than the move to heroism but I still think it's not fully perfect. My two concerns are dead passives for multiclassing with the shared cooldown and whether a softer adjustment of ult generation could be better for this. Ults are not all of equal cast value and power budget, and there are some "for fun" ult spamming builds out there that are probably fine that are going to be impacted by this. I understand concerns about ult gen being too high in certain content though as well. Similar to a lot of problems that have arisen from subclassing this is one of those things that is very nuanced and should probably be evaluated with a mix of data and player feedback. I think the main suggestion I offer is consider with ult adjustments the tensions of fun vs player power and how it impacts various players of different skill levels/in game goals.

Erickson9610

I'm a little disappointed to see many of these changes reverted. I honestly thought they were all pretty solid changes.

YandereGirlfriend

code65536 wrote: »

I'm a bit disappointed to see no mention of Grim Focus here.

The change is a pretty significant nerf for pure NB, because of how the class line is being used in subclassing.

I do agree that the ability should be active and not just a passive, and ironically, U46's change to allow it to stack to 10 was a major part of shifting this skill into a passive.

If reverting the 10-stack is not something you want to do, then perhaps another option is to grant X weapon/spell damage for Y number of seconds whenever the bow is fired.

NB never needed nor deserved that ridiculous giga-buff when it happened. Justified nerf is justified on an already overloaded skill.

While we're at it, restore the Pen bonus to flanking so that it does not continue to contribute to PvE power-creep. That was another ridiculous and unnecessary buff, particularly with how jealously ZOS has guarded Crit Chance over the last several years. To just hand out a giant unique tranche of Crit Chance was completely bewildering in U46.

If need be, shift the power to another skill or preferably another skill line altogether (such as the unloved and forgotten Shadow).

BlackLabel

Good changes except for the bound armor one. Please just let us stack max magicka for the sake of our weak shields.. also why does bound armor, a skill that’s under Daedric summoning, have an active passive that is on dark magic skill line? Just keep it how it is on live.

Radiate77

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I'm a little disappointed to see many of these changes reverted. I honestly thought they were all pretty solid changes.

Right, I want to believe @Turtle_Bot is right and these reversions are a prelude to a larger balance update, but I don’t believe they have a vision anymore.

To hit reverse without any announced plans moving forward, does not inspire confidence.

Not to mention, this was done in the name of “feedback” yet I can point to hundreds of other threads with more thoughtful, well written feedback for much larger problems within the game that are left completely on ‘unread’ and not actioned upon for years, like any of your Werewolf threads.

Desiato

In regards to banner, I hope you try to find a middle ground for it for a few reasons:

- In the subclass era, I think it's unfortunate arc remains meta as a base class purely on the basis of the class mastery script.
- banner is really tedious to coordinate for players who run in multiple cores and pug hms/tris. It's a common oversight that can result in players being singled out and having to deal with everyone waiting on them while they port out to change their banner config
- the visual spam of 6-8 players running it
- less build diversity compared the the pre-banner era because banner uses 2 slots -- which is a fair req because it offers so much

I think banner would be better if positioned as a support dd ability that makes sense for one or two players to run in an optimal group comp.

And as someone just mentioned in a discord, it's weird that you're considering adding ult gen to it in an update in which you've recognized ult gen as a balance issue to correct.

Marto

Radiate77 wrote: »

Well, this is just confusing.

While the communication is great, stepping backwards is a horrible sign. When you make a change, and then revert it, it tells me you either have no vision or there’s not enough confidence in that vision… and that’s a horrible sign for the future.

It's very likely that ZOS has the same concerns, ideas, and arguments internally as we do over the forums. And they'll sometimes have multiple different versions of a single fix, unsure of which one is best.

As Amy describes, making class passives share a cooldown is something they discussed internally before. So think of it as "plan B", while "plan A" was changing them to minor/major heroism.

Arthtur

Great to see some communication.
But why nothing about problems left from previous patch? Like DK sustain nerfs? Barerly anything was done and it doesnt feel good to play when you are constantly out of resources.
It still feels like balancing all of this will take years and it doesnt sounds great.

