PTS Update 47 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities Changes

xAlucardx92 · July 9

It's always the same: ZOS releases something, a set or a skill (now combination of Skilllines) performs far better than they should, and instead of acting, you're "discussing a lot of potential ways to move forward and waiting to see how it behaves."

It always takes a year or more for anything to happen.

Malacath's Band of Brutality, Rush of Agony, Hardened Ward, 2x Spectral Arrow, and all the other things that were completely overperforming. On the first day on the test server, it was immediately determined that they shouldn't go live. But ZOS doesn't give a damn, brings it live, and "closely monitoring all the fun."

Over 3000 possible combinations. But the in reality in PvP is, if you don't play a combination of Assassination, Animal Companions, Restoring Light, or Storm Calling, you will be destroyed.

After an update like U46 subclasses, you really should do more than "light with balance adjustments."

trippcap · July 9

It’s so incredibly disappointing to see yet another step in the direction of stripping all class identity and unique feel of classes in favor of spreadsheet balancing.

These ultimate changes are awful, if you or your group are already sourcing either heroism buffs they are completely useless and non-unique class passives. And if you’re not getting them through group and having to apply them yourself, the uptime will be so poor you have to run pots or a scribed skill. And even then it’s just for a redundant buff with a bad uptime. No matter who plays this game this is a loss or a wash. This patch isn’t a win for any player whatsoever.

I know you say more changes are on the way but through two entire patches there hasn’t been almost ANY work being done to lift up unused and very poor skilllines. I cannot understand why they insist upon nerfing everything down to the same level instead of uplifting other options to meet the thing you say is over performing. This has been happening for years, and the community keeps telling you this isn’t a fun way to balance the game. Please if you want to remove such immense power away from arcanist or nightblade, give them something else to use through a different buff to an underperforming skill or skillline of which there are many. Learn how to let players have fun instead of punishing them for optimizing.

This just feels like a giant slap in the face. Please revert the ultimate changes entirely. Even increasing the uptimes of these passives won’t fix the loss of identity. Please make the class script for arcanist something else if you wish to nerf it as it’s totally redundant with inspired scholarship. Please uplift all of the underperforming skills and passives, and add back the power lost somewhere. Seems more and more time is spent complaining in the forums and our voices seem like they’re not heard as maybe a small adjustment is thrown our way but our qualms are almost never fully addressed. It’s time for a collective pride swallowing and a full reverting of this weeks combat changes.

jecks33 · July 10

Zos, what's your problem with Dark Cloak?
Years ago it was a decent (the only) self-healing for Nightblade tanks, then you ruined it with the 'stand still' requirement, now the requirement is even more stupid + the skill is no longer influenced by the Dark Veil passive

Do you have any idea how tanking works in ESO??

HackTheMinotaur · July 10

Moving Major Resolve away from Storm Calling is a huge hit for Solo Builds, PVP Builds, DPS Builds and others I'm sure. That's a big miss for me. These types of builds need more sources for Major Resolve, not less.

HackTheMinotaur · July 10

Also, all class Ultimate generating passives (other than Catalyst) are now dead skills for Oakensoul builds. This does not work IMO.

ZhuJiuyin · July 10

HackTheMinotaur wrote: »

Also, all class Ultimate generating passives (other than Catalyst) are now dead skills for Oakensoul builds. This does not work IMO.

Not all classes. After all, Sorc has never been eligible for Ultimate generating passives.

Gadamlub14_ESO · July 10

im actually impressed you guys nerfed some class passives so hard that no one would ever want to put a skill point into them.

MincMincMinc · July 10

rosendoichinoveb17_ESO wrote: »

I do not understand why the push to nerf arcanist. It is the most popular as it has easy rotation without the need to ligh attack weave.
There are several class combinations without the arcanist beams that deal more DPS but they are all the same boring ones that require you to ligh attack weave (or as I say it "macro light attack when casting each skill") Please do not force us to get back to that.

The banner barrier Crux change is pointless as we already use as spell that grant crux when we have none

Thats its own problem it probably shouldnt be nerfed, the mechanics should be changed so it requires any amount of thought or effort. However it is easier to just change an integer value and gut it at some point instead of recoding and balancing mechanics. That is what always happens with the latest "accessibility" playstyle that just ends up being abused.

