No more skill spamming!

tunepunk · January 2015

I think most skills should be revamped. I'm against skill spamming and think Light & Heavy attacks should always be main source of damage, and skills should help out in certain kind of situations.

For now it seems like most people play the game by spamming skills for maximum DPS, and making builds thereafter. In my opinion skills should be used for things like, survivability, burst damage, AOE, Damage over time, CC, and not for spamming as a source of sustained DPS.

I wouldn't mind if they increased both the cost and effectiveness of all skills so you can't use them over and over, and instead only use them when it really matters. I think that would make gameplay more fun and interesting, and you would learn when or when not to use a skill instead of hitting the same button over and over, because most people have enough magicka or stamina regen to do so. Skills should be powerful, and useful, and help you out in certain kind of situations.

I really dislike that kind of playstyle and I see a lot of people playing this way. Head in and just spam your main damage skill. Lot of AEO destruction staff wielders spamming impulse over and over, etc. for example.

A spell like Crystal Shard and it's morphs, is quite neat, but using it as a main source of sustained DPS ruins the whole thing. It doesn't really do much more damage than a Heavy Attack. Why not make it more powerful, but at a higher cost?

There is a lot of skills that can be spammed like this and doesn't make gameplay very fun in the long run.

For me a skill like impulse should be super powerful, but a one time cast, when you want to do massive ammounts of AOE damage in a certain situation. Not like a main source of spammable damage.

Defensive skills like DK's reflecting scales, is really useful and powerful, but i see people keeping this skill up almost 100% of the time and although that's really awesome, i don't think it is intended.

Anyway i would rather see skills being used more rarely but was more powerful in general. Recast timers or cooldowns, or increasing costs of skills and increasing the effectiveness of the skills would probably make the game more fun, tactical and challenging.

Maybe morphs of skills should have more variety. One powerful version, and one weaker spammable version, for those who like that playstyle?

Either way, right now there are some skills that are too powerful to be spammable, and some skills that are to weak to be useful.

Cody · January 2015

My problem, is that people can do all this WHILE blocking, which I think is crap.

Germtrocity · January 2015

Having super powerful skills with large cooldowns and increased costs would require a restructure of a lot of things. For one, groups in cyrodiil could just wait until all their cooldowns are finished and then faceroll an entire area using everything they have in a coordinated attack and then go back into hiding and wait for their cooldowns to refresh - just one of the few issues that could arise.

I like the idea of greater costs on skills, and being less spammable so that it takes more skill to time your attacks to be the most effective. I would be happy to just have increased costs with no extra damage added whatsoever, I think that it would make people have to use their brains a bit more when picking which skills to put on their bar.

And still with the block casting, definitely needs to go

tunepunk · January 2015

Germtrocity wrote: »

Having super powerful skills with large cooldowns and increased costs would require a restructure of a lot of things. For one, groups in cyrodiil could just wait until all their cooldowns are finished and then faceroll an entire area using everything they have in a coordinated attack and then go back into hiding and wait for their cooldowns to refresh - just one of the few issues that could arise.

I like the idea of greater costs on skills, and being less spammable so that it takes more skill to time your attacks to be the most effective. I would be happy to just have increased costs with no extra damage added whatsoever, I think that it would make people have to use their brains a bit more when picking which skills to put on their bar.

And still with the block casting, definitely needs to go

Counters would also be more powerful of course, so a coordinated attack would mean everyone running dry on resources wasting them on a well prepared team in pvp for example. Making scouts useful notifying teams of incoming zergs for example.

tunepunk · January 2015

It will be fun to see what they do later with upcoming spellcrafting. Skills like evade is quite useful. But i would rather have a powerful 80% dodge chance for 4 seconds than a weak 15% one for 20 seconds.

Kybotica · January 2015

Cody wrote: »

My problem, is that people can do all this WHILE blocking, which I think is crap.