Still, this is a step forward which is nice.

sarahthes

Desiato wrote: »

In regards to banner, I hope you try to find a middle ground for it for a few reasons:

- In the subclass era, I think it's unfortunate arc remains meta as a base class purely on the basis of the class mastery script.
- banner is really tedious to coordinate for players who run in multiple cores and pug hms/tris. It's a common oversight that can result in players being singled out and having to deal with everyone waiting on them while they port out to change their banner config
- the visual spam of 6-8 players running it
- less build diversity compared the the pre-banner era because banner uses 2 slots -- which is a fair req because it offers so much

I think banner would be better if positioned as a support dd ability that makes sense for one or two players to run in an optimal group comp.

And as someone just mentioned in a discord, it's weird that you're considering adding ult gen to it in an update in which you've recognized ult gen as a balance issue to correct.

I've seen a bit of chatter in some PC endgame communities about moving banner from dds to supports if this change goes through.

Ragnarok0130

Thank you for the improved communication, but since you are "solving the ultimate generation powercreep" can you un-nerf the Pillagers Profit set and Pearls of Elnofey nerf that were hit very hard in U46?

Erickson9610

Radiate77 wrote: »

To hit reverse without any announced plans moving forward, does not inspire confidence.

I agree. I'm just glad that some of the changes are still slated to go through.

Radiate77 wrote: »

Not to mention, this was done in the name of “feedback” yet I can point to hundreds of other threads with more thoughtful, well written feedback for much larger problems within the game that are left completely on ‘unread’ and not actioned upon for years, like any of your Werewolf threads.

It does bring into question which feedback is worthy of developer discussion and which feedback isn't.

Update 42 introduced Scribing, so that was the main focus of that PTS cycle. However, it also introduced a bunch of Werewolf balance changes. There were several threads pointing out issues with the Werewolf balance changes, yet all of that feedback was ignored while the Scribing feedback wasn't. Why is it the case that this feedback wasn't ignored, yet the Werewolf feedback from U42 was?

It sounds absolutely hypocritical for me to wish the U47 changes weren't reverted while the U42 changes were reverted, but I'd at least like a consistent level of developer discussion regarding balance changes each patch.

AdmiralDigby

ZOS_Amy wrote: »

Hello All,

We've seen a lot of your feedback about some of the class and ability changes that are currently on the PTS for Update 47. We hear your frustration and confusion about why some of these changes are being made, and we wanted to give you some additional context.

We also understand that having to continually update builds with every patch can be tiresome and can detract from the fun and enjoyment of playing the way you want, something that is a part of ESO's DNA. In considering the community’s feedback, we will be making the following changes starting in an upcoming week of the U47 PTS, sometime after PTS week 2.

1. Since the release of U46, our aim has been to prevent excessive ultimate generation by limiting the newer sources that Subclassing introduced, but with a more targeted approach that doesn't hurt those who aren't Subclassing. An upcoming PTS update will address the feedback we've seen with the following adjustment:
   • All class passives that were adjusted to a Major or Minor Heroism effect are now once again unique ultimate sources. However, the passive abilities that generated Minor Heroism during week 1 will now share a cooldown — so they cannot be stacked.
     • We originally discussed this before the week 1 changes but feared the gameplay experience with these effects would result in confusing and jarring gameplay experiences (since passive cooldowns cannot be messaged clearly), but we've seen a lot of discussion that suggests we likely over-worried about that.
2. We'll also be introducing a failsafe for the Arcanist's Class Mastery script with Banner Bearer — so it's not a complete loss of power. It will generate Ultimate if the effect did not generate a Crux.
3. Finally, we'll be looking at our Sorcerer adjustments and reiterating and reverting some of the adjustments based on your feedback:
   • Lightning Form will again grant Major Resolve instead of Minor Force to retain its unique damage/defensive hybrid effect.
   • Bound Armor will again grant Minor Protection at base rather than Major Resolve. Additionally, the active effect of the abilities will now scale in duration with your Armor, rather than a flat amount.
     • The max Magicka and Stamina increase from the ability and its morphs have been moved to Dark Magic, which will exist on the Blood Magic passive.
     • Bound Armaments will have a higher chance of applying Sundered, so it reaches a closer power level to the Grim Focus morphs.

