Agility Nerf - another 15% dps lost for Stamina builds

GaldorP · September 2014

This nerf hits my build hard in PvE group content so, for once, I am whining

According to patch notes, the Medium Armor passive Agility was bugged and gave 15% increased attack speed instead of 10%. Instead of fixing it, in patch 1.4.x, the bonus got completely removed and replaced by another one that is much weaker (any reasonable Stamina build at VR12 is over the soft cap for weapon damage already).

This change alone will reduce the dps of my bow damage dealer character by 15%... I guess it was just too much to ask for to have a competitive bow build in veteran dungeons (in trials I still couldn't be a valuable group member because spell crit destro staff builds simply are so much better in so many ways and trials are built around them).

I guess I have the same choice again that I had before the Medium Armor passive that reduced Stamina skill cost and the Hawk's Eye set were introduced: Go Staves and Light Armor or stop doing endgame group content. For a while a bow build was good enough to be competitive in veteran dungeons and it was possible to get the speed run achievement in CoH with 2 bow damage dealer characters in the group. It was fun while it lasted

Light attacks per minute on a VR 12 character with full medium gear (7 items) and Agility rank II; no weighted trait on weapon; no attack speed bonus from any set:

On the PTS (patch 1.4.x.): 46
On the EU Server (not patched yet): 54

Edit: It appears the cooldown of skills is not affected by attack speed. That doesn't change the fact that Stamina builds that rely on alternating light attacks or partially charged heavy attacks with skills lose a good amount of sustained dps with this nerf. The damage bonus gained by having a tiny bit more weapon damage (over the softcap already for all stamina builds I've seen) will be less than 5% but I will note my damage values on regular VR 11 monsters with both regular attacks and skills today, before the patch, and will compare them with the values I get tomorrow, after the patch. I will post the results here.

Update: As promised, here is the comparison in actual damage done per attack with the new and the old Agility bonus. The character used was wearing the exact same gear and had the exact same buffs (only Tower Mundus Stone, no PvP buffs, the same VR 5 buff food) in both tests.

CHARACTER STATS

.................... Update 3 .... Update 4 .

Weapon Damage (-) .. 202 (+5) .... 210 (+13)
Weapon Damage (+) .. 212 (+17) ... 220 (+25)

DAMAGE ON A VR 10 DAEDROTH MONSTER FROM MAXIMUM DISTANCE

.................... Update 3 .... Update 4 .... Increase ....

Light Attack (-) ... 315/*472* ... 326/*488* ... 3.492%/3.390%
Light Attack (+) ... 329/*494* ... 338/*507* ... 2.736%/2.632%

Heavy Attack (-) ... 645/*967* ... 667/*1001* .. 3.411%/3.516%
Heavy Attack (+) ... 676/*1013* .. 695/*1043* .. 2.811%/2.962%

Venom Arrow (-) .... 329/*494* ... 336/*503* ... 2.128%/1.822%
Venom Arrow (+) .... 338/*507* ... 345/*518* ... 2.071%/2.170%

Numbers in brackets=points lost due to overcharge
(-)=without Igneous Weapons buff
(+)=with Igneous Weapons buff

As you can see the new passive gives roughly 1.8-3.5% extra damage on a VR 12 DK bow build. This extra damage gained is the lowest percentage on skill use (1.8-2.2% only). It seems that Weapon Damage has a bigger effect on Heavy Attacks and especially Light Attacks than on skills. The character used doesn't have any + Weapon Damage glyph on its jewelry.

Conclusion: 15% extra damage lost, 1.8-3.5% extra damage gained. A huge buff for Stamina builds, I guess?

ThatHappyCat · September 2014

Actually, the original bonus was worthless whether it's 15% or 10% because of animation cancelling.

Looks like ZOS decided to embrace it rather than fix it.

Aeratus · September 2014

Isn't the attack speed bonus mostly useless because of animation cancelling anyways? I thought ZOS realized this and replaced it with a bonus that is compatible with animation cancelling, since weapon damage affects skill attacks.

So when I read the patch notes, it looked like a buff to me.

zbtiqua · September 2014

OP is dead wrong... this is a huge BUFF to stamina builds...

GaldorP · September 2014

Before you could use 54 light attacks + 54 weapon skills per minute, now it's 46 of each. Animation cancelling does not affect the cool down of weapon skills or light attacks.

