Despite what you believe, a cap wouldn't do anything for balance as long as classes are inherently unbalanced and so is gear.

It would just make damage have either an absolute cap, then more players stack defense, or vice-versa.

Also, the problem with tankiness has never been healing of any kind; it has always been a function of damage reduction. You can heal for a billion hp per second, but if you die in one hit, the healing you do does not matter.

But let's take your example of a cap for a spin.

Say ZOS implemented a cap on damage reduction (or damage), then players with other defensive mechanics that also are essentially damage reduction (invisibility, cloak, purge, in-built class damage reduction, or certain sets) will gain a massive advantage versus all players that don't have those mechanics built into their builds even more than they have on live today.

A blanket nerf or change of any kind will not balance the game when each class is not properly balanced one way or another. An example is the upcoming planned changes to damage and TTK.

Unless they changed something, classes with already low damage or easily countered class damage skills (read: DK) will essentially become even more useless than they are on live.

What needs to be done is that ZOS needs to take PTS input on skills and sets more seriously. It only takes 3 days to find broken and OP builds relative to all others on PTS -- in fact, I already think of them the moment I read the patch notes and they always pan out to be exactly as I thought.

An example of this is when ZOS changed surprise attack to give off balance and stun. I thought : wow, someone will be able to spam that skill and do absolutely nothing but that and light attack to kill people. Sure enough, with the right build it is the case, and I killed 20 people alone spamming it on live...

There are other examples, like living dark scaling off of hp, warden netch, etc. - all things that are well-known by anyone making the META to be out of line, and also part of why the ultra-tanky + damage specs continue to exist.

Those builds you see simply stack a bunch of mechanics that are out of line, find a balance between them that keeps them just right, and then have an innate advantage over all other builds. That won't disappear with a blanket nerf today, tomorrow, nor in the future.

It will only disappear if the problems are actually addressed when they come up, and they do almost every PTS cycle. Not sure about this one, but if it stands as it is, there will be even worse builds to come out from the changes ZOS has proposed.

There is too much to comment on the PTS patches, so I will end that discussion here.

Greek_Hellspawn wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Despite what you believe, a cap wouldn't do anything for balance as long as classes are inherently unbalanced and so is gear.

It would just make damage have either an absolute cap, then more players stack defense, or vice-versa.

Also, the problem with tankiness has never been healing of any kind; it has always been a function of damage reduction. You can heal for a billion hp per second, but if you die in one hit, the healing you do does not matter.

But let's take your example of a cap for a spin.

Say ZOS implemented a cap on damage reduction (or damage), then players with other defensive mechanics that also are essentially damage reduction (invisibility, cloak, purge, in-built class damage reduction, or certain sets) will gain a massive advantage versus all players that don't have those mechanics built into their builds even more than they have on live today.

A blanket nerf or change of any kind will not balance the game when each class is not properly balanced one way or another. An example is the upcoming planned changes to damage and TTK.

Unless they changed something, classes with already low damage or easily countered class damage skills (read: DK) will essentially become even more useless than they are on live.

What needs to be done is that ZOS needs to take PTS input on skills and sets more seriously. It only takes 3 days to find broken and OP builds relative to all others on PTS -- in fact, I already think of them the moment I read the patch notes and they always pan out to be exactly as I thought.

An example of this is when ZOS changed surprise attack to give off balance and stun. I thought : wow, someone will be able to spam that skill and do absolutely nothing but that and light attack to kill people. Sure enough, with the right build it is the case, and I killed 20 people alone spamming it on live...

There are other examples, like living dark scaling off of hp, warden netch, etc. - all things that are well-known by anyone making the META to be out of line, and also part of why the ultra-tanky + damage specs continue to exist.

Those builds you see simply stack a bunch of mechanics that are out of line, find a balance between them that keeps them just right, and then have an innate advantage over all other builds. That won't disappear with a blanket nerf today, tomorrow, nor in the future.

It will only disappear if the problems are actually addressed when they come up, and they do almost every PTS cycle. Not sure about this one, but if it stands as it is, there will be even worse builds to come out from the changes ZOS has proposed.

There is too much to comment on the PTS patches, so I will end that discussion here.

Yeah the class balance is a separate issue. The game started with specific roles in mind, sorc mag dd, NB stam dd, DK tank, Temp Heal/dd. Then they introduced warden/Necro with ALL 3 ROLES IN MIND. That is why those 2 are out of balance they have passives/skills that give tanky/heal/DD all in one class, plus delayed blast skills makes them powerful in PVP.

Unfortunately it is not really possible to 'Balance' classes, they will either end up all the same and be super boring in PVE or they will have distinct abilities and be unbalanced in PVP. My suggestion is to disable class skills/passives in PVP and use only the other skills/passives and CP, plus sets.

[snip]
If you disabled classes in pvp it will just kill the pvp, nobody is going to enjoy playing the same skills again and again, even if it's the most balanced game.
It will kill any fun and diversity there is left in the game.

