Sylosi wrote: »

But then nothing is balanced in PvP, because it is not possible to have an even vaguely decent degree of balance in a game like this.

Furthermore as a generalisation the sort of player into the PvP in this game has no real interest in balanced, competitive, skilled PvP, you wouldn't play this game if those things mattered to you, because the PvP has never provided those things in any meaningful way. Players actively want lack of balance (and lack of competitive PvP), as long as it is the sort of lack of balance that favours whatever way they want to play is, there is a word for that.

Zenimax realise that so they do exactly what they should do with the balance, which is changing things up on a reasonably regular basis, which also conveniently fits in with their business model.

This is just not true at all

If sets like DC or BP are "okay" or ball group playstyle is also "okay"... then Oakensoul is also kinda um.... "okay"

Sylosi wrote: »

FrankonPC wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

But then nothing is balanced in PvP, because it is not possible to have an even vaguely decent degree of balance in a game like this.

Furthermore as a generalisation the sort of player into the PvP in this game has no real interest in balanced, competitive, skilled PvP, you wouldn't play this game if those things mattered to you, because the PvP has never provided those things in any meaningful way. Players actively want lack of balance (and lack of competitive PvP), as long as it is the sort of lack of balance that favours whatever way they want to play is, there is a word for that.

Zenimax realise that so they do exactly what they should do with the balance, which is changing things up on a reasonably regular basis, which also conveniently fits in with their business model.

This is just not true at all

Sure it is and the truth hurts.

It's also why PvP in games like this is so unsuccessful, it's literally PvP for "PvP" players who don't care that most of the time the PvP is uncompetitve, low skilled, an utterly imbalanced cheesefest, etc, essentially trash tier PvP.

factually inaccurate statements are not hurtful. there will never be true balance in this game but for years now there's been an overarching theme where, if every class on every build in the game in pvp is better running one set to a point a few sets are ran, then it's just not an enjoyable patch that inevitably gets adjusted.

it happened with sloads/duroks, it happened with malacath+ procs, it happened with black rose/viper and now it's happening with oakensoul. it's the same reason no cp cyrodiil, which was once thriving, is now dead. people want sets and set options. they want variety. they want sets close enough in power to where they can play other things.

This has been the pvp history of this game, not what you're attempting to claim here.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Oakensoul has amplified some problems that already existed. Instakill ganking, unkillable trolls, certain ults. Nerfing Oakensoul won't fix these problems. They need to be addressed separately regardless of what they do with Oakensoul, which itself has been a boon for casual players and shifted the PvP meta more towards damage and aggression.

Well you have to do both. Address the problematic skills as well as the set that amplifies them

FrankonPC wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

FrankonPC wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

But then nothing is balanced in PvP, because it is not possible to have an even vaguely decent degree of balance in a game like this.

Furthermore as a generalisation the sort of player into the PvP in this game has no real interest in balanced, competitive, skilled PvP, you wouldn't play this game if those things mattered to you, because the PvP has never provided those things in any meaningful way. Players actively want lack of balance (and lack of competitive PvP), as long as it is the sort of lack of balance that favours whatever way they want to play is, there is a word for that.

Zenimax realise that so they do exactly what they should do with the balance, which is changing things up on a reasonably regular basis, which also conveniently fits in with their business model.

This is just not true at all

Sure it is and the truth hurts.

It's also why PvP in games like this is so unsuccessful, it's literally PvP for "PvP" players who don't care that most of the time the PvP is uncompetitve, low skilled, an utterly imbalanced cheesefest, etc, essentially trash tier PvP.

factually inaccurate statements are not hurtful. there will never be true balance in this game but for years now there's been an overarching theme where, if every class on every build in the game in pvp is better running one set to a point a few sets are ran, then it's just not an enjoyable patch that inevitably gets adjusted.

it happened with sloads/duroks, it happened with malacath+ procs, it happened with black rose/viper and now it's happening with oakensoul. it's the same reason no cp cyrodiil, which was once thriving, is now dead. people want sets and set options. they want variety. they want sets close enough in power to where they can play other things.

This has been the pvp history of this game, not what you're attempting to claim here.

The balance in this game has always been terrible (which is why for example early in this game you had a zillion Vamp MagDKs in Cyrodil, because it was one of the most busted OP things ever seen in this game) and in regards to the health of PvP, it has been in decline virtually the entire game. That is the history of PvP in this game, wearing rose tinted spectacles doesn't change that.