People always flock to the most damage for the least effort. Its an honorable thought to make the game "accessible" for the less fortunate, but the meta finds its way to the lowest common denominator within a week of pts.

method__01 · July 10

why keep changing my pure class skills for -nerf whatever you want to do- another class?
why i must pay your lack of vision-cause if had something new to present and not subclass (this year) or scribing (last year)
features no1 asked for there will be no need for these negative changes -cause they impact me and my toons
no i dont want to play a dk with pets or a necro with hurricane or whatever you think is bringing more ppl in game
-btw hows sales for new chapter ?cause i see way less people than before and this should alarm you

after terrible launch with -still continue errors in game both from planning and game performance -you now decide
to nerf-change-- whoa big surprise here, never happen before --- your own choices and with them ,destroy mine

awesome

Ezhh · July 10

Last PTS cycle I made a genuine attempt to offer useful and constructive feedback.

At the end of it, my magplar, which was previously consistently in the top 2 DDs for the group I played it in, has dropped to being the bottom performing in that group even when I add in assassination for some more damage. Highest CPM player, lowest dps. It hurts. I could recover the damage with beam yes.... but then my play style would be lost. Before the last patch I could keep up thanks to experience and azureblight (which was also taken from me).

Meanwhile my most loved healer playstyle (pillagers/pearls) was also massively nerfed and the whole playstyle around pearls changed into something far less engaging.

Now the only things I feel I have left are soloing dungeons on my stam sorc (DLC HMs so resolve is needed) and having some fun with siphoning on my healer for a tiny bit of remaining ult gen control. Somehow even this gets taken away, with no end to the problem that is beam dominating everything in sight anywhere. Instead we get a weird nerf to bow proc that will hit everyone else as well (while opening up more abuse of the skill in PvP!), and the adjustment to class mastery which, while good, will only serve to make beam more reasonable to play on non-arc classes.

I cancelled ESO+ when the last update went live. I was hoping for a reason to renew. This is not it.

onyxorb · July 10

Blackrim wrote: »

Morvan wrote: »

With most of the attention understandably shifting to class balance, I'd like to suggest some changes to the Vampire line that might help fill gaps as some subclassed combinations lack essential buffs, providing named buffs to this line would help with that.
Vampire
Mist Form
Blood Mist: This could use Major Brutality/Sorcery, would also be great if the damage was brought up a bit, for example, Deadly Cloak functions similarly, has the same range and duration, but deals more damage that is increased even further by the Dual Wield passives, Blood Mist deserves to be on par with that.

Elusive Mist: The buffs on this skill should definitely last longer, 4 seconds is way too low to make it a viable source for them.

Blood Frenzy: This skill really fails to compensate its own drawbacks, especially in group content, as it completely block you from not just being healed by others, but also from getting buffs triggered by overhealing like Major Courage from Spell Power Cure — which by itself gives you more damage than Frenzy. It would be nice if while unhealable any ally heal would automatically considered an overheal, and this skill could use a named buff like Minor Force — we seriously need alternatives to Barbed Trap.

Eviscerate: This skill and morphs are the best thing on this line, but it would be nice if it had Major Prophecy/Savagery while slotted.
Blood for Blood: Just like my suggestion for Frenzy, the unhealable portion of this skill should make blocked healing from allies count as overhealing. This would ensure that even while you're unhealable, you can still benefit from sets with overhealing-based effects.

Vampiric Drain: This is one I rarely see on tank setups, it could definitely get some love — maybe give it some kind of blood damage shield if it overheals, some defensive named buffs would be nice too, like Minor/Major Vitality, Toughness or Protection — any of those would help.

Mesmerize: By far the most forgotten skill in this kit, I do like the concept and looks though, wish something new was done to it, like giving it Major Timidity if the stun hits, it's a debuff with no sources in game that would fit this skill's vibes really well.

First things first with vamp I would highly suggest more skills become accessible at stage 4 to incentivize it more.

Blood Mist damage is useless I tested it in PvP... It needs to provide some sort of cc immunity, greater buff, or a direct % heal of max health.

Elusive Mist should have a 15 second duration of major evasion

Delete Frenzy and replace

Eviscerate, fine as is with morphs.

Drain: keep as is its so unique with ulti gen and stamina gen % should be higher

Mesmerize: Make it a fear that DOES NOT give cc immunity.