Aeratus · September 2014

m.stollb16_ESO wrote: »

Before you could use 54 light attacks + 54 weapon skills per minute, now it's 46 of each. Animation cancelling does not affect the cool down of weapon skills or light attacks.

I don't think so. The overall animation speed was limited by the cooldown of the weapon skill, not the cooldown of light attack. So the cooldown of light attacks was of no consequence.

Kewljag_66_ESO · September 2014

Personally i never noticed the weapon speed effecting my basic bow speed. On top of that it didn't effect hotbar ability speed.

My combo of Heavy attack, instant poison arrow, instant light seems to be at the exact same speed now but hitting harder with the weapon damage bonus.

If you are already over bow weapon damage softcap that mean s you can chance your gear around now. You probabaly have a ring with + 13 weapon damage, you can switch that with something else. Bow is far from soft cap on its own without + gear

Gorthax · September 2014

wtf....54 LA and 54 weapon skills PER MINUTE! I call b.s.....how the hell do you do that??

Phinix1 · September 2014

Aeratus wrote: »

m.stollb16_ESO wrote: »

Before you could use 54 light attacks + 54 weapon skills per minute, now it's 46 of each. Animation cancelling does not affect the cool down of weapon skills or light attacks.

I don't think so. The overall animation speed was limited by the cooldown of the weapon skill, not the cooldown of light attack. So the cooldown of light attacks was of no consequence.

That isn't true. Yes the animation could be cancelled, but you couldn't START another light attack until the internal cooldown was up, and that DOES go by weapon speed.

Many theorycrafting posts on Tamriel Foundry about this.

GaldorP · September 2014

Maybe I am wrong about animation cancelling (I don't use any macros or addons that do commands for me so I don't know about these things) but then please explain to me how I can do more than one Venom Arrow or more than one Acid Spray/Bombard between each light attack/partially charged heavy attack.

Gorthax wrote: »

wtf....54 LA and 54 weapon skills PER MINUTE! I call b.s.....how the hell do you do that??

That's with full medium armor and weighted trait on my bow. I just tested it again on the EU server. It's a bit less than I said before: up to (if perfectly done with no lag) ~48 light attacks + ~48 skills per minute. If I do only light attacks, I can do 60 per minute. If I only spam Bombard or Poison Arrow, I can use that skills 60 times per minute.

I don't have any screen capture software installed, but I can demonstrate it to you on the (not yet patched) EU server if you have a character there.

So yes... for my build, this change will be a dps reduction of close to15%, believe it or not. My weapon damage is well over the softcap already with only the bonus from Hunding's Rage + Igneous Weapons.

demonlkojipub19_ESO · September 2014

The trait bonus doesn't even match the trait name now... they could have at least changed that too. It pretty much kills the nature of medium armor speed.

And juggernaut from heavy armor line still doesn't do anything.

c0rp · September 2014

Has HASTE changed?

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

Actually, the original bonus was worthless whether it's 15% or 10% because of animation cancelling.

Looks like ZOS decided to embrace it rather than fix it.

Yep, using animation canceling has always been far higher DPS making the old 5pc Agility completely useless/pointless. I'm glad they changed it to a nice big weapon damage bonus

. A much-needed boost to medium builds to fix the 5pc bonus and makes it actually relatively balanced comparing light/medium passives now.

Arsenic_Touch · September 2014

c0rp wrote: »

Has HASTE changed?

Nope, still worthless. They'll need to change that and the weapon trait to be consistent. It'll probably take a few months though.

GaldorP · September 2014

Does anyone posting in this thread understand that there are medium armor builds that alternate light attacks/partially charged heavy attacks with skills and that the light attacks for these builds will now have longer cooldowns?

TheBull · September 2014

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

Actually, the original bonus was worthless whether it's 15% or 10% because of animation cancelling.

Looks like ZOS decided to embrace it rather than fix it.

You may have not noticed, but haste made animation canceling quicker. It's real apparent (NB haste skill) when duel wielding or using bows.

demonlkojipub19_ESO · September 2014

Actually I can confirm that the new bonus isn't functioning just like the juggernaut trait.

With the same item sets for both medium and heavy armor sets, I have more weapon damage in medium armor as listed in my character sheet however I am dealing the same amount of damage.

