Combat Updates – Update 51 PTS

ZOS_Kevin

Hi All. Below is a message from the combat team, touching on some of the feedback we've seen over the last two weeks of PTS.

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Greetings! This week the combat team has an update relating to some upcoming changes we’ll be pushing to the PTS for Update 51. Before we get into the juicy details, we’ll quickly talk about general sentiments we’ve seen that have led us here, as these changes are in direct response to your PTS feedback and were not originally planned.

Firstly, we’ve seen a good deal of feedback on the state of PvP regarding both Dragonknight and Werewolf, and their prevalence and often dominance in that space. Part of this is inevitable by nature of them getting their refreshes before others, but this has clearly been a frustrating experience that has diminished much of the benefits that Class Mastery has introduced (at least in the PvP setting). While we did make a targeted set of changes on the PTS that made sustaining more challenging for Werewolves, we did not make a larger effort to reel in some of the spikiest bits (namely their burst and sustain) of the Dragonknight kit – which we’ve heard loud and clear that this is a priority issue you’d like us to address (and you will see some of that below).

Additionally, on the PvE side of things, we’re happy to see many of you enjoying the Class Mastery system – it’s clearly been a healthy shake up for the meta in that part of the game and we’re still seeing data rapidly change every few weeks, meaning things have far from settled. This is originally why we had combat balance adjustments very light. There’s still much to discover and optimize, and we didn’t want to disrupt that so soon after the experience came out; however, similarly to PvP, we’ve seen a lot of push back about classes that don’t win as much as you’d like and concern that they will feel left in the dust for a considerable amount of time. With the short turn-around we have, it isn’t possible to rectify every issue or make large changes, but we have devised a handful of smaller, numbers-based adjustments that will hopefully help out the classes that feel a little more is needed to get them up to speed with the others.

Coming in next week’s PTS patch, you can expect the following adjustments:

• Dragonknight
  • Core of Flame will restore 12% missing resources, down from 15%. Heart of Flame’s healing has also been reduced by 20%.
  • Landslide now generates slightly quicker, stacks slightly higher (12 stacks), and decays slower, reducing how “swingy” the class can feel at times.
  • Earthspike Mantle’s flat damage done bonus is now damage done to monsters, to offset the buff to Landslide in PvP.
  • Seething Fury (Molten Whip’s buff) is now halved in PvP, reducing how deadly their burst combos can be.
  • Power Lash (augment to Flame Lash) deals less outright damage, but now offers a minor bonus to damage done to monsters after generating charges, to also reduce their burst potential.
• Templar
  • Balanced Warrior’s math formula is now more complicated, but more rewarding. It has no cap and rewards the slotting of Templar skills in addition to scaling with Armor, helping it be better for Templars, while staying around the same power for non-Templars.
  • Judgment’s Brand’s damage bonus has been increased slightly (1600 bonus damage, up from 1400, still halved in PvP).
  • Aetheric Lancer’s area effect now generates on you when it activates, provided you are not moving (rather than spawning randomly around you.) This rewards the Templar who holds their ground with relentless damage.
• Nightblade
  • Strife now grants a unique damage bonus that increases your damage done by 1% for every 10% Health you have, while it is active.
    • We’ve also seen pushback on the cost increases, which we are still evaluating further adjustments to. We’re very cautious to reintroduce the skill to the same degree of power it was in the Summerset era.
• Necromancer
  • Nothing Wasted now decays less aggressively (loses 2 stacks instead of 3) but decays every 12 seconds of not generating a corpse, rather than 15 seconds. This is mostly a cadence tweak to help reduce how punishing it feels in some encounters.
  • Pummeling Goliath’s bash attack will now have a 1-second cooldown, but deals ~73% more damage on hit, helping smooth out how strong the Ultimate is. This is mainly aimed at correcting the need to double bash weave, which we know isn’t particularly fun. Bash weaving is hard enough! This will nerf some of the ceiling potential, which we’re also okay with based on their logs.
  • Frozen Colossus will deal more damage (12.5% more) and cost less (150 Ultimate) for the update, while we work on long-term changes. We will ultimately revert these in a future update for a more PvE-targeted approach, as the Ultimate isn’t weak in PvP as it stands now.
• Warden: We’re currently still amid the refresh, which has made improvements here very difficult. These are not indicative of where we’d like the Warden to end up, but change here is much more restrictive for that reason.
  • Fetcher Infection will deal slightly more damage (75%, up from 60%) every other cast
  • Arctic Blast will deal more damage over time (~20% per tick)
• Miscellaneous
  • Draugrkin’s Healing reduction now is halved in PvP, since its bonus is halved, so it’s less punishing to use after being reduced. We’ve also updated the 2- and 4-piece bonus to Weapon and Spell Damage, instead of those stinky other stat lines.
    • We’re still interested in updating stat lines for old sets like you saw us work on in Update 49, and will do so as time and bandwidth allow for smaller efforts such as this.
  • Ice Comet does more damage over time (~21%), helping it climb up the mountain of distance between it and Shooting Star. It also now snares enemies whenever it deals any damage, rather than only the initial hit, helping keep enemies inside its lingering area.
  • The usual bug fixes and tooltip updates!

