Ezhh wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

If you don't like a beam build then play what's fun for you.

If only it was that simple.

How should we handle it if we want to do the most recent trifectas (because we've done everything else) but the encounter design makes it so that nothing other than ranged cleave is considered viable (for mostly very good reasons) by the community of players in which this content can be realistically beaten?

I was able to do everything up to and including Swash on high CPM parse DDs. This was viable for the vast majority of the game's lifespan to date. I am all for accessibility (I'd like to see HA builds buffed a bit!), but it does feel a bit unfair when this comes at the price of what has been a playstyle many of us fell in love with over the years.

I feel like a stuck record by this point, but it wouldn't be so hard to add a ranged cleave scribed skill with comparable damage to beam that suits a higher CPM gameplay for example. Yes, there'd still be a meta, and it might still even be beam, but at least let there be an option that comes close.

I'm pretty certain I'm asking for too much at this stage, but I care about the game and would like to continue playing, preferably without most of my friends leaving for the same reasons, so I will keep asking.

I highly support asking for what you want in this game.

I'm just not really going to fault ZOS for deciding to make the game easier as a choice for players. That's not going to appeal to some players of course and I understand that but it's generally been the case that entertainment platforms take the safe bet of making easy content that's more approachable for general audiences.

Groups and other players play how they like but it doesn't mean you have to do the same and if you feel you have to then that's more about how you may or may not fit into the game.

@ZOS_Kevin always be dodging my requests for simply a reply pertaining to werewolf buffs. I wish a lot of changes were made

I cannot agree with OP's opinion.
Fatecarver is one of the best damage sources but it's also relying on sets.

Azureblight set is being nerfed in U46 to proc requirement. Changing Fatecarver from DoT to Direct Damage will kill Runecarver set (which means Scribes of Fate DLC is going to be pointless DLC for Damage Dealers because there's nothing to farm anymore) and Thaumaturge CP. Fatecarver will have a target cap to 6 targets which make AB set useless in trial content with many enemies (Rockgrove for example).

Overall, this is a big L for all people who did grinding Lair of Maarselok and Scrivener's Hall hours and wasted all time and gold materials for getting and upgrading items.

soon ZOS will release an update: we give the beam 7 color, now you have diversity!

twisttop138 wrote: »

Anyway, my fear is that the people that can do the HM stuff, the tri's and stuff will be gone. That the raid leads will become less and those of us wanting to advance will become stuck. That's probably just hyperbole but we'll see. I don't know what the right answer is but I think the fact of the matter is this is what we're getting until the inevitable crash if update 47 or 48 when they nerf everything.

Problem is that that doesn't exactly sound like hyperbole. Especially for anyone who lived through U35.

A lot of people like to point to U35 - which honestly wasn't that bad on release - but that was one of the major downturns of everything. It was a big nerf to a lot of people with the stated goals of "reining in power creep" and "raise the floor, lower the ceiling."

Problem was that it ended up being a blanket nerf, not something that raised the floor. Sure, the casuals won't notice much because overland and normal is overland and normal. And the people who could bounce back from it were the sweaty min-maxers. But for that group in the middle - the "I'm better than normal content and feel comfortable in standard vets" group - they just got hit hard and weren't able to bounce back from it.

One of the other issues with U35 was the attitude around it. We got a lot of "don't have knee-jerk reactions and complain about nerfs without trying it!" But... people did try it on PTS. Most of the people who post on the PTS feedback threads are incredible number-crunchers and they back up their claims with full CMX parses and logs. Those weren't knee-jerk reactions; they were saying exactly what would happen if it released as is... and they were right since they know the game and its playerbase.

We also had things like Project Vitality, which was designed to get people into group content. It was a bunch of experienced raid leads running with newer players and teaching them how to complete the vet trials. After U35, a lot of raid leads left in disgust, partly due to the nerfs and partly due to the communication and feelings from the dev team.

