I can't recall a single combat change that has made the game better! Please prove me wrong.

moderatelyfatman · October 3

Hello Everyone,

I've been playing this game for nearly six years. In that time, I've seen some really nice Quality of Life improvements such as the Sticker Book, the Armory, changes crafting such as Chromium plating as well as the Trial Finder. These are things that have made the game better.

I've also admired some incredible work on the new dungeons (best for any MMO imho) and the new trials which are also far more sophisticated than their predecessors. Although the Overland areas are not always a hit with players, I can't deny that zones such as Necrom are visually stunning and certainly a step above what you can find in the original base game.

The point I'm making is that there has been a general progression in the standard and quality of much of the content in ESO. You can play an early base game dungeon and a recent dlc dungeon and see an obvious difference. A returning player can be pleasantly surprised at being able to remake any item set to any specification for transmutes. And yes, horses can now swim.

Yet the returning players come back to the combat and wonder what the hell is going on. I have yet to see a combat change which significantly improved the gameplay experience or class diversity for any vaguely challenging content such as veteran dungeons and trials in PvE or general PvP.

spartaxoxo · October 3

Heavy Attack Builds used to be pretty bad and now they aren't. They aren't meta but they have greatly improved access to harder content for the general playerbase.

Necromancer is a fun and interesting clas, even if it needs buffs.

The addition of mythic items was a great

I do actually like Arcanist too. I'll give this only half credit though because of the balance issues before and after it's release

Stamicka · October 3

Yea very few combat changes have been positive in the 10 years that I’ve played the game, and there’s even fewer positive changes since 2019. I actually can’t think of any at all off the top of my head.

The game never really recovered from the disaster that was 2019. Many of the worst combat changes ever were made that year.

Combat adjustments have been extremely light since 2022. Outside of subclassing, combat hasn’t changed all that much compared to previous years. It’s a shame. They made drastic and detrimental combat changes and then stopped when the game was in bad shape.

colossalvoids · October 3

Remember feeling more confident in the direction pre 2020 or around that year more or less, for the last few couple of years I don't recall anything much positive really, but might me jaded from the nerf train for my main class I was playing for years prior and overall homogenisation.

StihlReign · October 3

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

I have yet to see a combat change which significantly improved the gameplay experience or class diversity for any vaguely challenging content such as veteran dungeons and trials in PvE or general PvP.

Elemental susceptibility no longer removes players from stealth on every damage tic. - general PvP.

Took forever to address and fix, broken multiple times after the fix. Now mostly reliable.

Dock01 · October 3

Yeah animation is still super stiff compared to the new gens

freespirit · October 3

Mythics and HA playstyle were great combat changes for me.

I can now solo a lot more Vet Dungeons!

Ofc it could be said anything that enables more solo play in a MMO isn't necessarily a good thing!! 😁

I don't follow build guides, I just do my own thing and my characters I use a lot are definitely more powerful than they were, with minimal thought from me. This means I still enjoy playing as more challenges have opened up that I can pit my skills against.

React · October 3

The upgrade on melee ability range from 5M to 7M was a huge QOL improvement. I wonder who suggested that...

But yes, the vast majority of changes to the game mechanical and balance wise have been very bad. The block changes ruined animation cancelling, cast time ultimates are terrible, hybridization effectively halved the number of playable classes in the game and is still unfinished, scribing actually wasn't terrible but is also unfinished, subclassing is in an unacceptable state with zero follow up balancing.

The sad thing is, I've never seen them admit they were wrong about a single thing related to combat or balance. Might be their biggest downfall, honestly.

Vaqual · October 3

Let me preface this by saying, that I am well aware of the shortcomings in combat balancing. But nevertheless, many changes have made the game much better for me.
Just a couple from recent memory:

Hybridization benefits:
>Flavor based alternatives becoming an option /Dropping Rally, Trap Beast and Caltrops once and for all
>Free Weapon selection with manageable tradeoffs independent of main resource
>Reducing set quality bias towards pre-hybridization WD/SD hybrid sets

Scribing benefits:
>More flexible buff and damage type sourcing for bar-reshuffles
>Skill-line independent gap-fillers with reasonable opportunity cost
>Massive flavor options for breaking class confines pre-Subclassing

Subclassing benefits:
>Huge upgrade to character building by loosening poor and arbitrary class configurations
>Leveling playground for (still much needed) direct skill/line specific balancing without class-wide power budgeting constraints

Important combat changes that gave me peace of mind:
Nerfs:
>Savage Werewolf & Crystal Weapon nerfs
>Mara's Balm nerf
>Masters Stinging Slashes nerf
>Removal of unique %-damage multiplier on Cloak/Concealed against players
>Hardened Ward nerf
>Removal of flat WD from Grim Focus
>Combustion resource reduction
>Removal of Ult generation during Corrosive
>Removal of Pyrebrand Crits
>Change of unrestricted Banner Bearer Crux Pulses

All of these have enabled uniquely oppressive and toxic play styles that easily outperformed the global build average with minimal user requirements. They were only problematic because ZOS made them so, but I appreciate that they got adjusted.

