I think they only copied characters from the EU servers for this week so if they were on the NA server that would explain it.

The week 4 buff to piercing cold passive is straight up just a spit to our face, are we making feedback for nothing or what? Have the devs ever heard of shock dmg?

Thank you for the good feedback to players responses in the recent updates. Overall, the updates made this Monday go in the very right direction. Thats really good work.

Many things have been adressed, for example the too strong combination of necro with arcanist. There are still many things to finetune, but that is always the case. I am really happy about this that the team is really working hard and making sensible changes.

There are so many positive players out there and there will be for sure solutions also for players who are not 100% happy with all changes. Many of those are also giving very constructive feedback, only a few here should pay a little bit more attention to their wording.

Cynical_Alchemist wrote: »

PTS 11.0.3 states that beams are now considered direct damage rather than DoTs. Are they still considered channels?

This affects the Deadly Strike set, and one of the more common builds for Arcanists.

Deadly still works

I like the class and ability changes in the latest patch, but to be honest, I was hoping for a bit more. There's still a significant gap between the DPS potential of pure classes and optimized subclass setups, and some skill lines with otherwise fun abilities - like Dark Magic's Crystal Fragments - still aren’t really viable in high-end PvE due to being outperformed by stronger alternatives.

That’s why I’d personally really like to see a few more changes this cycle. Maybe underperforming passives such as Exploitation and Illuminate (which are currently weaker than their counterparts offering unique Minor buffs) could be buffed, for example? I think that would be a small but welcome step toward making more skill lines viable, both for subclassing and for pure class builds.

Dark Magic Improvements

Dark Magic is an important output skill line for Sorc, because the iconic Crystal and Exploitation are located in this line. The former is Sorc's strongest single-target skill, and the latter is Sorc's unique group buff.
However, from a PVE perspective, the rest of Dark Magic is either mediocre or terrible. Even though Vibrant Shroud and Daedric Refuge have been reworked, better alternatives can be found through subclassing, and it lacks sufficient appeal. And the situation of their other morph is even worse. Shattering Spines lacks damage ability, and Daedric Tomb has never been reworked. Even Exploitation pales in comparison to Hemorrhage.

Considering that the U46 is less than a month away from launch, it may not be possible to make major changes. However, there is still an opportunity to slightly buff Dark Magic in the final month to make it more valuable in subclassing, and also to help non-pet Sorc get into PVE end-game without relying on Daedric Summoning.

My suggestion is to add some extra buffs to the less powerful skills in the Dark Magic line, but with just a little buff, they can be made attractive enough, such as Shattering Spines, Suppression Field, Unholy Knowledge, etc.

1. Added 10 seconds of continuous damage to Shattering Spines, making it available as a continuous damage in the Sorc back column along with Lightning Flood.
2. Increase the damage of Suppression Field and have it give Major Brittle to the target it damages, so that it can compete with Storm Atronach and this will not benefit the pet build.
3. Add a damage-type ability to Unholy Knowledge or Blood Magic, such as increasing your non-pet direct damage by 1%/3% (or when you use an ability with channeling and casting, increase your damage by 2/5% for 10 seconds, but not for proc crystals, similar to the Soulshine set). If this ability is added, perhaps Fatecarver's damage can also be nerfed at the same time, canceling its 8% gain, because Fatecarver is now channeling + direct damage, which can well alleviate everyone's anxiety about Fatecarver being too powerful. For those who want to have powerful lasers, the direct damage (or channeling and casting time) buff provided by Dark Magic will be a unique and attractive choice.
4. Provide Exploitation with similar abilities to Hemorrhage, for example: when you have Dark Magic skills, your Critical Damage (or Penetration) will be increased. Since both Critical Damage and Penetration have upper limits in PVE, giving either of these two buffs will not make existing pet sorcs stronger, but will moderately enhance non-pet sorcs and increase the attractiveness of Dark Magic.

This is probably not new, but: the guaranteed critical hit from Shadowy Disguise does not seem to work with any channeled direct damage attacks. Tested with Rapid Strikes, Jabs and Arc Beam and Templar Beam. I'm not sure what the interaction should be to be honest. But it should either have some interaction (e.g. buffing the first tick) or clarify in the tooltip that it does not work with channeled attacks (similar to how Varen's Legacy states that - I think this would be preferrable).
Warrior's Opportunity (increasing the damage of the next direct damage attack) does seem to interact with those skills and increases the damage of one tick.

chongguang wrote: »

So , my simple question is that will there be more adjustments in next 3 weeks or the adjustments for combat is over in 11.0.3?

I believe this is a question that everyone is concerned about.
@ZOS_Kevin Will there be more adjustments for combat before June 2?