And now, we're seeing the same thing on PTS. A lot of people showing (not just whining and complaining, they're actually using data) what the problems are, and warning that we'll see another massive shift just like U35. This is offset by the number of people who are talking about U46 as if it's a godsend (which, fair, we didn't have with u35), but pretty well every person who's trying to deflect all U46 criticism also proudly talks about being a solo PvE player... which means they're probably not the best people to talk about PvP or endgame dungeons/trials.

The big thing with this patch is the fact that it's not a global DPS increase. It will reward the people who know what lines to slot and what to give up... so the sweaty min-maxers. Anyone who wants to build a Subclass based on aesthetics (including people who want to keep their three original Class lines) is not going to see any measurable effect on DPS, and likely will see a damage loss due to skill line nerfs or because they're dropping lines with passives they don't realize they use. This essentially means we're going to be increasing the gap between the sweats and the casuals. Anyone who's going into this patch thinking "I can't do HM content now, but when I get to Subclass then I'll be able to!" is deluding themselves. If you want to raise your DPS, you have to start thinking sweaty, and even then the requirements that raid leads put on is going to increase since the endgame DPS will increase significantly.

...and that means that U47 (which will only drop on PTS about a month after releases, so maybe not enough time to really see many shifts) or U48 (which gives plenty of time to see what's OP) will end up being another major nerf fest to try to "rein in the power creep" that is blatantly being made available in U46. That'll likely lead to another exodus of that mid-range playerbase just like we saw with U35.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Anyway, my fear is that the people that can do the HM stuff, the tri's and stuff will be gone. That the raid leads will become less and those of us wanting to advance will become stuck. That's probably just hyperbole but we'll see. I don't know what the right answer is but I think the fact of the matter is this is what we're getting until the inevitable crash if update 47 or 48 when they nerf everything.

Problem is that that doesn't exactly sound like hyperbole. Especially for anyone who lived through U35.

A lot of people like to point to U35 - which honestly wasn't that bad on release - but that was one of the major downturns of everything. It was a big nerf to a lot of people with the stated goals of "reining in power creep" and "raise the floor, lower the ceiling."

Problem was that it ended up being a blanket nerf, not something that raised the floor. Sure, the casuals won't notice much because overland and normal is overland and normal. And the people who could bounce back from it were the sweaty min-maxers. But for that group in the middle - the "I'm better than normal content and feel comfortable in standard vets" group - they just got hit hard and weren't able to bounce back from it.

One of the other issues with U35 was the attitude around it. We got a lot of "don't have knee-jerk reactions and complain about nerfs without trying it!" But... people did try it on PTS. Most of the people who post on the PTS feedback threads are incredible number-crunchers and they back up their claims with full CMX parses and logs. Those weren't knee-jerk reactions; they were saying exactly what would happen if it released as is... and they were right since they know the game and its playerbase.

We also had things like Project Vitality, which was designed to get people into group content. It was a bunch of experienced raid leads running with newer players and teaching them how to complete the vet trials. After U35, a lot of raid leads left in disgust, partly due to the nerfs and partly due to the communication and feelings from the dev team.

And now, we're seeing the same thing on PTS. A lot of people showing (not just whining and complaining, they're actually using data) what the problems are, and warning that we'll see another massive shift just like U35. This is offset by the number of people who are talking about U46 as if it's a godsend (which, fair, we didn't have with u35), but pretty well every person who's trying to deflect all U46 criticism also proudly talks about being a solo PvE player... which means they're probably not the best people to talk about PvP or endgame dungeons/trials.

The big thing with this patch is the fact that it's not a global DPS increase. It will reward the people who know what lines to slot and what to give up... so the sweaty min-maxers. Anyone who wants to build a Subclass based on aesthetics (including people who want to keep their three original Class lines) is not going to see any measurable effect on DPS, and likely will see a damage loss due to skill line nerfs or because they're dropping lines with passives they don't realize they use. This essentially means we're going to be increasing the gap between the sweats and the casuals. Anyone who's going into this patch thinking "I can't do HM content now, but when I get to Subclass then I'll be able to!" is deluding themselves. If you want to raise your DPS, you have to start thinking sweaty, and even then the requirements that raid leads put on is going to increase since the endgame DPS will increase significantly.