Imagine if classes were disabled and everyone was given a superclass, they could choose abilities from every single class. That would be fun wouldnt it. /s

[edited to remove quote]

xHotguy6pack wrote: »

The best patch they ever had was the no proc cyrodiil. The best thing they could do to fix pvp balance would be to remove all proc sets and tweak the different classes to get them on an even level THEN focus on adding certain proc sets back, work on those, THEN add a few more and so on. And honestly damage proc sets should be removed from pvp entirely they have no place in it at all.

Proc sets became only slightly useful to many players in PVP when ZOS removed the % chance to proc but they were never really OP. And when ZOS gave everyone w/s damage 1000 bonus and a bunch of resources, proc sets became totally underperforming than stat based builds but many people admitted that, as well as admitting no proc cyro sucked.

Now that they have added scaling to proc sets it is the worse it has ever been. NOW some proc sets are TRULY OP. Have you seen stamsorc with ashen grip, deadland, malacath, vateshran 2hnd sword. NO LESS THAN 3 PROCS. All you have to do is click rally, hurricane, vigor, crystal weapon, then streak on top of someone and do ONE MEDIUM ATTACK (at minimum this power should be FULLY CHARGED HEAVY but also only 1 proc per attack NOT 4 PROCS), and spam spin to win if by some miracle they are still alive. And it gets better, if you don't kill them streak away and try again. TOTAL OP braindead build that is everywhere now. Vateshran should only proc when using stam abilities DURING COMBAT not spamming buffs 5 times also.

But we're getting sidetracked, this is supposed to be about replacing the blanket % nerfs in battle spirit with CAPs to limit abusing the system while also not penalizing EVERYONE.

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Despite what you believe, a cap wouldn't do anything for balance as long as classes are inherently unbalanced and so is gear.

It would just make damage have either an absolute cap, then more players stack defense, or vice-versa.

Also, the problem with tankiness has never been healing of any kind; it has always been a function of damage reduction. You can heal for a billion hp per second, but if you die in one hit, the healing you do does not matter.

But let's take your example of a cap for a spin.

Say ZOS implemented a cap on damage reduction (or damage), then players with other defensive mechanics that also are essentially damage reduction (invisibility, cloak, purge, in-built class damage reduction, or certain sets) will gain a massive advantage versus all players that don't have those mechanics built into their builds even more than they have on live today.

A blanket nerf or change of any kind will not balance the game when each class is not properly balanced one way or another. An example is the upcoming planned changes to damage and TTK.

Unless they changed something, classes with already low damage or easily countered class damage skills (read: DK) will essentially become even more useless than they are on live.

What needs to be done is that ZOS needs to take PTS input on skills and sets more seriously. It only takes 3 days to find broken and OP builds relative to all others on PTS -- in fact, I already think of them the moment I read the patch notes and they always pan out to be exactly as I thought.

An example of this is when ZOS changed surprise attack to give off balance and stun. I thought : wow, someone will be able to spam that skill and do absolutely nothing but that and light attack to kill people. Sure enough, with the right build it is the case, and I killed 20 people alone spamming it on live...

There are other examples, like living dark scaling off of hp, warden netch, etc. - all things that are well-known by anyone making the META to be out of line, and also part of why the ultra-tanky + damage specs continue to exist.

Those builds you see simply stack a bunch of mechanics that are out of line, find a balance between them that keeps them just right, and then have an innate advantage over all other builds. That won't disappear with a blanket nerf today, tomorrow, nor in the future.

It will only disappear if the problems are actually addressed when they come up, and they do almost every PTS cycle. Not sure about this one, but if it stands as it is, there will be even worse builds to come out from the changes ZOS has proposed.

There is too much to comment on the PTS patches, so I will end that discussion here.

"Despite what you believe, a cap wouldn't do anything for balance as long as classes are inherently unbalanced and so is gear"

You also forgot to mention skills. Take for example Evasion from medium armor. 20% mitigation against AOE ( the main damage type for hard hitting Ults and skills). Just for the hell of it, I crafted spectre's eye to see how powerful major evasion was. I back-bar the set and don't believe me if you want, but the survivability is insane on my mag Templar. I encourage everyone to get major evasion- next patch it will be 40% (20% from M evasion and 20% from CP) mitigation against AOEs without talking in consideration battle spirit, armor resistances, and any other minor/ major/ class mitigation. Let's all be tanky!!!

moo_2021 wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

BTW it is perfectly fine if someone makes a build that maximizes all the CAPs that would be expected. BUT if the CAPs are set correctly NO ONE would be OP. In the current scenario, people are maximizing weapon damage or crit or mitigation to be so off the charts that it is OP.

But what's wrong with OP? Unless it makes everyone going for a specific class and build I don't see any problem.

I don't need CAPs to protect me. I need to make OP build just like others.

I am thinking about this from the perspective of ZOS not what would make my own personal gameplay better. CAPs would allow ZOS to have more control of the outlier cases, and reduce the need to play whacko-mole, by continuously making changes that create more outliers in a never ending cycle.