In addition, regarding combat balance of Sorc, the changes to Daedric Prey in U46 are not only unhelpful to PVE Sorc (pet & non-pet), but also unfavorable for those who are interested in pets to subclass, because Daedric Prey loses the buff for other pets.
Furthermore, the changes to Daedric Prey are the exact opposite of the v11.0.0 developer notes, which state that "Many abilities were originally designed to be "outliers", to enable a class to stand toe to toe with others in certain aspects." & "This patch focuses on trying to bring into line many of those abilities, while also reinforcing the core themes of a skill line."
Obviously, the changes to Daedric Prey do not help "reinforcing the core themes of a skill line" since it loses the buffs to other pets, and the 50% buff to sorc pets makes them even more of an "outlier".
This of course includes preventing the pan-pet combination from being too powerful, and also preventing pure Sorc from being too powerful. But this is not only contrary to the expectations of U46 developers, but also not conducive to Subclassing, because Daedric Summoning loses its iconic benefits to various pets, and because Sorc pets need to occupy 2 bars, it also makes Daedric Summoning unattractive and not conducive to Subclassing.

The recent change to Lightning Splash and BA damage recovery are all good, but it still does not solve the core problem of Sorc, which is the pet & non-pet divide in PVE. Strengthening one may cause the other to become too powerful. But now that we have Subclassing, maybe we can try another approach, which is to nerf Daedric Prey and allow it to enhance all types of pets, and the dps lost by pure Sorc can be distributed to Dark Magic and Storm Calling.
For example, nerf Daedric Prey to 30% and allow it to benefit all pets. Also increase Suppression Field's damage by 20% (or more, to make it competitive with Atronach), add 10s or 20s dots to Shattering Spines or Daedric Tomb or Endless Fury so they can weave better and do enough damage, add damage bonus to channeled and caster skills to Unholy Knowledge, allow Boundless Storm to have a higher chance to cause Concussed, etc.
In this way, those who like pets can build their pet park through Subclassing and Daedric Prey, while those who like non-pets can make better use of Dark Magic and Storm Calling.

I know you need more context for this, I just want to give one example of how the gap is going to become larger with next update. Here I join a vKa group, most dd are arca beamers, 2 heavy attack pet sorcs and few others. I play a no-pet sorc build that sits around 80K here.

I get Triple CPM compared to those holding beams and heavy attacks.


But still have lowest dps, with the heavy attack pet sorcs doing slightly better.


Sometimes you wonder why even bother trying so hard when you can just hold heavy or beam and get top dps including cleave damage. And these are the ones they are buffing even further. The "lazy" playstyles getting stronger is another topic perhaps.

With Subclassing however, the choice of pure class, no-pet sorc, and slightly off-meta will be so unrewarding, so much that those in similar position won't continue play a game that is unrewarding to this extend. Not to mention the loss of identity for our characters and build playstyles choices and forced transition for those who want to keep up. I really don't see the point anymore if the gap is going to be even larger.

Yudo wrote: »

I know you need more context for this, I just want to give one example of how the gap is going to become larger with next update. Here I join a vKa group, most dd are arca beamers, 2 heavy attack pet sorcs and few others. I play a no-pet sorc build that sits around 80K here.

I get Triple CPM compared to those holding beams and heavy attacks.


But still have lowest dps, with the heavy attack pet sorcs doing slightly better.


Sometimes you wonder why even bother trying so hard when you can just hold heavy or beam and get top dps including cleave damage. And these are the ones they are buffing even further. The "lazy" playstyles getting stronger is another topic perhaps.

With Subclassing however, the choice of pure class, no-pet sorc, and slightly off-meta will be so unrewarding, so much that those in similar position won't continue play a game that is unrewarding to this extend. Not to mention the loss of identity for our characters and build playstyles choices and forced transition for those who want to keep up. I really don't see the point anymore if the gap is going to be even larger.

Yeah , we still saw arcanist dominate this area and seems it will continue in next patch if there are no more changes of combat. Btw may I know what is the pink red line ,is this a Nightblade? If so then ,why this line has a different colour for a short length on the right end ? I mean i saw another 2 sorcerer also have different blue color at the right end of the line . What does it mean? Sorry , I am not familiar with report logs.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Subclassing makes balancing harder not easier. This is way more work for the devs. And more player frustration.

Rather than having a group of 15 active skills, 15 passives, and 3 ultimates to balance a class out between each other for a class as a whole, you now have to make do with less. You have to make 5 actives, 5 passives, and an ultimate balance with 20 others to make them balanced.

Honestly, a better choice at this point would have been to either increase morph options, or better yet to have introduced class specializations, where a character can choose one of the three skill lines to focus on and get new skill lines. Night blade would be assassin, shadow, soul and you get to have 3 new skill lines for each one. That would have had balancing challenges but gives you a ton of room to play in.

100% agree. A true subclass would be for a fully ranked templar to be able to further specialize into added Templar subtypes like a Paladin for damage or tanking or a Priest for healing not giving you access to non-Templar skill lines that run contrary to the class' theme like necromancer or arcanist.

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

Cominfordatoothbrush wrote: »

Regarding the patch notes, my disappointment in seeing the communitys feedback seemingly not considered at all is immeasurable. Some of us LIKE the old classes, it's ridiculous for this patch to go forward with multiclasses being so much more powerful

If subclassing wasn’t noticeably stronger than just the basic classes as they stand now there would be no point in adding it to the game.