...and that means that U47 (which will only drop on PTS about a month after releases, so maybe not enough time to really see many shifts) or U48 (which gives plenty of time to see what's OP) will end up being another major nerf fest to try to "rein in the power creep" that is blatantly being made available in U46. That'll likely lead to another exodus of that mid-range playerbase just like we saw with U35.

I started writing probably 4 replies to this. Stuff about being on a break for u35 but being here for Morrowind. Great stuff about trying to make the best of bad situations or some such stuff I would tell my kids. The fact of the matter is though that your reply was so on point. Way to ruin the vibe lol. I was hoping I was being hyperbolic but you crushed that dream. All kidding aside though, you give more clear voice to my own concerns. I would love to not see an exodus. People in my vet trials guild discord just laugh at zos's stupidity in this situation. Though they are resilient. There's no talk of quitting. Just making the most of the power before it gets nerfed.

sans-culottes wrote: »

MorallyBipolar wrote: »

mrreow wrote: »

Ezhh wrote: »

snip

I do weave even in pvp on other classes out of habit I guess and lemme tell ya I cannot do this for more than an hour at a time. This non stop button mashing and between them mashing the mouse clicks is something that I hope one day is gone as it is simply clunky and not fun to do. It is a bug turned into a feature after all.
Arcanist is a literal godsend finally one can focus on mechanics, others and the game instead of fighting with mouse and keyboard. Bliss

There should be a skill gap between experienced and inexperienced players. Weaving is an integral part of the combat system and is a good thing.

Why is animation canceling a “good thing”?

Let’s be honest about what it actually is. By ZOS’s own admission, this was never an intended mechanic. It’s a quirk of the engine—a bug-turned-feature—that became enshrined over time because the combat system was built around it retroactively. That doesn’t make it elegant. It makes it a patchwork.

From a design perspective, animation canceling is an unwieldy, highly frenetic system that rewards muscle memory and rapid input cycling more than strategic decision-making. It creates a skill gap, yes, but it’s a gap based on mechanical throughput rather than tactical depth. That’s not inherently “good.” It’s simply punishing for players who don’t want their RPG experience to feel like a rhythm game under duress.

And from an in-world perspective? Imagine what this would look like. Spellcasters spasming between incantations, warriors flailing and stuttering through sword swings, all in a twitchy haze. It’s absurd even by fantasy standards. The idea that this is how combat “should” look or feel in a high-fantasy setting strains credibility.

The goal should be a combat system that rewards thoughtful play, not just mechanical input density. Arcanist hints at that possibility—not because it’s “easier,” but because it’s smoother, cleaner, and actually supports the idea of watching and reacting rather than jamming keys on cooldown.

I agree with this. This is how I’ve always felt, but you put it much more eloquently.

Why do i get the feeling that even if every class regardless of how "easy" or "hard" to play all had exact same damage and cleave potential, certain people would still find something to complain about.

Orbital78 wrote: »

cuddles_with_wroble wrote: »

you dont seem to understand why people dont like these things, being really easy is only half the issue the other half is that its also the best. why would i press 3x as many buttons and do a whole lot of extra work when the beam spam is equally as good if not better but with 10% of the effort or brainpower required

Because it is the playstyle you personally enjoy?

again if what your enjoy requires twice as much effort for the same reward, not that many people are gonna put in that amount of effort esp when doing harder content.

mdjessup4906 wrote: »

Why do i get the feeling that even if every class regardless of how "easy" or "hard" to play all had exact same damage and cleave potential, certain people would still find something to complain about.

they would yes but then they would complain about every class feeling exactly the same. imo it just feels bad that the cleave of the beam is so good that it outshines anything else i could possibly do in 99.9% of situations

this game is very good at giving you the illusion that you can play or use whatever you want and it wont matter, but as soon as you step into the harder content it immediately becomes clear that the amount of things that actually work and are useable and fun in this game are VERY limited

Elementalist and zoo lovers are having fun in a corner somewhere.