As for your 'variety', that is one of the reasons balance in this game has always been so bad, it is not possible to have decent balance in a game like this when you have to balance for:

1 - A variety of game modes - PvE trials / dungeons, Cyrodil (then within that you have zergs, guild groups, smallscale, solo, etc), CP, no-CP, proc, no-proc, 4v4v4 BG (then within that deathmatch, chaosball, crazy king, capture the flag & domination). This alone makes decent balance an impossibility, you can't balance for all the differing and often conflicting balance requirements of these very different game modes and situations.

2 - A variety of players. You can't balance PvP when you have new players directly facing players with thousands of hours of experience, tryhards vs casuals, different numbers of players on a team, etc, its not possible. (It also makes for boring as hell PvP if you actually value PvP gameplay, rather than roleplaying). Which is why sports, actual competitive PvP games, etc have leagues, proper matchmaking, etc.

It is also a big reason why PvP in games like this is not successful, because the population dies off from both ends, new players leave because they have such a big disadvantage and at the other end anyone decent who isn't braindead gets bored because farming new players or less tryhard players soon loses its novelty value.

3 - A huge variety of build options, being able to pick and choose every skill individually from a large number of skills, combined with a zillion sets, glyph's, poisons / potions, CP, racial passives, wear any type of armour, use any type of weapon, etc is the exact opposite to what is required for decent balance. That you don't understand that, speaks volumes.

@Sylosi

Your idealization of "Balance" not* being sufficiently satisfied does not preclude the game being competitive in any manner whatsoever, and in a way the complexity of this game increases its "Skillfulness": figuring out how to best exploit the vast array of build elements requires "Discernment" - which is the etymological meaning of "Skill", as the word still means in the Northern Germanics.

It's part of the game. You like it or you don't.

Items which are so strong that they diminish the Discernment required to maximize a toon's potential in PvP are undesirable, as Frank said.

* edit: missed a word which helped that make sense, my point there was that being compelled to find the strongest flavor of cheese isn't non-competitive.

Sylosi wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

@Sylosi

Your idealization of "Balance" being sufficiently satisfied does not preclude the game being competitive in any manner whatsoever, and in a way the complexity of this game increases its "Skillfulness": figuring out how to best exploit the vast array of build elements requires "Discernment" - which is the etymological meaning of "Skill", as the word still means in the Northern Germanics.

It's part of the game. You like it or you don't.

Items which are so strong that they diminish the Discernment required to maximize a toon's potential in PvP are undesirable, as Frank said.

Is this some sort of roleplay?

Yes, I'm a Wood Orc scholar remarking from my vacation rental in Southern Elsweyr

I don’t know about this ring but I still get ping-ponged around by Dark Convergence piled on top of Necro Colossus or VD constantly in Cyro lately.

Oaken Soult provides way

Dem_kitkats1 wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

I find it refreshing to finally have some gear that threatens these players who have been using gear to dominate for years. I say let it ride for a while. If everyone starts using it across all of those group combinations en masse then it needs to be looked at, but if most people are still preferring 2 bar builds then this is just a niche set up that has its own big down side.

You have to build for burst damage, pressure damage, stuns, soft cc, speed, offensive utli, defensive ulti, snare removal, hots, burst heals, etc. It is a lot easier to build for all of that with a 2 bar build. 1 bar builds have to make significant sacrifices with 5 abilities and 1 ultimate. There is no way they can cover all of those bases, and they need to figure out which sacrifices they want to make.

Just by looking around and seeing the lack of bar swapping and RR spamming, I would say that majority of players are enjoying Oakensoul or are at least trying it out. The reason is because the main purpose of a back bar is to heal, rebuff, or just play more defensively. You're not sacrificing anything when Oakensoul permanently gives you buffs (some of the hardest to obtain in the game btw) in which you don't need to swap to re-apply or even slot skills whose main purpose was to give you those buffs in the first place. You don't need to swap to defense when you can burst someone down more quickly and efficiently than ever before; as well as have free access to major protection and resolve at all times on top of that. Why have 2 types of ultis when you can gain almost %100 uptime on one powerful ulti and use it as part of your combo? Besides that, you could barely get a 2 bar to fulfill all of those needs in the first place anyway. It's simply more efficient and powerful to drop the second bar for the ring.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Oakensoul has amplified some problems that already existed. Instakill ganking, unkillable trolls, certain ults. Nerfing Oakensoul won't fix these problems. They need to be addressed separately regardless of what they do with Oakensoul, which itself has been a boon for casual players and shifted the PvP meta more towards damage and aggression.