While we will continue to monitor feedback based on these adjustments, as Nick outlined in his letter, we want to focus on quality experiences over calendar dates so these efforts may take us longer than before. That being said, we’ll continue to take note of the sentiments and desires for future updates, and continue to search for ways to take smaller, more targeted approaches like this as the march of time continues. Thank you all for your support and patience – we know it isn’t always easy! See you in Tamriel – until then, safe journeys!

madmufffin

This is an excellent round of updates that make it feel like our voices are at least being heard. Much appreciated update o7

LunaFlora

Warden: We’re currently still amid the refresh, which has made improvements here very difficult. These are not indicative of where we’d like the Warden to end up, but change here is much more restrictive for that reason.
Fetcher Infection will deal slightly more damage (75%, up from 60%) every other cast
Arctic Blast will deal more damage over time (~20% per tick)

this is nice for now.

Please do say more about the actual refresh soon.
We have no idea how far along it is, but any details on the actual changes would be much appreciated.

Good luck with the Warden refresh and thank you for the update.

AdonisJorge

Great changes i admit, the werewolves needs adjustments still, their sustain are awful outside sorceres mastery

HMG_Spaun

Why add a cooldown to Goliath? I don’t understand this concept. Double bash weave is something that is learned and practiced, just as light attack weaving. It isn’t hard, it needs to be learned to become applicable. Those that can do it, and have practiced it, will now have less of a “ceiling.”

Derpomancer

Very nice updates, a bit odd that every class gets a nice change except sorcerer who is not even mentioned.

ArctosCethlenn

Neat, don't forget fleetstep wings.

Techwolf_Lupindo

Hmm...Sorc is missing there. The SORC is the reason werewolves are so strong now. That one class passive by itself is buffing the werewolf massly. Fix that and werewolf will be properly balanced without all the other nerfs in U51 PTS.

KahunaKhan

@ZOS_Gilliam good stuff.

While the combat team is on the topic of balance adjustments I would like to throw into the ring taking a look at Sorcerer's Conservation of Energy / Blood Magic healing? I might be a minority opinion but I think the healing should be toned down by a minor amount-- they've already got the best defensive/mobility skill in the game with streak which every sorc in bgs, ic, whatever can and does spam multiple times in a row. The constant healing is also arguably one of the stronger factors as to why sorc ww is so beefy. Maybe a change like making it so it doesn't proc off of core combat abilities like break free or bash.

Put simply it's just tedious and obnoxious to play against in a similar way to how current dk with heart of flame is.

gammelscroll

Techwolf_Lupindo wrote: »

Hmm...Sorc is missing there. The SORC is the reason werewolves are so strong now. That one class passive by itself is buffing the werewolf massly. Fix that and werewolf will be properly balanced without all the other nerfs in U51 PTS.