As we mentioned before the release of U46 and Subclassing, we will continue to work on tuning these abilities to achieve greater class balance. It's worth noting that the changes above are also subject to change, and we'll continue listening to your feedback before these go live. In the months ahead, we are going to continue to look at balancing and will make additional adjustments. For now, we hope these amended abilities are more in line with your expectations, and you continue to enjoy Subclassing.

Thank you, again, for all the thoughtful and constructive discourse around the U47 PTS changes. Your input is valuable and these adjustments are a direct result. Please continue to let us know how your experience is on the PTS — we're listening.

Communication is good. However the proposed changes mainly miss the mark as well.

1. Arc beam is the problem. Make skill based builds have a higher ceiling then easy builds (while still making easy builds a viable option to clear all content)
2. We need more options for cleave than Arc beam.
3. Pureclass's need a buff per same skill tree present.

Soarora

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

To hit reverse without any announced plans moving forward, does not inspire confidence.

I agree. I'm just glad that some of the changes are still slated to go through.

Radiate77 wrote: »

Not to mention, this was done in the name of “feedback” yet I can point to hundreds of other threads with more thoughtful, well written feedback for much larger problems within the game that are left completely on ‘unread’ and not actioned upon for years, like any of your Werewolf threads.

It does bring into question which feedback is worthy of developer discussion and which feedback isn't.

Update 42 introduced Scribing, so that was the main focus of that PTS cycle. However, it also introduced a bunch of Werewolf balance changes. There were several threads pointing out issues with the Werewolf balance changes, yet all of that feedback was ignored while the Scribing feedback wasn't. Why is it the case that this feedback wasn't ignored, yet the Werewolf feedback from U42 was?

It sounds absolutely hypocritical for me to wish the U47 changes weren't reverted while the U42 changes were reverted, but I'd at least like a consistent level of developer discussion regarding balance changes each patch.

ZOS does have to start somewhere and I don’t think we should be so critical of them listening or they may stop listening again. If this is a one-off and they continue to ignore popular discussions on what should be changed then I think we can give them this criticism. But they cannot change the past and addressing a future change before it happens is more important than addressing things that have already happened.

Malyore

Throwing my voice into the mix to say thank you for letting us know, and letting us know this was on the table even before it's implemented.

ajkb78

The change to shadow cloak needs re-examining. It was generally an underwhelming morph but the change of the bonus heal condition from standing still to bracing feels too punishing especially given shadowy disguise now gives minor protection - essentially the choice is between a poor HOT or invisibility. Dark cloak never saw a huge amount of use in PVP but it was kind of nice on PVP healers where invisibility was useless because of the desire to constantly cast heals or buffs. If you have to blockcast for the duration to make it worthwhile then it's probably just better to slot a different non-class skill altogether, which is a shame. Generally nightblades have felt underpowered for a while: they are very much a single target class and they aren't even competitive on the dummy, where single target classes should shine. In an add pull they're downright bad. So if you're taking away the passive bonus weapon and spell damage from Grim Focus and morphs then you really need to buff NB damage in other ways, otherwise in the era of beams that are as strong for multitarget damage as they are for single target then there really isn't much of a place for nightblades any more.

Remember what you did to vampires and werewolves? Both of those are essentially dead now because they're awful to play, and in the case of vampires because the only thing that made them vaguely tolerable to play (decent buffs to go with the disadvantages) got nerfed into the ground. Don't let the same thing happen to single classes.

I'm still optimistic about subclassing. In particular I think there's a real opportunity to introduce some cool single skill line mini-classes that wouldn't be worth a full 3 skill lines - bard, claw dancer (martial arts), perhaps alteration etc. It does need to achieve balance with the base classes, but not at the expense of robbing them of their identity or their individual viability. And perhaps along the way you could re-evaluate where vampire has ended up so it actually becomes a viable option again, not better or worse but just different, rather than the hot mess it has become, and rework werewolf so it meshes better with subclassing and perhaps even so that we can achieve permanent werewolf form like all the NPC werewolves can. That would be ace. Thanks in advance

Desiato

sarahthes wrote: »

I've seen a bit of chatter in some PC endgame communities about moving banner from dds to supports if this change goes through.

