Feedback Compilation of Melee Issues

Crescent

Playing as a DW melee sorc, I've encountered several annoyance in the way melee functions in this game:

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Hit box issues: They just fail and don't hit targets within your reach often, and mobs in the air are not hit.

Example: Volcanic Rune is failure as a melee. You simply will not hit at least with DW normal attacks a flying mob a good portion of the time.

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Movement:

This has got to be one of the most obnoxious issues. You're fighting a mob, and in comes some ranged guy, often a bow user, who decides to knockback spam the mob. It completely screws you over as you need to get to the mob.

But....the mob aggroes to the ranged guy and mob movement actually seems to be faster in combat than player movement, so chasing a mob as melee when that mob is chasing a ranged guy makes it really hard to have uptime on moving mobs as DW.

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Weapon Swap

Most times I die, I can point my finger at the awful weaponswap delay. Sometimes the weapon won't even swap at all.

As a melee sorcerer, not being able to quickly swap and use my resto staff is lethal. My critical surge is on the resto staff, because my primary skill bar has to use storm form, blood craze, bound armaments and degeneration just to survive (and bound armaments must be on both bars for some *** reason, and I need the 10% increase to heavy attack damage).

So every second of delay you add to me renewing critical surge and slapping on a mutagen or quick siphon, is time im not attacking and getting critical surge heals that are necessary to live, and in turn I'm eating vet rank mob autoattacks that each per mob take out 1/7 of my 2210 HP bar (so it's not that I'm fragile, my armor's softcapped and I have stacked health; veteran mobs just do *** damage).

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Melee Survival

This is another big one. The amount of my skill bar that I need to dedicate to survival skills so I do not get blown up in seconds by a pack of veteran mobs is dumb. My bars use:

Bound Armaments, Thundering Presence, Degeneration, Blood Craze, Quick Siphon, Mutagen, and Dark Conversion. I often need to use a good combination of those.

Just 2 of them is not enough; nothing quite comes close to Dragon Blood for spike healing, and the problem is that while sustained healing can be good with my setup, in this game you die by damage spikes. So you need raw spike healing or really really high stacked sustained healing if you don't have spike heal skills like Templar or DK.

On top of this, leather users have no good amount of spell resist, and most of the damn lethal circles/attacks in the game happen at melee range.

So while a caster sorcerer or bow user can just keep moving around and avoid the charged up skills, melee FORCES me to walk into 3-5 mobs, and all of them are casting either uppercut or shuriken toss or stormblast teleport or a conal or a shield bash, often simultaneously. And even if I block all of them, I'm losing a good chunk of my health.

Something needs to be done about melee survival in this game, because what you see are a bunch of shield bash spamming melee or destro staff Impulse spammers in light armor.

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Spell resistance in leather

Let's not sit here and pretend that for some melee classes, especially the sorcerer who depends on crits for survival, that leather is optional to melee.

The problem with having 21% of your potential melee crit chance tied to 7/7 leather is that you have virtually no good amount of spell resistance uptime.

Veteran caster mobs, just with their staff autoattacks, hit for CRAZY damage. So do archers whom apparently for some reason seem to do damage based on your spell resistance.

Boss level caster mobs with a staff autoattack are wiping out 1/4-1/3 of my 2200 HP bar. And this is due to not sporting 5+ light armor pieces.

In dungeons a lot of the AoE attacks, many which you can't dodge without a teleport, are based on resistances as well.

Spell resistance should not be a stat tied to armor type, or some other mechanic needs to be put in place to allow nightblades and melee sorcs to cope with spell damage, because at least DK's have reflective scales.

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Class abilities costs for leatherwearers

It's not without reason that you see a good chunk of nightblades sporting light armor, because class skills for the nightblade and sorcerer cost a metric ton of magicka.

This is a problem, because the mechanics for melee sorcs demand that they stack melee crit to survive, and for nightblades their class spells actually go off weaponcrit, which is tied to leather.

The cost of class skills is too high for non-light armor wearers. Something like Encase easily wipes out 1/3 of your magicka pool. Critical Surge alone takes out 35-40% of your magicka pool.

Nightblades have similar issues with their shadow skills.

The culprits here are as follows:

-The regen softcaps. You need to remove them or increase them substantially as they are too easy to cap
-The light armor passives are too strong. They need a reduction

So we have a scenario where people say casters can spam skills for long periods like bolt escape, but that's only possible on 7/7 light armor with its powerful cost reduction passives and easy magicka regen returns.

Ultimate stat scaling

Ultimates scaling by magicka alone is crippling to stamina builds.

As a melee sorcerer I'll never use anything other than Absorption Field, ever. For the 9.5 sec stun.

Why? Because Overload heavy attacks do less than a single DW light attack, and Overload is an ultimate that costs Ultimate points.

AoE options

Simply put, if you are not a Templar or DK, your AoE option is Destruction staff Impulse spam. Which happens to be magicka based and requires light armor reduction costs.