Organised groups will all have DD setup as Herald + Assassination + X
Low effort beam holding, for maximum damage and AOE on top of that.
I have been complaining about identity, but hope you can see the depth of skill-reward is also at stake.

Then there are those claiming you do not need beam. I have seen builds where beam was replaced with another Arca spammable on the exact same setup. How daring and creative.

LordDraw wrote: »

I cannot agree with OP's opinion.
Fatecarver is one of the best damage sources but it's also relying on sets.

Azureblight set is being nerfed in U46 to proc requirement. Changing Fatecarver from DoT to Direct Damage will kill Runecarver set (which means Scribes of Fate DLC is going to be pointless DLC for Damage Dealers because there's nothing to farm anymore) and Thaumaturge CP. Fatecarver will have a target cap to 6 targets which make AB set useless in trial content with many enemies (Rockgrove for example).

Overall, this is a big L for all people who did grinding Lair of Maarselok and Scrivener's Hall hours and wasted all time and gold materials for getting and upgrading items.

Such is life in ESO (or any MMO). Same thing happened to other previously meta sets when Scribes of Fate, LoM, etc. were released. The wheel is always turning. You either adapt or you don't, it is, ultimately, your own choice.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

mdjessup4906 wrote: »

Why do i get the feeling that even if every class regardless of how "easy" or "hard" to play all had exact same damage and cleave potential, certain people would still find something to complain about.

I would imagine that most people believe that that the level of effort required to play something should correspond to damage outcomes.

Be careful. In eso this amount of common sense is called toxic gatekeeping xd

Daoin wrote: »

ZOS cuddled upto trial HM players, score pushers and players that only think about themselves and in the end the continual catering to them did not pay off, continually did U turns on things for average player improvements approach, things where getting sillier by the season and the only fix in the end was labelled as subclass, which is also terrible and after a number of contnual U- turns its not hard to see that your going in a sort of never ending circle, and has been a very reckless approach, however it is plain too see that the dev teams have tried to correct some past mistakes in which other areas of the game were effected as a result and although today there are no short term benefits to subclassing on the long run i am unsure still

Yup. What really killed ESO was update 35 when everyone and their mother got nerfed into oblivion. They slowly brought back some end game but ultimately the player counts and activity have really dropped off since then. The end game community has become this bounce around private discord thing with the same recycled 200 players and they all feel special now. So this amount of power creep is now making them mad they may be joined by people that couldnt get on their level of skill before subclassing. But all that said, subclassing sounds rushed and likely pushed to attempt to bring player counts back up. Enticing people with huge DPS, unkillable supports, etc. I honestly think its hilarious how mad the end game community is. The fewest are the loudest, they dont represent the entirety of ESO opinion but they think they do. If ZOS thinks buffing people 30% for free will bring back thousands of players and their credit card, they are 1000% going to do that. I dont blame them. The few hundred mad about the meta being too strong dont matter if this plan works for ZOS and the longevity of higher player activity.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

Anyway, my fear is that the people that can do the HM stuff, the tri's and stuff will be gone. That the raid leads will become less and those of us wanting to advance will become stuck. That's probably just hyperbole but we'll see. I don't know what the right answer is but I think the fact of the matter is this is what we're getting until the inevitable crash if update 47 or 48 when they nerf everything.

Problem is that that doesn't exactly sound like hyperbole. Especially for anyone who lived through U35.

A lot of people like to point to U35 - which honestly wasn't that bad on release - but that was one of the major downturns of everything. It was a big nerf to a lot of people with the stated goals of "reining in power creep" and "raise the floor, lower the ceiling."

Problem was that it ended up being a blanket nerf, not something that raised the floor. Sure, the casuals won't notice much because overland and normal is overland and normal. And the people who could bounce back from it were the sweaty min-maxers. But for that group in the middle - the "I'm better than normal content and feel comfortable in standard vets" group - they just got hit hard and weren't able to bounce back from it.