210 weapon damage in medium armor - 781 uppercut
201 weapon damage in heavy armor - 781 uppercut

its just listing the weapon damage increase, but not applying it to attacks, and juggernaut never worked...

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · September 2014

Juggernaut even if working the damage is pitiful.

Any one who wants to make a weapon/stamina build, needs Ravager set (3 jewels, 2 heavy) and the rest of the armour medium for the Stamina regen bonuses.

Only if they make juggernaut to give 10-15% damage bonus will worth to wear more heavy armour.

demonlkojipub19_ESO · September 2014

Actually those numbers are off due to a small stamina disparity. my heavy set only has 4 more stamina than my medium set now.

medium uppercut = 784, Light attack = 236
heavy uppercut = 781, light attack 235

zbtiqua · September 2014

I have never seen any evidence that attack speed allows you to get more attacks per minute, other than light/heavy non-ability attacks... Can you prove this? Also, even if true, does it even matter with weaving/cancelling?

zbtiqua · September 2014

m.stollb16_ESO wrote: »

Does anyone posting in this thread understand that there are medium armor builds that alternate light attacks/partially charged heavy attacks with skills and that the light attacks for these builds will now have longer cooldowns?

If you aren't using two light attacks/partially charged heavy attacks in a row, then this is completely irrelevant... Attack speed has no effect that I know of on GCD or the speed animations are played... Plus, animations can be cancelled...

GaldorP · September 2014

Ok, I'll try to explain it once again. It would be nice if all the people who have never actually played a Stamina bow build in endgame PvE group content could read this before posting the phrase "animation cancelling" without explaining why they think the attack speed bonus had no effect at all.

1. Light and partially charged heavy attacks have a standard cooldown* of about 1.3 seconds that can be reduced with increased attack speed buffs (with Agility + weighted trait on weapon it could be reduced to 1.0 seconds).

2. Stamina weapon skills like Poison Arrow or Bombard have a fixed cooldown of about 1.0 seconds which cannot be reduced with increased attack speed effects.

3. The cooldown of light/partially charged heavy attacks and the cooldown of skills are two separate values and run independently.

4. "Animation cancelling" or "weaving" with a bow build consists of doing a light attack first and using a bow weapon skill immediately after that, cancelling the light attack animation and instantly performing the skill attack. After that the bow user has to wait until the cooldown period for the light attack is over before he or she can initiate another light attack.**

5. In patch 1.4.3. the attack speed buff from Agilty which reduced the cooldown of light attacks/partially charged heavy attacks from 1.3 seconds to ~1.1 seconds (1.0 with weighted trait on weapon) was removed. This reduced both the number of light attacks and skills that a "weaving" medium armor bow user can perform per minute.**

* cooldown means the time you have to wait until you can use such an attack again.
** "Weaving" with a bow means: Light Attack > Poison Arrow/Arrow Spray > Light Attack > Poison Arrow/Arrow Spray > etc. The only way that a light attack cooldown of 1.3 seconds (instead of 1.1 seconds) would not affect the dps of a weaving build is if it were possible to do something like the following (time that would have passed ideally since begin of sequence in brackets):
Light Attack (0.0) > Bow Skill (0.0) > Bow Skill (1.0) > Light Attack (1.3) > Bow Skill (2.0) > Light Attack (2.6) > Bow Skill (3.0) > Light Attack (3.9) > Bow Skill (4.0) > Bow Skill (5.0) > Light Attack (5.2) > Bow Skill (6.0) etc.
But this is not possible. It simply doesn't work that way.

Kego · September 2014

To bring the CD down from 1.3 seconds to 1.0 seconds you need 24% Haste.
Means the current change is a win for any Nightblade, cause with our Haste Buff we already get to the maximum CD reduce and we gain another 3% Crit Chance as well.
Surely a different Story for other classes, don't know if they can push their haste rate somehow.

GaldorP · September 2014

Kego wrote: »

To bring the CD down from 1.3 seconds to 1.0 seconds you need 24% Haste.
Means the current change is a win for any Nightblade, cause with our Haste Buff we already get to the maximum CD reduce and we gain another 3% Crit Chance as well.
Surely a different Story for other classes, don't know if they can push their haste rate somehow.