I would love to see bleed damage and hemorrhage status added to the vampire skill line.
Kind of silly that werewolf has them, but vampirism doesn't.

Bleed/Hemorrhage really fit the theme, and half the skills have blood related names, but all the damage is 'magic'.
Would be an actual reason to slot more of the skills on my bar.

Would love to have them remove the need for a stage 4 vamp to use 'mesmerize' to talk to vendors.
I have yet another vamp toon that I am leveling, so it doesn't have mesmerize yet, and its so annoying to not have easy vendor access. Feels like someone thought it would be 'fun' and then forgot to remove it afterwards.

Tannus15 · July 10

the other issue with the bound aegis change is that even on pure sorc you don't have the skill slots to make the build work

here is a mag sorc build:

ele weapon, frags, prey, scamp, bird, flawless dawn
blockade, hurricane, crit surge, scamp, bird, atro

where do I put bound aegis? in the hurricane spot?
I could put bound arms in the frags spot, but then I'm literally locked out of major resolve

pure sorc can't get both resolve and prophecy for some reason that makes no sense

Drackolus · July 10

I kind of like slotted major buffs, but these particular choices are nonsensical. My biggest gripe is taking away savagery/prophecy from Shadowy Disguise. It's a weak skill line, especially for dps, but this skill is unique and useful. Nobody taking that morph wants minor protection. Especially between morphs, I think the fear of major buff redundancy is unfounded.
I also don't see why passive Brutality/Sorcery is being kept exclusive to Herald of the Tome. It's not a thematic uniqueness, and it's been the most powerful and popular damage lines already. Why does it need an additional random bonus on top of that? Changing Grim Focus' passive to Brutality/Sorcery would keep closer to the theme and create a redundancy, rather than a synergy, with Herald of the Tome, which is ideal. Having Bound Armaments have this buff would also help with that issue. You could also let Hurricane keep the Major Resolve for stam sorcs, make Boundless Storm have something like minor force, and make Surge have Major Savagery like it always should have.

Personally, I think Daedric Summoning should be the pet line, and Dark Magic should be the max attribute line. Let them be thematically consistant. Move the buffs to a Dark Magic passive that says something like "Increase your maximum health, magicka, and stamina by 5%, increased by 1% for each Dark Magic skill slotted on at least one bar."

randconfig · July 11

GIVE ARCANIST CRUX GENERATION ON BANNER BACK

YOU'RE KILLING ANY ALTERNATIVE PLAYSTYLE TO THE BEAM, PREVENTING ARCANIST FROM USING SUBCLASSING OR ANY OTHER SPAMMABLE BECAUSE YOU CANNOT MAKE USE OF YOUR OWN CLASS PASSIVES WITHOUT THE CRUX GENERATION FROM BANNERBEARER

IF SOMEONE WANTS TO USE TENTACULAR DREAD ON A FIFTEEN SECOND COOLDOWN RELYING ONLY ON BANNERBEAR CRUX REGENERATION EVERY 5 SECONDS, WHILE LOSING A SCRIPT SLOT ON BANNER, STAMINA AND MAGICKA OVER TIME, AND 3 ABILITY SLOTS, THEN LET THEM, THAT IS NOT BROKEN

SPAMMING THE BEAM BACK TO BACK IS BROKEN

THE BEAM SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO GENERATE CRUX DURING THE CHANNEL, ITS THAT SIMPLE

ALSO FIX THE BUGGED CRUX GENERATION THAT DOES NOT OCCUR WHEN PROCCING INSPIRED SCHOLARSHIP WITH TENTACULAR DREAD IF THAT IS INTENDED, OR IF THE CRUX IS AUTOMATICALLY CONSUMED WHEN ITS PROCCED, THEN FIX THE BUG WHERE TENTACULAR DREAD DOES NOT GET THE BONUS 33% DAMAGE FROM THE CRUX THAT INSPIRED SCHOLARSHIP'S PROC GAVE.

you already killed blastbones necromancer playstyle by making the pvp pet limit 5 and having corpses and blastbones count as a pet, don't kill arcanist too by making it a press beam AFK bot, LITERALLY NO ONE WANTED THIS