This. One of the reasons, if not THE reason, that many people still view magicka builds as the most viable is because they can reserve stamina for blocking and have their entire magicka pool for spamming abilities while they are blocking. A stamina build doesn't have this luxury, and it weakens them significantly if they want or need survivability. I still think that we should be capable of blocking using stamina or magicka. Make it some sort of toggle ability, so that warriors using stamina abilities can block with a magical barrier and spam their stamina abilities, and mages can continue blocking while spamming spells. Either this, or eliminate the ability to block and cast at the same time.

Wisler89 · January 2015

They should remove animation canceling (which would also remove block casting me thinks).

After that there should be two different kind of skills: cheaper ones to increase damage/defence short term (a 10 sec dot, or a short damage buff, a short but strong armor buff or evasion chance) and much more expensive skills for real gameplay change (summons, bound armor/weapon, permanent damage like inferno [a skill which needs a rework so badly]).

I still think the removal of the traditional ES Magic Schools and the implementation of the now existing classes was a mistake.

tunepunk · January 2015

Another solution could be greatly reduced Spell DMG while blocking and/or 0.5 to 1 second after blocking or something like that. And some more skills to counter or bypass blocking would be nice. Blocking should be powerful since it's a way to survive, but i think the benefits of blocking are greater than it should.

When I do PvE i rarely block since my play-style is more of Attacking is your best defence, because there's not many Enemies that block, and I play ranged with bow, so i prefer using distance as a source of defence.

PvP however renders this tactic quite useless, since most people are blocking most of the time, and can still do a significant amount of damage doing so, bu using BlockCasting. It's clearly an exploit that needs to be fixed.

I rarely play PvP as it seems many people are using these kind of exploits, and game mechanics to their favour.

Blocking should of course make you well protected, but also hinder any kind of offensive action, including spell casting. Otherwise they should make more spells/skills penetrate blocking

Blocking will negate incoming damage and CC but hinder your Weapon damage output since you can't swing while blocking. FAIR.
Blocking will allow you to block Spells and CC but still allow you to cast spells.
NOT FAIR.

People using Block Casting tactic would clearly have an advantage against any build / playstyle not using the same tactic.

I wouldn't mind if my opponent kept his shield up 100% of the time if i could be sure he was not gonna harm me while doing so. I would wait for an open window. Currently there's no waiting. Facing a Block Caster would make me think twice about engaging, because most my offensive skills/spells and attacks would be useless while the opponent still can output a good ammount of damage with spells. If I'm a stamina based build mostly I'm even worse off. If i have some spells, i can still counter with the same tactic.

Joy_Division · January 2015

People can spam skills because of Spell Symmetry. Revamp this skill so there is actually a legitimate cost to it that can not be easily circumvented by a healer and people will start using heavy attacks.

eliisra · January 2015

People enjoy different things. I would not find ESO fun at all if 80% of my dps was coming from light and heavy attacks, like game play during beta + early access where you used 2 heals and went oom

I love using actual skills, seeing awesome animations and effects, over hitting something with a basic sword over and over, that's to repetitive and colourless. But I can't say this is ideal either, as dps I'm basically spamming Crushing Shock or Snipe over and over depending on magicka or stamina.

At least PvP offers more diversity.

Most enjoyable gaming for me is good recourse management and diverse/flexible rotation and skill usage. Where basic attacks are secondary. I'm well aware that ESO will never fit into that perfectly, with limited action bars and resources. But hopefully we see more fun dps builds than Crushing Shock spam in the future.

tunepunk · January 2015

I agree, but recast timers would be nice to encourage people to use a skill rotation instead of skill spamming, and maybe add some gear or passives to decrease timers if you want to spam skills.

One interesting thing would be if they moved out all the weapon skills and made them like in Morrowind or Oblivion (Don't remember which one) Holding MB1 + Direction would execute different weapon skills. That way you would not be restricted to 5 slots of skills. You would have 5 skill slots AND 4-5 different heavy attacks/weapons skills.

For example:
Bow - Hold MMB + W (Moving forward) = Snipe
Bow - Hold MMB + S (Moving backwards) Magnum shot.
Maybe even customisable to assign them to any direction.