Yes, I agree, if you used Haste on a NB, then the old Agility bonus wasn't helpful. However, for a DK bow build the change that came with patch 1.4.x. equals 15% extra dps lost.

zbtiqua · September 2014

m.stollb16_ESO wrote: »

Ok, I'll try to explain it once again. It would be nice if all the people who have never actually played a Stamina bow build in endgame PvE group content could read this before posting the phrase "animation cancelling" without explaining why they think the attack speed bonus had no effect at all.

1. Light and partially charged heavy attacks have a standard cooldown* of about 1.3 seconds that can be reduced with increased attack speed buffs (with Agility + weighted trait on weapon it could be reduced to 1.0 seconds).

2. Stamina weapon skills like Poison Arrow or Bombard have a fixed cooldown of about 1.0 seconds which cannot be reduced with increased attack speed effects.

3. The cooldown of light/partially charged heavy attacks and the cooldown of skills are two separate values and run independently.

4. "Animation cancelling" or "weaving" with a bow build consists of doing a light attack first and using a bow weapon skill immediately after that, cancelling the light attack animation and instantly performing the skill attack. After that the bow user has to wait until the cooldown period for the light attack is over before he or she can initiate another light attack.**

5. In patch 1.4.3. the attack speed buff from Agilty which reduced the cooldown of light attacks/partially charged heavy attacks from 1.3 seconds to ~1.1 seconds (1.0 with weighted trait on weapon) was removed. This reduced both the number of light attacks and skills that a "weaving" medium armor bow user can perform per minute.**

* cooldown means the time you have to wait until you can use such an attack again.
** "Weaving" with a bow means: Light Attack > Poison Arrow/Arrow Spray > Light Attack > Poison Arrow/Arrow Spray > etc. The only way that a light attack cooldown of 1.3 seconds (instead of 1.1 seconds) would not affect the dps of a weaving build is if it were possible to do something like the following (time that would have passed ideally since begin of sequence in brackets):
Light Attack (0.0) > Bow Skill (0.0) > Bow Skill (1.0) > Light Attack (1.3) > Bow Skill (2.0) > Light Attack (2.6) > Bow Skill (3.0) > Light Attack (3.9) > Bow Skill (4.0) > Bow Skill (5.0) > Light Attack (5.2) > Bow Skill (6.0) etc.
But this is not possible. It simply doesn't work that way.

So you are saying if you go Light Attack > Venom Arrow, the game is keeping count of both cooldowns simultaneously..? I was under the impression that since one took priority over the other, it replaced it, in which case the cooldown for the light attack would not matter.

I've never tested this or seen it tested, as I assumed (as would make sense) that it was only the cooldown from the latest skill used that mattered for this purpose.

Do you have any data or logs supporting this? Or is it based on something more subjective...

GaldorP · September 2014

zbtiqua wrote: »

Do you have any data or logs supporting this? Or is it based on something more subjective...

It's hard to record data or make a log of it because the difference is only 12% now. I wouldn't know which addon to use for that. CLS only shows full seconds for me. Also, it's really hard to keep weaving at the perfect speed over a longer amount of time. Venom Arrow needs a target to be used and bosses often have special animations that break the rhythm. If I use Arrow Spray which needs no target, I run out of Stamina after about 17 uses.

What I know is that I definitely noticed how my weaving got slower with this update. I often press the light attack button too early and the light attack gets skipped because it isn't ready for re-use yet. Another player with a similar build (bow DK weaving Light Attack > Venom Arrow/Bombard) who's run a lot of veteran dungeons like me noticed the same thing when he did a veteran dungeon today, after the patch.

I can definitely (in the current update) do faster weaving when I use a bow with the weighted trait (+12% attack speed on legendary VR 12) than I can when I use a bow without that trait. The following test I made confirmed this:

I used the weaving sequence "Light Attack > Bombard" 17 times in a row against no enemy. I took the time with a stop watch and did 10 runs first with a bow with the weighted trait, then 10 runs using a bow without that trait. I only counted runs where I failed a maximum of one "Light Attack > Bombard" combo (where I accidentally skipped a maximum of 1 Light Attack).

With Weighted: 20.49/19.68/19.77/19.54/19.93/17.93/18.64/18.82/19.47/19.39 seconds.

Without Weighted: 22.46/22.51/21.88/21.71/21.24/21.02/21.54/22.23/22.23/21.48 seconds.

zbtiqua · September 2014

Hmm... I'm going to have to look into this more I guess... maybe I spoke too soon.