Yes 2 hit ganking, and 1 shot heavy attacking builds have always existed, but they required very niche builds and sacrifices. It doesn't justify the fact that Oakensoul is making these types of playstyles easier and more accessible to players. Oakensoul isn't balancing the game, it's exacerbating imbalances.

There's more damage? Yes, but how are people dying? 1-2 shots+proc+ulti combos in the back. Players melted down before they can even counter. Sorry, but that type of PvP is just as awful as a tank/healing metas because it's just the inverse of extremes. Damage is a good thing, but it needs to balanced and counterable just like everything else. Otherwise the cycles of extremes will continue, and mythics will continue to compensate for bad balancing.

Apparently we all need Sea-Serpent's Coil to counter the Okensoul to reduce the damage on the first hit. This would than give the player two of the buffs that Oakensoul has. Even with these extra buffs I would have to give up a lot more to maintain the same type of buffs that oakensoul provides.

For instance a templar can have the following buffs: minor endurance, minor intellect, minor fortitude, major protection and major prophecy up constantly on both bars but it will cost the player 3 slots on both bars meaning the player would than be left with 4 total slots. To get major resolve and sorcery the templar would than have 2 slots left and one of those would a healing slot the other would be a damage slot making the templar only have 1 primary damaging ability, maybe 2 if they use biting jabs instead of puncture sweep. Using the ring it frees up quite a bit and makes it easier to craft a build. Of course some of those buffs could be had with armor sets but that would make the player lose out on proc sets or possible debuffing sets etc...

The Oakensoult ring should have the following buffs..

Major Resolve, Major Sorcery / Brutality, Major Prophecy / Savagery, and Major Protection.

These buffs really provide more than enough for a player to use the ring in PVP if someone doesn't want to use 2 bars.

I would than add Major Slayer and Major Aegis in place of the other buffs so the ring is more PVE focused.

Even without the major courage, major heroism, major berserk, minor intellect, minor endurance and minor fortitude the ring still provides some benefits for some players in PVP but not over the top like it does today.

Sylosi wrote: »

Apparently we all need Sea-Serpent's Coil to counter the Okensoul to reduce the damage on the first hit.

Remove the 40% slow drawback on Coil and it would become legitimate competition for Oakensoul. Two bar builds would return to the meta, and we'd even have a band-aid on some of the gank shenanigans. All without nerfing Oakensoul.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Is it still balance behind a paywall?

That's the beauty of it, they would still get to sell their DLC!

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

Apparently we all need Sea-Serpent's Coil to counter the Okensoul to reduce the damage on the first hit.

Remove the 40% slow drawback on Coil and it would become legitimate competition for Oakensoul. Two bar builds would return to the meta, and we'd even have a band-aid on some of the gank shenanigans. All without nerfing Oakensoul.

I'd rather have them increased duration on 40% damage reduction one way or another. The way it's written now, it saves only from first hit. What if that's DW heavy -> Incap (+caluurions) -> spin2win? None of the followup hits affected, only half of heavy, because those are two hits.

So, like, apply that in 1-2s buff at least?

Possibly also remove the cooldown to make it fun.

ShadowProc wrote: »

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

Oaken Soult provides way

Dem_kitkats1 wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

I find it refreshing to finally have some gear that threatens these players who have been using gear to dominate for years. I say let it ride for a while. If everyone starts using it across all of those group combinations en masse then it needs to be looked at, but if most people are still preferring 2 bar builds then this is just a niche set up that has its own big down side.

You have to build for burst damage, pressure damage, stuns, soft cc, speed, offensive utli, defensive ulti, snare removal, hots, burst heals, etc. It is a lot easier to build for all of that with a 2 bar build. 1 bar builds have to make significant sacrifices with 5 abilities and 1 ultimate. There is no way they can cover all of those bases, and they need to figure out which sacrifices they want to make.

Just by looking around and seeing the lack of bar swapping and RR spamming, I would say that majority of players are enjoying Oakensoul or are at least trying it out. The reason is because the main purpose of a back bar is to heal, rebuff, or just play more defensively. You're not sacrificing anything when Oakensoul permanently gives you buffs (some of the hardest to obtain in the game btw) in which you don't need to swap to re-apply or even slot skills whose main purpose was to give you those buffs in the first place. You don't need to swap to defense when you can burst someone down more quickly and efficiently than ever before; as well as have free access to major protection and resolve at all times on top of that. Why have 2 types of ultis when you can gain almost %100 uptime on one powerful ulti and use it as part of your combo? Besides that, you could barely get a 2 bar to fulfill all of those needs in the first place anyway. It's simply more efficient and powerful to drop the second bar for the ring.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Oakensoul has amplified some problems that already existed. Instakill ganking, unkillable trolls, certain ults. Nerfing Oakensoul won't fix these problems. They need to be addressed separately regardless of what they do with Oakensoul, which itself has been a boon for casual players and shifted the PvP meta more towards damage and aggression.