Destruction Staff - Hold MMB - Regular heavy attack/channeled attack
Destruction Staff - Hold MMB + S - Impulse.

That would be quite neat. The current 5+1 skill set per bar is a bit too little in my opinion and only promotes skill spamming.

Even if we have 2 bars, I use them for different kind of situations, or facing different kind of opponents.

Gothren · January 2015

[quote="

I rarely play PvP as it seems many people are using these kind of exploits, and game mechanics to their favour.

[/quote]

zos knows about animation canceling. I have not read or seen any video were they openly condone using this. Therefore, it is not an exploit.

Cody · January 2015

Gothren wrote: »

[quote="

I rarely play PvP as it seems many people are using these kind of exploits, and game mechanics to their favour.

zos knows about animation canceling. I have not read or seen any video were they openly condone using this. Therefore, it is not an exploit.[/quote]

You have not seen videos where they openly accept it, so its not an exploit?

Is my definition of condone just wrong? im confused:/

MissBizz · January 2015

Legitimate question here.

How would a healer do? Not well I imagine.

As a healer I do many heavy attacks and try NOT to spam my skills because I will drain my magicka just about the time someone gets hit hard. If my skills costed any more I'd be... <insert shipped word here>

Gothren · January 2015

In my opinion, I do not think animation canceling will be eliminated. However, I doubt they will do anything about it for the foreseeable future. I may be in the minority here, but I like that you can use animation canceling. I just feel that combat will be dull and boring without it.

tunepunk · January 2015

Gothren wrote: »

In my opinion, I do not think animation canceling will be eliminated. However, I doubt they will do anything about it for the foreseeable future. I may be in the minority here, but I like that you can use animation canceling. I just feel that combat will be dull and boring without it.

I don't think the animation cancelling itself is the problem. The problem is that it has no penalties for doing so... Of course it is great to be able to react quickly and block but like i said earlier. Some kind of penalty on spellcasting would be in order to even it out.

Nijjion · January 2015

You are blaming skills for spamming when the problem is only being able to use 10 skills.

Though sure some skills can be revamped, Other games do skill chains where you have 2-3 skills in a line up so you can't use the 3rd till you done the 2nd and the 1st before that.

I'm guessing you want that as well... but in that we would have to open up having more skill slots in the first place.

Vordae · January 2015

Cody wrote: »

Gothren wrote: »

[quote="

I rarely play PvP as it seems many people are using these kind of exploits, and game mechanics to their favour.

zos knows about animation canceling. I have not read or seen any video were they openly condone using this. Therefore, it is not an exploit.

You have not seen videos where they openly accept it, so its not an exploit?

Is my definition of condone just wrong? im confused:/[/quote]

Accept there whole new system of ult generation is based on light attack weaving. Light attack weaving is canceling the light attack animation by using a skill. Animation canceling is intended and a necessary part of the combat system. Without animation canceling you would not be able to block or dodge when you need as you would be locked in animations. This would make combat feel extremely clunky. They created a hierarchy to skill animation to make combat fluid and responsive.

Vordae · January 2015

Also to the people complaining about Block Casting. With the addition of all the new things that can be blocked you will see people being less and less able to sustain block casting. They will block so many additional effects they will be drained of stamina much more quickly. This will make them much more susceptible to CC. Changing the code to make it so you can't block and cast is much harder then just making block casting a really bad idea cause you will go from 100% to 0% stamina super fast. Its a great work around to make block cast less effective.

Vizier · January 2015

Nah- It might be nice to see light and heavy attacks become the meat and potatoes of combat but then there's really not much to distinguish the classes from one another. The population would likely gravitate even more to Dragon Knight and Sorc due to DPS plus mitigation and Bolt Escape.

Can you imagine cloaking for a whole 2.9 seconds and then waiting on a cool down. LOL- Group Wipe cuz heals were on cool down...nice.