Lightning Flood and Daedric Mines for sorcerer sucks, not to mention on top of being weak spells, melee sorcs focused on stamina have less spell damage and magicka to support these already weak spells. The same goes for Nightblades.

You need to fix the weak AoE class skills like Lightning Flood and Dark Path/Lotus Fan. For Lightning Flood, have the synergy damage detonate at the end of the cast if it is not used. Daedric Curse's splash damage needs to be 100% of the explosion damage. Daedric Curse itself could use a damage buff considering it's a 3 sec ramp up skill morphed or 6 seconds if not. Daedric Mines need a larger detonation radius as AoE damage and a magicka cost reduction along with an arming time of no more than 1 second.

MOST IMPORTANTLY:
Stamina based AoE weaponskills need severe buffing. Whirlwind needs to do actual damage before it becomes an Execute. So does Cleave.

DoT's should be reduced to deloiver damage over 3 or 5 seconds tops if their damage stays what it is. Delayed damage should always be considerably higher than direct damage.

Volley needs buffing as well. Ember Explosion and Shrouded Daggers need damage increases as well.

Selodaoc

Melee range beeing c*** distance is really annoing.
More so for us Europeans when a boss is beeing kited and delay makes you miss even though your almost standing inside the enemy.

Sakiri

Agreed.

I want to make a mostly melee weapon character but I just cant *not* use spells in the end.

And my heavy armor dw dk is squishy at vet rank.

Only weapon skill he uses is blood craze...

Crescent

Sakiri wrote: »

Agreed.

I want to make a mostly melee weapon character but I just cant *not* use spells in the end.

And my heavy armor dw dk is squishy at vet rank.

Only weapon skill he uses is blood craze...

It's the only one I'll be using after they nerf Flying Blade as well. And really, only use Blood Craze for a heal since the DoT is pathetic. DoT's in this game do like 600 damage over 10 seconds, that's 60 damage per second. That's less than a light autoattack it's really bad.

My melee sorc consists of heavy attack spam because the only class skills we got for single target are crystal shards, which doesn't let you melee, and Daedric Curse, which you can't spam because it's a timed explosion spell that you don't want to ovewrite or it'll never deliver the damage.

So a melee sorcerer RELIES on the weaponskills working, because there are no class skills for a melee sorcerer to spam or weave in to do good damage like fire lash or biting jabs.

And since no weaponskills work outside Flying Blade, and that is being nerfed with a 26% cost increase next patch, my sorcerer basically spams DW heavy attack.

Bound Armaments itself should be an 11% increase to weaponskills, because if you're not spamming heavy attacks the skill itself is wasted.

Melee need a lot of help in this game for build variety with the way this game has stacked on damage and HP on veteran rank mobs. They do such an absurd amount of damage that the only way to build is either an effective turtle spec like shield bash which can tank lots of damage, or an AoE glass cannon that can AoE mobs down quicker than they can make you explode.

And melee sorcs and Nightblades have such little group support for dungeons. I mean, Nightblade can bring Strife healing and Shades for damage reduction, but that's about it besides Refreshing Path.

And a melee sorc has not a single group utility skill whatsoever. The only skill with a group synergy is Lightning Flood and that spell is mediocre and even worse on a stamina build. The only thing you bring to a group as a melee sorcerer is Negate Magic ultimate (whatever morph) and that's very little to justify a spot if you are already behind caster sorc DPS and want to go for Craglorn trials leaderboards.

I expect leaderboard groups to bring a couple caster sorcs for the raw DPS and load up on Dragon Knights and Templars. Bring a healer Nightblade but that's about it. Melee sorcerers are not viable in hardcore group content and melee nightblades may sort of shine single target once their skills like Haste are fixed, but even then a melee DK or Templar comes pretty close and they bring far more to the table, especially DK.

Loco_Mofo

Great post!

You pretty much detailed everything I hated when attempting to build my first toon which was a medium armored, dual wielding, stamina focused NB. Got him to around the mid 20s, before I realised it's issues. Not that it wasn't viable, just not what I had hoped.

I've since re-rolled a light armored, destruction staff, magicka focused NB who just face rolls in comparison.

twistedmonk

The combat system needs a major overhaul.

Stamina based builds are fundamentally flawed because you need stamina for defense (block/dodge) and you need it for your offense too.

With the stamina regen softcap set laughably low (you can get softcap in junk gear). and no viable resource generating spells (whirling blades I'm looking at you).

and you have a broken combat system.

The AoE's need a serious looking at...the only viable AoE is dark talons and impulse spam.

unfortunately thousands of players have commented and Zenimax has zero feedback and no transparency so it's like talking to a wall.

peter.harkessnrb18_ESO

After playing this game for sometime now its clear to me that the clunky weapon swap mechanics in the game is a major problem (especially for my Nightblade). Its a poorly implemented system designed to keep the number of skills down to 5+1 when a much better system would be 10 + 1. In my opinion they need to either a) reduce the damage out put of VR mobs or b) increase the number of skills on the bar so people can more adequately deal with incoming damage. Right now its just bad game design.