You want the sustain nerf that already is, and you want to take away sorc mastery also?
Why not delete werewolf from the game then?

Dax_Draconis

Why are class refreshes being introduced one at a time instead waiting until all of them have been refreshed before giving them to players?

Ketarmish29

You still want the Templar to play standing still?... PvP Is not a gameplay to stand still! We need to move! We need to chase to go for the kill, not stay In a place just to get our buffs and fight there. Enemies are always moving.

Ive been playing since Beta and there's even one skill In the Templar tree that even 10 years later I havent even spend a skill point to level because of how S** (Underperformed) the skill Is and that is Healing Ritual. Please, take your mind away that the Templar Is a class to protect his house, we need to protect all our comrades homes aswell...

VinnyGambini

Regarding aetheric lancer and movement - can you just make area bigger (less restrictive)?

TheAwesomeChimpanzee

Core of Flame sustain was not nerfed nearly enough. Halving it would have been the minimum for the change to actually be noticeable. But if you are this protective of nerfing what is arguably the most broken sustain mechanic ever introduced to the game, as well as Sorc’s sustain class mastery, then I think it’s fair to assume this will be the standard going forward with the other class reworks. We’re seemingly heading toward a point where building for sustain will cease to exist altogether.

I don’t necessarily think that’s the right direction, but if everyone eventually ends up on an equal playing field, then at least it would be consistent. The problem right now is that DK and Sorc sustain will remain completely uncontested while every other class still has to make meaningful sacrifices for sustain.

On the other hand, I think most of the other changes are quite good. DK’s burst problem could have been addressed by removing Core of Flame sustain altogether, forcing DKs to actually spec into sustain and sacrifice some damage, but this is another way of approaching it. I’m interested to see what the Power Lash damage reduction actually looks like, because a 50% reduction to Molten Whip’s bonus pretty much makes that morph pointless if Power Lash isn’t also brought down enough to make the choice competitive.

As for the buffs to the other classes, they’re welcome, but they’re fairly small. I would have liked to see significantly more sustain buffs if DK and Sorc sustain are going to remain at their current level. If you’re this hesitant to meaningfully nerf the two obvious outliers, then the other classes need enough help to actually reach a comparable sustain tier. What they’re getting here isn’t enough to compensate for that gap.

Even with that criticism, I’m glad our feedback is being heard. I don’t fully agree with the approach being taken, but these are still welcome changes, and it’s good to see the issues we’ve been discussing actually being addressed.

Leivendil

Werewolf needs to be viable on any class. Again, we need to revert the sustain nerfs and instead disable class masteries for ww entirely. It can't be viable only on sorc. Also, after the dk nerfs and ww nerfs, sorc will be miles ahead of any class in pvp, both ww and non ww builds.

Estin

Good to see some DK changes coming. The nerf to HoF's sustain might not be super impactful, but at least whip isn't going to instantly delete people anymore.

I still hope we can see much needed adjustments the class masteries in u51. Nightblade in PvP still feels like they have no masteries equipped.

Zyaneth_Bal

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Draugrkin’s Healing reduction now is halved in PvP, since its bonus is halved, so it’s less punishing to use after being reduced. We’ve also updated the 2- and 4-piece bonus to Weapon and Spell Damage, instead of those stinky other stat lines.

Absolutely irrelevant, the set stays dead without a single potential use case. The set is simply one of the options in pvp, it’s certainly not overperforming even slightly.
There’s already a mountain of completely useless sets, why make it bigger instead of smaller.
Half of it’s former damage is simply abysmal, even dragon’s appetite’s value is higher.
At this point even for a status/dot build there are better options than a set that was supposed to be tailored for that role

Lagzee

The whip changes are terrible, and you picked the wrong whip to over nerf anyway. Molten wasnt the issue. But halving the damage increase is just way overkill.