Also as I said there are 2 types of players 1. that primarily plays 1 class and begs for all changes that only improve that class 2. people who play only the meta because they always want to have as much of an advantage as they can get at all times. So the second group is precisely what you might think as a problem.

divnyi wrote: »

I'm completely against caps. Anything that will *normalize* gameplay instead of allowing edge-case builds is a fun-breaker and should not exist.

Besides, the only correct Battle Spirit change is:

1. Reduce all cross healing by 50%.

The king of broken builds would not like to see CAPs, now that is a surprise.
But seriously I do like the ingenuity of your builds and you are probably the only one who explains in depth what stuff is for, however is it the intention of ZOS to allow the extreme stacking. Is it really better for the game? How many unkillable tanks and healers do we need? I think most people would say the opposite of your assertion, that extreme EDGE-CASE builds are fun-breakers and should not exist.

Merforum wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Caps would just lead to every DD building to the cap while maintaining effective damage.

How about add benefits and penalties to armor pieces to battle spirit? Spitballing here.

Each piece of heavy reduces damage done by 2% but increases blocking mitigation by 1%.

Each piece of medium increases crit % by 2% but causes 1% extra spell damage taken.

Each piece of light increases crit damage and healing by 2% but causes 1% extra physical damage taken.

Yes of course, that is the point, everyone would be able to maximize up to the CAP but no more. As an example, let's say weapon damage was maxxed at 6K, that is still a ton of damage but the 1% who can push it to 8+K (which might be OP according to ZOSes requirements, I don't know what their spreadsheet would say), would just be able to tweak their build in other ways.

They can tweak other things with battle spirit but I don't really like the armor tweaks. It doesn't make sense to me that armor should have a big effect on damage, but should have a big effect on mitigation. Weapons should have additional buff/penalties related to damage.

But there is a secondary, and if it reduces lag maybe huge side effect of caps, that it seems to me that it would reduce server calculations more than ever fluctuating stat/damage/etc numbers. There's already a soft cap on resistance so it's not like this is a novel idea. The bottom line is that ZOS surely has some calculations that tell them how strong to allow builds and stuff to be, and what would be considered outside that (I don't know what that is, maybe they wouldn't care if someone had 15K weapon damage) but the best/easiest way I can think of to control that is caps.

BTW not to get off topic but what I mean is if someone is wearing light armor they should receive a 4% weapon penalty for using a 2hnd, and medium should get 2% penalty, and heavy get no penalty for using 2hnd, but med using dual weild should get 2% dmg bonus for using it, Light should get 2% dmg bonus for using staff. Heavy using non ice staff should get 4% dmg penalty. Benefit/penalty based off weapon and armor makes more sense. BTW it could be based on wear 4+ pieces, to activate the bonus/penalty. But just because this makes more sense if it would add more calculations or whatever causes lag, I would be against it.

divnyi wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

I'm completely against caps. Anything that will *normalize* gameplay instead of allowing edge-case builds is a fun-breaker and should not exist.

Besides, the only correct Battle Spirit change is:

1. Reduce all cross healing by 50%.

The king of broken builds would not like to see CAPs, now that is a surprise.
But seriously I do like the ingenuity of your builds and you are probably the only one who explains in depth what stuff is for, however is it the intention of ZOS to allow the extreme stacking. Is it really better for the game? How many unkillable tanks and healers do we need? I think most people would say the opposite of your assertion, that extreme EDGE-CASE builds are fun-breakers and should not exist.

I'd rather they give counterplays, than straight up making it impossible.

I don't think edge case characters are that bad for the game. Best 1vs1 characters are averaging everything and min-maxing returns from each build piece. You can't do certain things at all on edge-case characters. You can't survive the damage at glass canons. You can't kill on permablocks. Averaged builds can do this all.

That is the point, if the devs have a RANGE of counterplay that is 'balanced' but someone comes up with a build that breaks that range. For instance, your unkillable tank (which is pretty fun I agree) which can block more damage than is possible to deliver. That is NOT really an edge case that is beyond the edge into broken. BTW you aren't really telling the truth because the unkillable tank build CAN STILL KILL. And the 1 shot build, CAN STILL SURVIVE, with things like streak and shade. Or unkillable 3 shield healer that can never die and heal all the team easily. Hence they CAN 'DO IT ALL' at a level of an average build PLUS do one thing WAY BETTER.

These are NOT GOOD for any game. I have tried 1 shot ganking and it gets boring really fast (I have to question the mental stability of anyone who finds that fun). A better balance would be to be able to do 80% of blocking, shielding or healing per second so eventually you will die, rather than blocking or healing 120%. And cap any 1 shot to 80% of victim's health, so you actually have to do 2 hits. There would still be a wide range of builds available just no broken ones. BTW I know you know that you are going beyond the bounds that is intended because you explain what you are doing in your build writeups.