It would have been the same crap we got with Scribing and Class based sets. Nerfed and watered down until there was no advantage over just using the existing meta.

That is called balance and giving players a choice on whether to engage with the new system. Any competent company would have pursued that course of action rather than taking choice away from long time players and forcing them to play in an entirely new way. At this point ZoS should just pull a final fantasy 14 and take the game down and redesign it from the ground up since it's such a drastic departure from what ESO is with multiclassing.

Just have to say what's with all these conspiracy theories that the creative team behind ESO are actually a cabal of evil capitalists that only care about money?

"If subclassing wasn’t noticeably stronger than just the basic classes as they stand now there would be no point in adding it to the game."

Or could it simply be that people like variety and the ability to make creative builds that are equally viable?

2018, I made an "Acrobat" bow sorcerer build using jump attacks + magnum shot (that knocked the enemy back 8 meters and pushed you back 8 meters), but the unique magnum shot ability was nerfed in 2019 for server performance I think. Either way the build was horribly weak in PvP. Now we have the scribing Vault bow skill that lets you do a full backflip in the air, and I absolutely love it and can use it viably in PvP.

2019, I made a full Ice Warden build, using Iceheart, Wall of Elements Frost Staff without leveling the Destro staff passive since it forced you to have a taunt on heavy attacks with frost staff. It was also horrible in PvP since Warden didn't originally have much damage or passives for the ice abilities, and Wall of Elements was the only Frost spammable you could use. Now we can make like what 5 or 6 frost spells in scribing, mutliple frost damage sets, buffs to frost warden, and now subclassing to allow us to accumulate multiple class frost spells?? It's literally enabling everything I've wanted from over the years!


So it seems very clear to me, as a veteran player, that they've always been working towards enabling more creativity and fun in the game, unlike in the past, and that there is a want/demand from the playerbase overall for this, as my own experiences shows.

Can we get either radiant oppression or radiant glory to return to DoT damage? The synergy between that skill and Grave Lord DoT dmg and exe scaling was one of my favorite combos. I was really looking forward to using it

Maggusemm wrote: »

Crystal fragments vs. Shield beam. Crystal fragments is not AOE and has lower damage. Both are class skills. All such skills should be checked and brought in line, e.g. to buff single target skills.

I really like the way cyrstal fragments works mechanically. Its unique and fun to use.

I absolutely DO NOT want them to change how it functions in terms of controls and gameplay.

A stat/dmg buff for it like you suggested would be great though.

Tariq9898 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

randconfig wrote: »

So it seems very clear to me, as a veteran player, that they've always been working towards enabling more creativity and fun in the game, unlike in the past, and that there is a want/demand from the playerbase overall for this, as my own experiences shows.

One of the big problems people are having though is that this addition of more freedom is coming at the expense of others.

Example: My main is a tank. His whole theme is dragons, fire, rock, etc. I built him around those ideas because that was what I liked. He's also lawful good in my mind, and I made sure to do the TG and DB quests on my alts because my lawful good paladin-of-fire-and-rock is not the right person to do evil things.

With Subclassing... well, that doesn't change him much. I want him fire-based. Why would I give up one of my fire lines to take on something else? Good, so I don't need to take it.
...except, there are other players who are now saying "hey, I can combine my Necro with the Earthen Heart line and basically print ultimate, and then the DK Battle Roar passive lets me just have infinite sustain!"

So what happens? Nerfs. And instead of nerfing "Players who take skill line X and skill line Y," we just get the individual lines nerfed. So because other people are building their characters in a certain way, I get my sustain nerfed by over 50%. That... kinda sucks. Sure, I could get that back, by... oh - I'd need to give up my fire-themed skills and likely make my lawful good character part Necromancer. So my choices are to have my character now be a shell of himself, or to throw out the entire story I've built for him over the years.

That's why some people are feeling that, while Subclassing is giving the freedom to build your character however you want, you're basically being coerced into building your character a certain way. If everything is getting nerfs because of the chance of interactions between Skill Lines X and Y, that means that characters who only have one or the other but not both are only getting nerfs where they didn't need them.

Subclassing itself is not bad, and I'd actually like to see more freedom with Subclassing - go ahead and make it so you can trade all three lines! Go ahead and make it so it doesn't level slower and require more skill points! Go ahead and take more than one line from a Class! But there needs to be a mechanic to not make Subclassed builds be so obscenely more powerful than the pure classes that we've had for 11 years, and that (to many peoples' surprise) some players actually enjoy having a consistent theme.

EXACTLY! As a DK main as well, I love the fire theme and even made a build that satisfies both my vet DLC dungeon and roleplaying needs. Utilizing themed sets such as Runecarver.

Why should pure class players be punished for a system they didn’t even ask for?

For the same reason every player has been punished several times for changes they didn't ask for.