Nah-No. This is a bad idea. If spells and abilities lasted about 10times longer you might be on to something. Otherwise it's a TERRIBLE idea.

trimsic_ESO · January 2015

A huge dev effort has been spent on balancing skills in 1.6. Skills that were considered too weak have been buffed so as to promote the build diversity and avoid a situation where the same skills were spammed.

However, and despite this huge balance effort, having only 5 skills per bar will continue to encourage a gameplay based on skill spamming.

tunepunk · January 2015

I think one of the problems are the soft caps and morph choices.

Skill spamming per say is a viable tactic of you can have enough resources to do so. But for now builds doesn't make for much diversity and soft caps makes it less so.

Let's say you want to make a build entirely based on skill spamming, if that's your cup of tea. Extremely high regen rate, but a quite low pool so skills are weaker in general would a good tradeoff. The soft caps will not allow you to play this way.

Let's say u are an opportunist waiting for the right moment to strike hard, and this is your tactic, soft caps also makes this less viable with diminishing returns. Maybe you have a lower regen rate, but a massive pool for a good ammount of burst. But soft caps put an end to this too.

The damage output of most skills doesn't vary much even with a difference of 1000 Magicka/Stamina and even less so past the soft caps.

Most skills can't be spammed forever since soft caps on regen puts a stop to this. Most skills will never be more powerful than to a certain point because soft caps. The soft caps tries to even out everyone rather than make them specialized, and kind of forces people to play in a "balanced" way somehwhere in the middle of spamming and bursting.

For example:
A skill like 'Crystal Fragments'..(not morphed)
With 90 Spell damage and 1500 Magicka it does approximatly 470 damage.
With 90 Spell damage and 2500 Magicka it does about 600 damage ...
They still gonna cost the same amount of Magicka to cast.

There are not many options in terms of customisation. Sure: gear, passives, etc, can make it cost slightly less, and bump my regen a bit, or make it hit slightly harder, But I will always be in the sweet zone between completely spammable and high damage. And this is what they done even more to skills like Bolt Escape. They don't want you to spam it, no matter how hard you try to make a build based on spamming Bolt Escape it wont' work. You can't even customize your build so it would work as powerful AOE (morphed to streak).

For me as a player, I would much rather have the option to use a really powerful Bolt escape every now and then, or if i chose, a rather weak one that i can use often. Now bolt Escape is bolt escape, either how you morph it sure u can use it slightly more often if you have more magicka regen and a bigger mana pool, but It won't change much of your tactic of when it's gonna be used and how often.

I've played around with a lot of gear, skills, build setups and attribute points and mundus stones, but I always end up somewhere in that sweet spot between completely spammable, and high damage, which is kind of boring.

xMovingTarget · January 2015

*Comes in and yells BoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoring*

I am done. cya

trimsic_ESO · January 2015

@tunepunk‌
This is the reason why so many games have skills with CD.

Now, I'm not saying that the ESO combat system is not viable, but if it does not implement any penalty for spamming a skill, then people will continue to spam their skills.

Is it a problem? Yes, because as you said it, it´s boring.

Venriz · January 2015

Problem with fixing combat right now is that all content is balanced over this bugged model.
if ZOS will change it , they will have to rebalance all PvE (im not saying its 100% balanced atm but see the point).

I wonder if ZOS are even into changeing anything in that matter.
All we know is that is not intendent but they picked easy way and just adapt to this, witch i never seen in any serious mmo.
Even now in 1.6 they changed skills with animation canceling in mind.

For me fighting is big deal because i do it most of time and it should be most polished part of game.

Good part for me is now i wont have to pay to cheak from time to time how game doing.
Thats bad for ZOS cuz they are loosing custommer, but do they care when they can sqeeze some money from console players?

I would like to know that they are just a little intrested in that problem or meyby they will sey that players wanted this, like with B2P model.

@ZOS - any word?

olsborg · January 2015

Cody wrote: »

My problem, is that people can do all this WHILE blocking, which I think is crap.

This is basicly my own main concern about pvp. And I know a large portion of the player base feels the same way. ZOS should deal with it asap, instead of pushing the problem infront of them while players are put off by cyrodiil because of it.