I'm really glad to hear that and hope it works out that way.

Cooperharley

Dude what??

W ZOS this is awesome stuff, really!!!

This is what I’m talkin about!!

Tommy_The_Gun

So um.... Catalyst will work as it does now on live server ? Do I understand this correctly ? No change to this passive ?
That is fantastic news

Also... give credit where credit is due. ZOS, I have to give you a huge credit for not just listening to feedback, but also communicating this. This is so nice, thanks !

Zyaneth_Bal

Cooperharley wrote: »

Dude what??

W ZOS this is awesome stuff, really!!!

This is what I’m talkin about!!

While this is good, we shouldn’t forget that they mostly only rolled back the changes they made and we have almost no changes so far. But there should be a bunch next week or so I’ve been told.

Zyaneth_Bal

I’m still baffled by the fact that they took max res from bound armour and moved it to dark magic. As I explained in the first post it doesn’t make any sense. And it’s not like daedric summoning is a strong line in any capacity, they add a little bit more power but at the same time take it away when the line clearly needs to be improved.

diamondo

I continue to ask but don’t get any feedback. What’s the plans for supporting players that don’t want to subclass in particular PVP.
I ventured out to try again tonight but found I was completely destroyed by most a few players that prior to patch 47 were an even match up.

I really hope there are some plans to balance the scales for players who want to stay pure class as my PVP experience has been very unenjoyable since the update @ZOS_Amy

AmishDefector

Gotta give props to the devs here. I sincerely appreciate listening to the feeeback and walking some of the changes back. Keep up the great work.

geopi

Appreciate the communication, but what is the reason behind nerfing Nightblades? Grim Focus is being nerfed hard because of the subclassing system and players running pure NBs get punished for it. Please reconsider the change to Grim Focus.

LunaFlora

that's good to see

ajkb78

I've said it before and I'll repeat it: it would help *a lot* if you moved to a longer-term engagement cycle. Currently we have PTS which pops 6 weeks before an update goes live and that's the first chance anyone gets to see the changes. Mostly it kind of muddles through, occasionally it's a disaster (nerfmire, vamp rework).

Why not extend the cycle so that as well as PTS we get a preview of the changes you're *thinking about* for the patch after the one that's on PTS. That would give the community much more of a chance to do the kind of gross error check that has happened here. The one time you did do that (trialling changes to heavy attacks) it worked out OK and resulted in avoiding a disaster if those awful changes had made it to PTS. Unfortunately that's the only experience we've had to date, but if last patch people had been able to see subclassing in action on PTS but also had the proposal of "and we know this isn't well balanced yet, we need to see it on PTS but here's what we think we'll need to do - move sorc passives around, change arcanist class script, hammer another nail into the coffin of pure nightblades - you could have had all this feedback 12 weeks ago and adjusted, and what we'd be experiencing on PTS would have had the benefit of all that player experience - and we'd be looking ahead to a preview of what will be coming to PTS in the next cycle and providing early feedback on that. You must have seen through the start-of-year previews that the player base can get excited not just about what's coming in the next patch but what's coming quite a bit further out as well, so use that - give us more exposure to the further-out changes, let it grow our enthusiasm and also take the valuable feedback you'll get from that early exposure.

You have a really dedicated player base contributing feedback on these forums and via PTS, and it seems to me you could wring a lot more value out of it than you are doing. It's a tough time for game studios at the moment as we can all see in the news. Everyone here wants ESO to succeed for many, many more years to come but we can only enable that to the extent that you give us the opportunity to influence the long-term appeal and balance of the game in a positive way.

ajkb78

geopi wrote: »

Appreciate the communication, but what is the reason behind nerfing Nightblades? Grim Focus is being nerfed hard because of the subclassing system and players running pure NBs get punished for it. Please reconsider the change to Grim Focus.