ZhuJiuyin · July 11

Balance = Adjusting a stat that stands out
EX: Reduced the damage this set deals by ~2%.
Full nerf = Crudely nerfing everything, and magically ignoring some things that should be nerfed more
EX: Turning all Ultimate passives into named buffs, making them lose their uniqueness and value, and completely ignoring Soul Harvest for providing more Ultimate points.
Pointless nerf = Nerfing something that has no obvious problems, and making it worse when compared to skills of the same type
EX: Bound Armaments V.S Relentless Focus

In U47, we are now facing full nerf, pointless nerf instead of balance, because 1. those really powerful skills and builds are still the strongest, 2. Unreasonable changes to specific classes and skills make them worse compared to skills of the same type, 3. Many classes lose their unique Ultimate passives. And accidentally reminded everyone that only Sorc never got Ultimate passives. NB has 3 different abilities to get Ultimate, and Soul Harvest is not on the nerf list.

Not to mention, as early as U46, players have been calling for subclassing to be fully prepared, but due to ZOS's insistence, the current damage expansion has occurred.
Now when everyone is enjoying and getting used to the current DPS, ZOS suddenly magically discovered that damage expansion is not good and needs to be suppressed, which will make players feel deprived. In addition, more importantly, the way to suppress damage expansion is to deprive most classes of their unique passives, which will only make players feel very bad.

If U46 is a mixed bag of good and bad, then U47 is mostly negative.

Alaztor91 · July 11

Hey ZOS, here is a suggestion for the next Updates. Rework every single Class passive that gives a ''unique'' stackable bonus into a Minor/Major Buff that can't be stacked.

''Aegis of the Unseen'' gives +Armor? Change it to Minor Resolve, ''Emerald Moss'' gives +Healing Done? Change it to Minor Mending, ''Pressure Points'' gives +Crit Chance? Change it to Minor Savagery/Prophecy, etc.

1)What if the buff is already added by another passive from the same base Class? -Just replace it with another buff like Force, Protection, Vitality, etc that is relevant to the specific passive.
2)What about Class skills that already give those buffs? -Remove/change the buffs from the relevant skills.
3)What about sets/potions that already give some of those buffs? -Use another set/potion.
4)This is insane, wouldn't this just kill build diversity and homogenize the game even more? -Yes, it would.

Then why would ZOS do something like this? -Because it's easy and because they already started doing it, look at the recent change of the Class Ultimate passives from a flat gain(stackable) to Heroism(non-stackable), look at how they changed the unique +Weapon/Spell dmg buff from Grim Focus to Major Savagery/Prophecy. Does it really seem that crazy now?

/s.....?

FoJul · July 11

Arcanist Beam is still strong.

Lightning form is useless.

Spectral bow not giving me 300 spell dmg nerfed my non beam pve build. I already have my crit buff.

Removing my 30 ultimate instant button also really hurts the performance of my PvE and PvP build. Major heroism is nice but id rather have 10 ult per sec for 3 seconds. Or just the instant 30. (Also having to be in combat for this is mega annoying).

Also if I didnt mention already, Arcanist Beam is overtuned and makes other playstyles obsolete.

MarioSMB · July 11

Combat & Abilities

Fixed any hope remaining that the gameplay won't be progressively nerfed to the ground with the introduction of subclassing.

Aliniel · July 11

I think these changes are step into right direction.

Grim Focus: I am surprised this even existed in this state. Free 400 WP/SP just for slotting it and never using? Plus, the passives you get (crit chance and crit damage). Insane.

Bound Armor: This was another example of "YOU MUST SLOT THIS AND NEED NEVER CLICK IT" (unless you used the stam version). Sorc has always suffered from the identity crisis. Role skills are all over the place. We need a complete redesign of Sorc class. Make each skill line serve a purpose (DD, Tank, Healer, Support, Solo Play, etc.).

Lightning Form: I like this for reasons stated above. Makes Storm Calling more DD oriented. I can't imagine tanks would ever subclass into Storm Calling. What would they get other than Lightning Form? All classes have some source of Major Resolve.

I expected more changes to be honest. It's quite disappointing to see so little balancing issues being addressed.

Rkindaleft · July 11

It's honestly still so bewildering to me that you guys are still at the stage of "needing" to rework skills that have been in the game since launch (11 years ago!).