Yes 2 hit ganking, and 1 shot heavy attacking builds have always existed, but they required very niche builds and sacrifices. It doesn't justify the fact that Oakensoul is making these types of playstyles easier and more accessible to players. Oakensoul isn't balancing the game, it's exacerbating imbalances.

There's more damage? Yes, but how are people dying? 1-2 shots+proc+ulti combos in the back. Players melted down before they can even counter. Sorry, but that type of PvP is just as awful as a tank/healing metas because it's just the inverse of extremes. Damage is a good thing, but it needs to balanced and counterable just like everything else. Otherwise the cycles of extremes will continue, and mythics will continue to compensate for bad balancing.

Apparently we all need Sea-Serpent's Coil to counter the Okensoul to reduce the damage on the first hit. This would than give the player two of the buffs that Oakensoul has. Even with these extra buffs I would have to give up a lot more to maintain the same type of buffs that oakensoul provides.

For instance a templar can have the following buffs: minor endurance, minor intellect, minor fortitude, major protection and major prophecy up constantly on both bars but it will cost the player 3 slots on both bars meaning the player would than be left with 4 total slots. To get major resolve and sorcery the templar would than have 2 slots left and one of those would a healing slot the other would be a damage slot making the templar only have 1 primary damaging ability, maybe 2 if they use biting jabs instead of puncture sweep. Using the ring it frees up quite a bit and makes it easier to craft a build. Of course some of those buffs could be had with armor sets but that would make the player lose out on proc sets or possible debuffing sets etc...

The Oakensoult ring should have the following buffs..

Major Resolve, Major Sorcery / Brutality, Major Prophecy / Savagery, and Major Protection.

These buffs really provide more than enough for a player to use the ring in PVP if someone doesn't want to use 2 bars.

I would than add Major Slayer and Major Aegis in place of the other buffs so the ring is more PVE focused.

Even without the major courage, major heroism, major berserk, minor intellect, minor endurance and minor fortitude the ring still provides some benefits for some players in PVP but not over the top like it does today.

Okay so your saying there is a counter that exists but because players don’t want to use it there’s a problem. Ya okay bud.

If you don’t want to use something or use a counter that’s on you. Stop crying to nerf everything everyone.

I can't get the same buffs in PVE or PVP that ring provides in a group with 100% up time. How is the ring balanced when the buffs it provides exceeds what one can get from two gears sets, a monster set, a mythical item and group buffs. Explain how the ring is balanced with it providing 100% up time on buffs you can't get elsewhere?

The second I saw the change from stats to buff I said it would be broken and it is. Stop defending broken sets, you probably defended Dark Convergence when it was broken and not working as intended.

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

FrankonPC wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

But then nothing is balanced in PvP, because it is not possible to have an even vaguely decent degree of balance in a game like this.

Furthermore as a generalisation the sort of player into the PvP in this game has no real interest in balanced, competitive, skilled PvP, you wouldn't play this game if those things mattered to you, because the PvP has never provided those things in any meaningful way. Players actively want lack of balance (and lack of competitive PvP), as long as it is the sort of lack of balance that favours whatever way they want to play is, there is a word for that.

Zenimax realise that so they do exactly what they should do with the balance, which is changing things up on a reasonably regular basis, which also conveniently fits in with their business model.

This is just not true at all

Sure it is and the truth hurts.

It's also why PvP in games like this is so unsuccessful, it's literally PvP for "PvP" players who don't care that most of the time the PvP is uncompetitve, low skilled, an utterly imbalanced cheesefest, etc, essentially trash tier PvP.

if it's so uncompletive and low skilled then why aren't you at the top ?

You really didn't think that through did you.

Putting aside whatever "at the top" is supposed to mean in a game like ESO (please tell me you mean the Cyrodil leaderboard that would be too cute), why would I have any desire to play enough or even care about being "at the top" of PvP I described as trash.

When I want to play PvP I go play a proper PvP game where I get some semblance of balanced, skilled, competitive and fun game play, you know the opposite to the "PvP" in this game, I leave that to the roleplayers of Cyrodil.