DK is in a good spot, where other classes should be. You shouldn't have to nerf it so much. But at this rate its looking like the class refreshes will finish sometime in 2030 so i guess this is unfortunately where we are at. And that time frame should leave most players speechless and confused.

Estin

gammelscroll wrote: »

Techwolf_Lupindo wrote: »

Hmm...Sorc is missing there. The SORC is the reason werewolves are so strong now. That one class passive by itself is buffing the werewolf massly. Fix that and werewolf will be properly balanced without all the other nerfs in U51 PTS.

You want the sustain nerf that already is, and you want to take away sorc mastery also?
Why not delete werewolf from the game then?

The current WW changes basically deleted them from the game when used on a class that isn't sorc, which means you will only ever see sorc WWs running around after the patch (though that's all you mainly see on live right this moment). I'd rather they undo most of the sustain nerfs and change how WW skills work with problematic class masteries. It would do a lot more for balance than what's currently on the PTS.

rlindsey912nub18_ESO

W zos !!!!

React

That nerf to molten is probably too heavy, while the nerf to HOF sustain is not enough.

I agree with what one of the above posters said, about how the sustain HOF offers is the main part of the issue, allowing DK to focus so many more resources into damage. Leaving the sustain almost untouched while enormously nerfing the primary spammable of the class is sort of a roundabout way to address the issue of molten hitting too hard, and personally I think this is a bad approach that might leave the spammable in a poor place.

Originally when the rework was introduced, I was part of the "wait and see" camp, who wanted to allow more reworks to hit the live server so that we could compare them and see if the reworked DK toolkit still was as much as an outlier as it had been in U49/U50. However, with the scheduele having been pushed back so heavily and the future being uncertain for anything past the warden rework, I'm not sure this approach is going to be acceptable anymore for the health of the game (especially pvp!).

I don't envy the position the combat team is in trying to balance these things, but really this is a result of their own making with the careless introduction of subclassing coupled with the decision to release the reworks one at a time to begin with....

cubbo

Can DK wings also please looked at? 50% reduction against ALL ranged projectiles makes ranged builds feel really bad in PvP atm. Hitting people for 3k crystal frags doesnt feel rewarding and theres nothing I personally can adjust on my build to counter 1 DK skill. Especially so because Major Protection was changed from 30% to 10% because of how strong it used to be, now DK has an ability that has higher % reduction than old Maj. Protection.

cubbo

KahunaKhan wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam good stuff.

While the combat team is on the topic of balance adjustments I would like to throw into the ring taking a look at Sorcerer's Conservation of Energy / Blood Magic healing? I might be a minority opinion but I think the healing should be toned down by a minor amount-- they've already got the best defensive/mobility skill in the game with streak which every sorc in bgs, ic, whatever can and does spam multiple times in a row. The constant healing is also arguably one of the stronger factors as to why sorc ww is so beefy. Maybe a change like making it so it doesn't proc off of core combat abilities like break free or bash.

Put simply it's just tedious and obnoxious to play against in a similar way to how current dk with heart of flame is.

They should simply remove health based healing from PvP or add a cap to how much max HP you can have in PvP, because DK has 3 abilities that scale off of max HP, same goes for WW. Its why there are so many 40k - 55k WWs/DKs and stam Sorcs running around.

CuriSacer

You guys should also take a closer look at Vengeance. Unleashed Fury from vanguard loadout is clearly overtuned and needs a nerf.

On the other hand, Templar and Necromancer are basically unplayable right now because they have neither the damage nor the sustain needed to compete. Sorcerer and Warden also have major resource issues, with abilities costing far too much.

At the moment, DK and Nightblade are pretty much the only classes that feel genuinely viable if not OVERPOWERED compared to the other ones.

Atlease make templar playable there, it has no damage.