With all the random things you throw at the wall to see what sticks in regards to combat every 6 months it feels like we're still playing a game that's in beta.

calamity192 · July 11

Current approach will eventually lead to frustration from both sides: people who want subclassing and people who want to play pure class. While nerfing something in combination of classes you are either shifting it from "great" to "decent" or "no subclassing this anymore", while for pure class it could be a crucial change that will basically push them to subclassing to make abilities feel good.
Instead, I think it should be a different approach to developing subclassing as a system overall. It will of course require more effort, but I believe this will benefit players and you in future and make everyone happy.
1. Introduce a new ability scaling mechanic, lets call it "Proficiency". If you feel like ability is too strong tie its floors to the amount of original skill lines character has. For example: Instead of Relentless Focus that gives total of 400 Spell and Weapon power you make it 400/3=130 for every Nightblade skill line character has. People who play pure Nightblade will feel that they have benefits of playing their class and are not offended in anyway. And people who subclassing will still get a portion of power.
2. Do not let us blindly wander in a subclassing world, instead guide us! What I'm proposing is to add a new skill line depending on the combination of subclasses character has. It does not have to be a fully-fledged skill line, 1-2 skills, 1-2 passives. Just enough to encourage people trying this combination, fill gaps in their build that subclassing can bring and make it more powerful (not ruining everything for other combinations and pure classes). The approach here could be different of course, instead skill lines, new morphs could be introduced. For example: by having Dragonknight and Necromancer classes, a character will receive a new skill line: Hellspawn. That will have a skill: flaming bonespear, that will launch a bonespear engulfed in flames into enemy, dealing fire damage and stunning; a passive, that will grant players bonus damage while dealing fire damage to enemies affected by Diseased status effect. Or a new morph that will make Sacrificial Bones a fiery skeleton, dealing fire damage and leaving an area of fire DoT upon impact for a short duration.
This approach will not only encourage people for playing subclassing, but as well give you an ability to safely balance skills around it and not *** of the rest of the community, as well it will give you a lot of creativity and eventually will grow into an interesting and fun way to play for everybody.

LukosCreyden · July 11

There should be absolutely no reason to change the base functionality of base game class skills at this point. Moving Resolve off of Lightning Form is an awful idea. I spent ages coming up with a build I like and this change kills it. If the one build I actually want to play is dead, what is there left for me to play?

Mayrael · July 11

Stop buffing assassination tree. Maybe it's a bit of a nerf from PvE perspective but for PvP it's the ultimate and the only reasonable choice right now. For the love of this game bring back old stacks number, remove the buff from it or make it so it will give 1pc set stat at best (like 5x25 damage).

Edit:
Can you explain why it's a good idea to place such a powerful buff (crit chance) on the hardest-hitting non-ultimate skill in the game? Especially in a skill line that already has the best spammable ability, one of the best ultimates, and some of the top passives? Wouldn't it make more sense to remove some stuff from it to actually nerf it, instead of just rearranging things around?

MashmalloMan · July 11

MincMincMinc wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?

This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

You forgot to mention how useless the rest of summoning skill line is for damage compared to one of the best set of the most relevant passives available on assassin.

honestly i was intentionally leaving that out. just look at the 2 skills. they are the same skill except one is way worse than the other by every metric.

Just put major resolve on BA so it's in the stam sorc kit again. this is so dumb.

What stamsorcs are going to use BA? Atleast in pvp stamsorcs are now just wardens with streak since you need the charm sribing skill and shalks for breaches. So at a minimum you are forced to run Animal and stormcalling for streak. Then what you run restoring light for Rune? Ok well now we are back to the old stamsorc dilemma of critsurge needs crit chance, but comically stamsorc has no access to critchance now that you dropped assassin. Funny enough its even more of a slap in the face that hurricane has minor force lol even further demanding you get critchance.

Welp glad I spent all patch finding a more efficient all around build than the Acuity boring waiting room playstyle.....just to end up going back to requiring acuity.
Again if zos wants to make more engaging active playstyles they need to incorporate the buffs into the skills.

Hurricane for instance could be a simple tooltip, growing in range, that gives you... guessing here...2% crit per second as it builds. Go a step further and only make it grow when it hits things per second. Suddenly the skill is worth nothing if used incorrectly and worth everything to a good player.

To your point and mine (about swapping buffs around) it never made sense for CRITICAL Surge to provide Brutality/Sorcery in the first place. I think it's time they move that out in favour of Savagery/Prophecy.