One of the other issues with U35 was the attitude around it. We got a lot of "don't have knee-jerk reactions and complain about nerfs without trying it!" But... people did try it on PTS. Most of the people who post on the PTS feedback threads are incredible number-crunchers and they back up their claims with full CMX parses and logs. Those weren't knee-jerk reactions; they were saying exactly what would happen if it released as is... and they were right since they know the game and its playerbase.

We also had things like Project Vitality, which was designed to get people into group content. It was a bunch of experienced raid leads running with newer players and teaching them how to complete the vet trials. After U35, a lot of raid leads left in disgust, partly due to the nerfs and partly due to the communication and feelings from the dev team.

And now, we're seeing the same thing on PTS. A lot of people showing (not just whining and complaining, they're actually using data) what the problems are, and warning that we'll see another massive shift just like U35. This is offset by the number of people who are talking about U46 as if it's a godsend (which, fair, we didn't have with u35), but pretty well every person who's trying to deflect all U46 criticism also proudly talks about being a solo PvE player... which means they're probably not the best people to talk about PvP or endgame dungeons/trials.

The big thing with this patch is the fact that it's not a global DPS increase. It will reward the people who know what lines to slot and what to give up... so the sweaty min-maxers. Anyone who wants to build a Subclass based on aesthetics (including people who want to keep their three original Class lines) is not going to see any measurable effect on DPS, and likely will see a damage loss due to skill line nerfs or because they're dropping lines with passives they don't realize they use. This essentially means we're going to be increasing the gap between the sweats and the casuals. Anyone who's going into this patch thinking "I can't do HM content now, but when I get to Subclass then I'll be able to!" is deluding themselves. If you want to raise your DPS, you have to start thinking sweaty, and even then the requirements that raid leads put on is going to increase since the endgame DPS will increase significantly.

...and that means that U47 (which will only drop on PTS about a month after releases, so maybe not enough time to really see many shifts) or U48 (which gives plenty of time to see what's OP) will end up being another major nerf fest to try to "rein in the power creep" that is blatantly being made available in U46. That'll likely lead to another exodus of that mid-range playerbase just like we saw with U35.

I think this pretty much hits the nail on the head, but with one minor quibble:

"This is offset by the number of people who are talking about U46 as if it's a godsend (which, fair, we didn't have with u35)"

This is actually not true. There was a very sizable contingent of people who were very supportive of the changes and fully bought into the way ZOS presented them. Underlying their support seems to be an "us vs them" mentality of self-identified casual players (who I think are not so casual about a game if they spend so much time on the forums) and the "elitist" end-game pve-ers. They wanted to "bring down" that group of players they considered elitists, and they didn't seem to care if the people hurt most in this process were themselves. The way ZOS presented the changes spurred this line of thinking rather than de-escalating it. Later, some of those players came to understand what the critics were trying to explain to them and would I think prefer to forget they ever supported U35.

The other revision of history I am now seeing crop up regarding U35 is that ZOS listened to player feedback and walked it back quite a bit. This never happened. I'm not sure where this rumor started. Ninja Pulls repeated recently on a video as fact. It is not. Go back to that PTS cycle and show me *meaningful* reversion of the changes. We are still living with an entire category of skills (ground AOEs) that for years have only been useful in 99.9% if PVE encounters for proccing azureblight and/or backbar weapon damage enchants. And next patch, half of those 2 will be gone. And new players don't understand things like this and seriously hinder themselves.

Let's remember the history as it really was: ZOS buried their heads in the sand in response to feedback to U35, as they always do.

Arcanist has been the best DD since Necrom chapter release. This idea that subclassing is suddenly making Arcanist the only viable DD begs the question as to where have you been. Arcanist has the highest cleave damage and is the easiest class to play. If you're not playing Arcanist right now as a DD on Live it's because you choose not to just the same as you can with subclassing.