XVestigeXx

Can we please revert Rally's heal from taking you out of stealth? Its only healing yourself, and essentially puts a timer on when you can use shadowy disguise and when you can't. Yeah its a 30 second timer but that just feels terrible if im trying to resfresh my major brutality and it just pulls me out of stealth mid fight. This is like making Core of flame break DK's block

Wuuffyy

This is a nothing-nerf to CoE for DK and werewolf remains sorc-only for PvP on PTS (where everything else is hit far too hard on sustain) while heavily and negatively affecting PvE for no apparent reason (examples of easily-affected playstyles in general: any PvE solo/ small-group mag builds, PvE tanks, high survivability PvE solo builds such as IA/BRP, ANY PvP mag wolves).

Beyond this, any update on the potential for existing recalls, etc. to remain functional for werewolf? Completely removing recalls (my personal main concern with cosmetics removal) for werewolf, especially ones I have already purchased explicitly for that purpose (recall in werewolf) such as the recall from the newest crate bundle on my part, is bad regardless of whether or not you want to exclude werewolf from future animation-related cosmetics (which is whatever/fine)…

…removing existing options, again, is bad.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom - I have never felt less heard on these matters or any matters for ESO than at this time. Can the ‘werewolf community’ have any kind of representation here please 🙏 🙏 🙏

LamaDellaTempesta97

I’d like to know who is in charge of class changes and ask them just one question… HOW CAN YOU BUFF OR NERF REWORKED AND UN-REWORKED CLASSES AND TALK TO ME ABOUT BALANCE?
What’s the point of nerfing a class that was just reworked?? When—or if—other classes get reworked later, you’ll end up needing even more rounds of buffs and nerfs… bringing us right back to square one.
I’m sick and tired of this team failing to understand basic logic: nerfs should only be handed out after every class has been reworked. Only then can you afford to start buffing or nerfing!!!!!
For once, start taking things seriously.

Wuuffyy

You are obliterating werewolf sustain significantly and hitting PvE as well for anything ‘outside of Rampage’. At first I thought with the community sentiment ‘to nerf CoF next’ (most suggestions were asking for between 1-5% missing resources per tick in PvP) that ‘infinite sustain’ was going away and despite werewolf damage being noticeably reduced in several areas from pre-rework and it shifting to a ‘sustain playstyle’ instead, that this was ‘how it was going to have to be’ due to belated future reworks-

-however, the actual and community-driven adjustment to Core of Flame (going from 15% to 12%) changes little to nothing in the way of actual Dragonknight sustain in PvP (so still near-infinite bi-stat sustain for them).

At 25,000 mag and only 2,000 mag left (in other words, 23k mag ‘missing’), casting CoE still results in an instant tick of roughly 2,760 mag instantly (and significant stam sustain, decent healing, and a burst move) and then that same tick again every 2 seconds for 4 seconds (so 8,280 mag in 4 seconds not including everything else it does)…

What else in the game even comes close? Not even werewolf has ‘infinite mag’ like that. I usually get 4-5 heals out of rampage and I’m completely out of mag on anything but a sorc… however now off of a sorc my sustain is hyper-limited, I have 0 burst moves outside of proc sets, and yet I’m meant to compete in the face of ‘infinite sustain’ reworks?

ItsNotLiving

Very good changes just need to tweak sorcerer and we’re looking very solid

Arunei

The whole point of WW Stam Skills costing so little and also being based on both Mag and Stam was to allow Mag WW builds to be viable; why is this still not being addressed at all? All my WWs are Stam but the option to play as a Mag one is going to be gutted with this and the entire point of WW Skills being both cheap in cost and doing scaling based on Mag and Stam was for this very thing not to be the case any more.

YffresTrill

I am not thrilled by the Core of Flame change specifically for difficult solo PVE. This combined with the Elemental Sustainability nerf will quite significantly affect my ability to solo vet dungeons and play on Vestige.

Would it not be possible to nerf it further in PVP (since that is what PVP'ers seem to want) while keeping it as is in PVE, instead of this lukewarm change that pleases no one?