Can you imagine how much easier and fluid it would be to build for Sorc if the line that asks the class to crit as much as possible included Major and Minor Crit buffs instead of spreading them out to the other 2 lines? Think about it, Assassination has everything it needs in 1 place, crit DMG, Crit chance, Major/Minor Crit, spammable, execute, burst, DPS ultimate, gap closer vs gap maker. It's insane. The only thing it misses is survivability (Surge vs Siphoning Skills), but that's slowly being stripped away from us apparently.

And while my suggestion still moves minor force to BA, it's much less required than having major/minor crit and Minor force being in 3 lines, I'd take those 2 in 1 place in a heartbeat. If they really wanted force there too, give it to Fury for slotting seeing as how it's useless for more than 80% of a fight given how low the execute threshold is and how fast those phases end up being. The skill is terrible anyway.

That said, I just want this mess fixed as fast and a simple as possible before we're stuck with this for years. So please, move Minor Force to BA, add Major Resolve, then figure out the rest after. Add Major Savagery to Lightning Form instead of Surge for all I care even if Surge makes more sense or if I want Minor Force in Storm Calling.

The problem again is zos made this change with the notion of pure classes.....there is subclassing now so the same philosophy isnt going to work. (yes I am rehashing for those only reading this post). Each skill line needs to become a coherent thought on its own.

The second portion is what is zos's vision? Well if they wanted people to run one damage, one tank, one support line.....they would have limited subclassing as such. A sorc for example could only trade storm for assassination or Aedric or Animal. Considering they did not restrict us this way, the intention is for damage to run 3 damage skill lines, tank to run tank, and support to support. The trinity is being forced to extremes.

I am also just worried, as is every sorc player it seems, that zos simply won't think up a cohesive skillset. Crit surge requires crit. So somewhere else in the kit should be critchance. IDEALLY not on critsurge because that just makes it standalone and does not promote theorycrafting what to combine it with

You had me in the first half, I agree, but you lost me on Surge shouldn't have Prophecy. We can agree the skill line due to subclassing should carry Major/Minor Prophecy, Assassination is not just popular because it's strong, it's a well designed and cohesive option for damage dealing. It has the necessary tools, passives, and buffs in 1 place. The abilities do what they should. A spammable that gives free crit strikes or extra damage from stealth is an example of how it plays well with the rest of the class without being entirely necessary or restrictive.

If we're moving named buffs around, why would we not do it right? From your point of view about theory crafting, how exactly does an ability that asks the user to crit, not providing the major crit chance buff, promote theory crafting any more than if it did provide it? I can't see any logical reason to add arbitrary barriers on abilitities like that in an effort to somehow promote theorycrafting in a roundabout way.

If I want to heal from crits, the ability should improve my crit chance, not my weapon/spell damage. Half the ability is also meant for healers, so what you're requesting those players to do is use Power Surge and another Storm Calling skill to achieve the original playstyle they wanted in the first place. Like lets say you add it to Lightning Form instead, why would a healer need an aoe dot to get Major Prophecy, just so they can make their heals crit to proc Power Surge and heal their team? It's just a waste of a skill slot they will end up taking through a potion or set. What if they're a ranged Mag Sorc, well like we saw previously players will just use Chudan to completely avoid the dead skill on their bar.

I mean in the end it doesn't matter a ton because you're most likely going to take 2 Storm Calling abilities if they're good to use, but on the off chance you only wanted to Crit Heal and had another source of Brutality/Sorcery like from Jabs, Mages Guild, a potion, or another subclassed line, it would be nice for that player to not have to waste a skill slot on something they don't really want because they're trying to force theory crafting instead of doing what makes sense.

If we're talking fun theory crafting and good build design, I think more minigames/interweeving mechanics as you previously discussed is the better answer than adding barriers where they don't need to be like Flame Skulls generating a corpse or the corpse mechanic in general for Necro, Ardent Flame Whip mechanic of building stacks, Arcanist Crux, etc. There isn't enough of this really and maybe its time for Sorc to get something like this too. We had it with Crystal Frags in a way.. but we both know that skill isn't going to see the light of day for a long time.