Crescent

I agree a 10 or even 7+1 would have done much better, but since they are designing for a console we have to resign to the fact that the gameplay concerns will be secondary to getting sales on a console version. I'd be really surprised if they actually increased it to 7 buttons per bar.


So my feedback is tailored more to what we currently have rather than any false hope that they will reconsider larger design revisions like ability slot numbers.

Darrett

One of the other big issues is with boss fights. Many bosses are just far easier without anyone in Melee range.

I just ran Direfrost Keep with a DK who couldn't participate in a fight (I gave him a green bow so he could use light attacks) because Melee combatants are a liability in that particular fight. It's like they just expect everyone to be a ranged character.

Gilvoth

i agree with you, my duel wield assassin just is broken, weak, and dies alot.

ElSlayer

peter.harkessnrb18_ESO wrote: »

After playing this game for sometime now its clear to me that the clunky weapon swap mechanics in the game is a major problem (especially for my Nightblade). Its a poorly implemented system designed to keep the number of skills down to 5+1 when a much better system would be 10 + 1. In my opinion they need to either a) reduce the damage out put of VR mobs or b) increase the number of skills on the bar so people can more adequately deal with incoming damage. Right now its just bad game design.

Consoles, man. Consoles...

Sakiri

10 + 1 is annoying because I can only comfortably reach 5 or 6 keys on the num row with this targeting system.

I cant use a gaming mouse either... carpal and ulnar nerve issues make me require a nearly upturned mouse(natural arm/hand position has thumb straight upwards). I also have short fingers and small hands.

I think ability number is fine but the weapon swap sucks so hard I dont use it in combat.

kuma82

I agree with you guys on this. I love playing melee characters, and I thought it would be cool to have a melee char with maybe 1-2 spell abilities. So I chose DK. DW only holds its own during lower levels, once you get to veteran you are constantly facing 2-3 mobs at a time. The incoming damage is far too high for someone who wants to play a melee class. Then lets not forgot "solo" dungeons. Facing up to 6 mobs at once, the game forces you to put heals, aoe, and cc on you bar. It has become a game of cc mostly to mitigate dmg. If I wanted to play a game full of cc, I would go back to wow and play in the arena and get feared for days, then sheeped, then frogged, then rooted. Then at the end you face a boss, which only certain class's and specs will be able to do in this "solo" dungeon.

They implemented a terrible class system. It was good in theory but in practice its bad. You can play any class, with any weapons, and any spells. The fact is though there are optimal builds and everything else once you get into VR content becomes sub-optimal and you die a lot. They gave way too many options without them being all equally viable. There is no way someone who wants to play melee will be able to be melee in this game. They need to boost melee damage by quite a bit to make it in line with everything else. It is a designed style meant to deal a lot of upclose damage and accept the fact we will take a lot of damage as well but overcome it with strength in melee. Every player should not have to fill up their bar with cc, aoe, spells, and heals. It defeats the purpose of even having different classes and specs if everyone is running around as a hybrid class. We are all doing same attacks, aoe, cc, spell, aoe, heal, they just different names due to class's. What's the point of weapons(melee) if we are all just running around screaming spells instead?

A class needs to have pro's and con's. Right now its a ranged and spell caster's game. They have the damage (at range), the ability to heal, cc, run away, and stealth. The only exception is shield bashing, which isn't a weapon skill really. You still have these shield bashing tanks loaded up with spells, aoe, and cc. Everybody can be anything and play how you want! *Until you try, then you cant.

cbbouletb16_ESO

Light armor on every class and build in the game. There isn't really an option if you want to optimize. Also, there is a skill called Encase.

Crescent

cbbouletb16_ESO wrote: »

Light armor on every class and build in the game. There isn't really an option if you want to optimize. Also, there is a skill called Encase.

I already addressed Encase in my post.

A melee sorcerer CANNOT use light armor. Their survival is COMPLETELY tied to critical surge, and in order to have a crit rating of 30%+ which is the rate you need to actually heal enough in vet content with the amount of damage done to you in melee range, you need 7/7 leather for the 21% melee crit chance.

Moreover, even if you build for Exploitation with light armor and encase, it's only 15% extra crit chance vs.21% in leather, a whopping 6% crit chance difference in melee. That's large enough a gap, trust me I've tried 5 leather/2 light and the difference between 7/7 leather and 5 leather/2 light armor with critical surge healing is sizable enough.

Even more so, using a melee weapon requires heavy investment in stamina to see the returns, which means your magicka pool is smaller and Encase costs a crapton of mana.

Understand that surge alone is taking out 400+ magicka per cast and renewal, Thundering Presence is another 370+. You simply cannot sustain that amount of magicka usage with encase on top, and Encase does NOTHING versus archers and spellcasters.

Light armor works for some classes because their healing is not completely tied to critical hits, but for a melee sorcerer your healing and competitive damage output is tied to physical rating. Your greatest throughput skill besides heavy attack is flying blade spam. And building light armor would nerf your DPS because as I said there's no magicka skill a sorcerer can spam in between melee. Your only option is crystal shard spam and then you're not really playing a melee build are you.