I can see why they did that. Assassination does rather stand out as the "you must have this skill line at all costs" as a DD. But in the reversions they've announced so far the balance hasn't been restored in other ways. An equivalent amount of power needs to be added back into the nightblade class, perhaps by moving that passive WD+SD to a different skill line or perhaps just by buffing the damage done by the actual active skills. In that regard I suspect the lesson to be drawn is that in the mix-and-match skill line situation that subclassing has brought the original classes, which mostly had 3 mixed skill lines, were much better conceptually than the more recent ones that very obviously have a tanking skill line, a healing skill line and a damage skill line.

diamondo

geopi wrote: »

Appreciate the communication, but what is the reason behind nerfing Nightblades? Grim Focus is being nerfed hard because of the subclassing system and players running pure NBs get punished for it. Please reconsider the change to Grim Focus.

Very happy I’m not only player who wants to pure class.

salander7

Logging in the forums just to thank you for listening to community feedback, credit where it's due. While I understand the need to tune down ultgen, I think this approach is better.
Personally I didn't understand the buff to Catalyst in March (20 to 30 ult gen w a potion), but making it useless (because any support can run Trample with heroism, or healers can use also Pearls of Ehlnofey). While it made full NB compete better w full Necro as pve healers, that change hurt the ultgen issue with subclassing.
On the Replenishing Barrier, I think having some sort of ult-back ultimate for supports is kind of nice. Situationally, DDs can get back 60 ultimate. Supports should have a similar option, even when it's tuned down. Maybe 3 per barrier instead of four? Maybe 40 after your own barrier disappears (not counting other people, making it equally viable on dungeons). I don't know, just brainstorming here.

I hadn't logged in to post feedback to this patchnotes, but as the people that did post it, I was not looking forward to these changes. I hadn't given feedback because I thought it would be ignored. It is encouraging to see it does not.

To reply some other users, but also to @ZOS_Amy, @ZOS_Kevin and to anyone involved in this happening, the original changes were not a step in the right direction, so backstepping on this is not only a good thing, but also an amazingly great sign, that feedback is actually taken into consideration and serves a purpose

So again, thank you, really.
Edit: typo

diamondo

ajkb78 wrote: »

geopi wrote: »

Appreciate the communication, but what is the reason behind nerfing Nightblades? Grim Focus is being nerfed hard because of the subclassing system and players running pure NBs get punished for it. Please reconsider the change to Grim Focus.

I can see why they did that. Assassination does rather stand out as the "you must have this skill line at all costs" as a DD. But in the reversions they've announced so far the balance hasn't been restored in other ways. An equivalent amount of power needs to be added back into the nightblade class, perhaps by moving that passive WD+SD to a different skill line or perhaps just by buffing the damage done by the actual active skills. In that regard I suspect the lesson to be drawn is that in the mix-and-match skill line situation that subclassing has brought the original classes, which mostly had 3 mixed skill lines, were much better conceptually than the more recent ones that very obviously have a tanking skill line, a healing skill line and a damage skill line.

I’ve heard suggestions that if you keep your original skill lines you get some form of flat damage bonus, each subclass line that damage is nerfed…. Or the second you subclass 1 line the damage bonus is gone.

Radiate77

diamondo wrote: »

ajkb78 wrote: »

geopi wrote: »

Appreciate the communication, but what is the reason behind nerfing Nightblades? Grim Focus is being nerfed hard because of the subclassing system and players running pure NBs get punished for it. Please reconsider the change to Grim Focus.

I can see why they did that. Assassination does rather stand out as the "you must have this skill line at all costs" as a DD. But in the reversions they've announced so far the balance hasn't been restored in other ways. An equivalent amount of power needs to be added back into the nightblade class, perhaps by moving that passive WD+SD to a different skill line or perhaps just by buffing the damage done by the actual active skills. In that regard I suspect the lesson to be drawn is that in the mix-and-match skill line situation that subclassing has brought the original classes, which mostly had 3 mixed skill lines, were much better conceptually than the more recent ones that very obviously have a tanking skill line, a healing skill line and a damage skill line.

I’ve heard suggestions that if you keep your original skill lines you get some form of flat damage bonus, each subclass line that damage is nerfed…. Or the second you subclass 1 line the damage bonus is gone.

Yeah let’s make Subclassed skills weaker than Weapon skills! /s