I think what you actually want would be something like if you take Surge, well maybe you should also take Hurricane because it improves your crit chance by 1% as it grows. That would be a fun way to promote combining skills together, it would accomplish the same goal without forcing a named buff where it doesn't belong. Obviously that's very strong, it's not a serious thing I think they would do, but you get the idea I'm going for with skills playing off of each other.

But again, things are so bad right now, I'd be happy to swap Major Prophecy to Lightning Form if it meant Bound Armaments provided Major Resolve instead, Surge doesn't need to have it, but I think it would just make a ton of sense.

universal_wrath · July 11

Marto wrote: »

Grim Focus:
I agree that this skill is overtuned in Live. Getting free 400 weapon/spell damage on any skill just for slotting it is too much.

But this nerf might be a bit too much, especially for pure Nightblade builds whose class power was designed around them receiving this weapon/spell damage.

What about having it grant a ~250 weapon/spell damage buff when you activate the arrow? That way it still serves the purpose people are used to, but without being as strong, or being as passive.

Relentless Focus could get this damage bonus, while Merciless Resolve gets the higher heal, to preserve the theme of one morph being more DPS focused, while the other is more about the active skill.

Bound Armor:
I don't think the removal of the bonus magicka and stamina is a good idea. Part of the identity of the Daedric Summoning skill line is to have high magicka/stamina values, and this skill built upon that.

Storm Calling:
This skill has had Major Resolve on it for a long, long time. Is it really worth it to remove it? At the very least, make one morph more damage oriented with minor force, while the other is defensive.

If you think a damage skill having major resolve is too much, what about giving one or both of the morphs minor resolve and/or some version of minor/major evasion? That way it keeps the defensive capabilities players have come to expect.

If I remmember bound armor was the original skill that grand armor buff, it is in the name lol. Lightning form used to grant damage mitigation and damge aura. I kind of like the new change except for the max stamina part. I believe a defensive skill should not do more than defense, like wise, damage skills should not do more than damage, same with utility and healing. Lightning form in its current form on boths morphs does many things being defense, offensive and utility.

Warden and necromancer are the most balanced classes out of the bunch because each of their skills are focus on specific roles.

MincMincMinc · July 11

The changes to the skills are just more worrying that zos did not have a balance plan for subclassing. DLC skill lines were designed to be straight damage/tank/heal skill lines. Warden being the example of this. Where the base classes are mixed well. This dynamic didnt matter before subclassing, but now it is an efficiency nightmare.

The mixed classes are for the most part not as efficient. This comes from the mixes not synergized stat wise. Imagine you take two mixed lines and one give block tank passives, while the other gives health regen. Sure they are both a tank stat, but wont necessarily work together. Compare this to the pure damage lines if you slot assassin that gives a ton of dense crit chance and it will pair with any line that gives crit damage.

As we have already seen in PvP you may aswell just run 3 pure efficient damage lines because there is no reason otherwise unless you want to relive the glory days of a dead playstyle. Is it worth dropping an entire skill line for a buff like resolve? Or is it easier to just use chudan? Seems like a straight forward answer IMO.

Zos:

Either skill lines should be balanced and reworked to have all three damage/tank/heal aspects within.
OR skill lines will have to be purely towards one damage or tank or heals. This enables drastic power creep where before a class only had 1 damage line......Now they will just run 3 damage lines.
There is a third option of moving towards the pure skill line concept, but putting the subclass restriction where only a damage line can be swapped for a damage line.

GloatingSwine · July 11

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Zos:
Either skill lines should be balanced and reworked to have all three damage/tank/heal aspects within.

OR skill lines will have to be purely towards one damage or tank or heals. This enables drastic power creep where before a class only had 1 damage line......Now they will just run 3 damage lines.

There is a third option of moving towards the pure skill line concept, but putting the subclass restriction where only a damage line can be swapped for a damage line.

It's almost certainly easier to rework the old skill lines to the new model than the other way around. I'm pretty sure any attempt to shuffle Arcanist especially just leaves it with the identity crisis Sorcerer has in U47.

universal_wrath · July 11

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Ok, I finally found it:

PTS notes 6.2.2:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/548259/pts-patch-notes-v6-2-2
"Item sets and passives that generate Ultimate now require you to be in combat to activate, to help reduce their ability to continuously enter a fight at full Ultimate"

PTS notes 6-2-3:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/548984/pts-patch-notes-v6-2-3
Nightblade
- Siphoning
Catalyst: This passive can once again be used outside of combat.

Developer Comment:

After monitoring the feedback from the recent adjustments to item sets and this passive, we agreed that class passives are not a fair comparison to item sets as passives are built in and cannot be removed, while item sets are designed with the thought that you will always wear them if you are attempting to utilize their bonus. Moving forward, we will ensure that item sets that generate Ultimate only do so while in combat, as well as buff effects with durations such as Major and Minor Heroism. Classes that can currently generate Ultimate outside of combat will remain as such, since they help reinforce the playstyle and roles that they try to bring to life.

So, around like 5 years ago (Markarth update) this was what ZOS was saying.

Back then, players also "disliked" (to put it lightly) this change and ZOS received a clear feedback - so this change never made it to the live server and was rejected - since it was a bad idea.

So... um.... what has changed ? Dev comment clearly says that "Classes that can currently generate Ultimate outside of combat will remain as such, since they help reinforce the playstyle and roles that they try to bring to life".

If something, we should get more options than less options - especially now when we have subclassing. Each class skill line should have "something". Something unique about it. Some feature that will make players to think more & experiment more. We should not have clear good ones & clear bad ones (hence why I don't understand why ZOS is focusing on NB's Assassination skill tree & not doing something about for example Consuming Darkness ulti etc).

Removing out-of comabt ulti gen was bad back then (and rightfully so it never made it to live server) and is also really bad now. Please ZOS, just don't do it. No one seems to like it. Reduce the ulti gen back to 20 from 30 if you have to, but keep this passive unique feature as now - not just NB's can benefit from it since we have subclassing. There is an actual reason why some one would want to pick this class skills tree.

Also... sub classing should be optional. So that you can min-max your niche build but not at a cost of a "pure" class builds. You should never look at class skills individually in a vacuum or treat them a sets that you can swap in blink of an eye. Also imho you should never think of any of class skill lines as a "flavour of the month" type of thing that you buff 3 or 4 for 1 year and leave others in the dust & keep repeating this proces each year / season so that people would have to grind. This is the worst you can do and is a perfect way to lose loyal player base.

Subclassing what changed the game and while optional now, I believe zos in later updates(probably years from now) will remove classes all together and make all skills avialable to everyone. Doing that will make it very easy for zos to balance the game.

MincMincMinc · July 11

GloatingSwine wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Zos:
Either skill lines should be balanced and reworked to have all three damage/tank/heal aspects within.

OR skill lines will have to be purely towards one damage or tank or heals. This enables drastic power creep where before a class only had 1 damage line......Now they will just run 3 damage lines.

There is a third option of moving towards the pure skill line concept, but putting the subclass restriction where only a damage line can be swapped for a damage line.

It's almost certainly easier to rework the old skill lines to the new model than the other way around. I'm pretty sure any attempt to shuffle Arcanist especially just leaves it with the identity crisis Sorcerer has in U47.

Well the corpse and crux system was just a terrible idea if subclassing was on the table. Both of those concepts are not going to last the next few years without alot of changing.

Yes it is far easier, but healthier for the game and future balance is the main issue. My main point was that before people had 3 skill lines giving equal 3x damage 3x tank 3x heals. However now with subclassing meta lets look at pvp for example. Assassin is probably 3x damage with stormcalling for 3x damage and Animal which is 2x damage 1x tank(utility) So 8x damage compared to 3x from before.

This example even fails to mention how some lines are not even in the running. Now you can just avoid those lines. Like how stamsorc has always just used stormcalling as 90% of its kit. Now you can pick up two useful skill lines.

lostineternity · July 11

Tannus15 wrote: »

What are we doing ZOS?

Balance what now?

This is so stupid. 3788 * 4 is 15152 vs 17556 and a heal and you can build to 10 stacks giving it more burst potential.
Do I need to say more?

Bound arms stacks fall off after 10 seconds, focus stacks don't because reasons. 1 skill is significantly better than the other one.

This is on the same character, side by side. What are we doing here?

Both skills were created for pure classes in mind, and comparing them 1 to 1 without any context is stupid (I would say was stupid 3 months ago but now with this brainless implementation of subclassing we don't have any context anymore, everything everywhere all at once and classes that were designed skill synergy between each other in mind remain unchanged with subclassing system that led to terrible outcome)