Buffs:
>Warden Brittle Synergy Rework
>Leeching Strikes Rework (severely reduced ranged weapon bias)
>Lightning flood self synergy for caster
>Nobility in Decay and upcoming Living Corpse Mechanic
>General adjustment of melee range instead of being an Elder Dragon exclusive
>Cloak rework to cleaner and smoother handling and removal of Entropy bug

There are many more small tweaks that made certain abilities/passives/builds more competitive without breaking or shifting the meta, which is the gold standard for me. Some of these changes didn't do much for the overall performance of optimal specs, but they helped to make combat feel fairer for everyone else.

There are plenty of problems and I am far from satisfied with the pace of post-subclassing balancing, but I wouldn't want to go back to any older version. For me the game has become better, but at the same time, some old sores just become harder to bear the longer they are left without remedy.
And I would like to use the opportunity to express my great disdain towards the current, insanely powercrept Mythic generation including Saint&Seducer, Monomyth and possibly that new thing, depending on how it goes on PTS. This is the stuff that really drives narrow and bland metas in PvP, where fairness and parity matters way more than in PvE.

Onomog · October 3

React wrote: »

The sad thing is, I've never seen them admit they were wrong about a single thing related to combat or balance. Might be their biggest downfall, honestly.

This right here is the most important takeaway. Agree 100%

Deimus · October 3

Finally giving Necromancer Major Brut/Sorc and Proph/Sav after all these years made the game drastically better for me.

There are many positive combat changes. It's just most of them are smaller targeted things that players have wanted for years or QoL changes. Compared to many of the larger big feature combat changes leaving the game feeling worse or incomplete.

This isn't a slight for those smaller more detailed changes, in fact I'd rather see patch notes with many small adjustments that add value to weaker skills and tones down overpowered skills than one big new feature that splits the community and narrows viable build diversity. I'd take real balance adjustments every time over a flash in the pan.

To address your argument of good major combat additions Scribing is the only one that I feel affected combat balance and gameplay in a mostly positive direction. I can't think of any friends or guildmates that disliked Scribing, the only bad addition from Scribing I can think of is Warden charm in PvP. While Subclassing has taken more fun away from high level gameplay than it has added. Just give us a couple of new grimoires every year with balance adjustments to existing skill lines.

Radiate77 · October 3

Scribing was too watered down in identity in fear of balance, and Subclassing gave everyone access to the strongest skills in a patch where they buffed those exact skills.

That’s the problem. ZOS tend to do too little, or too much when it comes to Combat, and maybe that’s intentional. I don’t know what kind of talks happen in their studio, but I refuse to believe they are so dense that they couldn’t fix the majority of problems if they actually did in fact want to.

Rohamad_Ali · October 3

I'm not sure if it was 1.4 or 1.6 but Vampires use to really be immortal in game. They nerfed that into the dirt for everyone's sanity in Cyrodiil.

Lord_Hev · October 3

Even scribing can be argued to be one of the worst additions ever. Scribing as it is now, completely enables the stacking of 3 offensive lines in PvP.

YandereGirlfriend · October 3

Onomog wrote: »

React wrote: »

The sad thing is, I've never seen them admit they were wrong about a single thing related to combat or balance. Might be their biggest downfall, honestly.

This right here is the most important takeaway. Agree 100%

Indeed.

The general sort of inability to say, "Whoops! That didn't work out the way that we had intended... here, let us quickly put in the work to right the wrongs!" is as baffling as it is self-sabotaging.

The main touchstone for that is probably U35 and then subclassing but really most of the consequential combat additions have just sort of been dumped into the live game with only minimal PTS feedback being responded to and then even more minimal post-patch tuning-up and balancing.

And the biggest tragedy in that is that all of those changes were good in principle... it's just the execution and follow-through where the bag got fumbled.

The good news is that that can be changed and improved at any moment... but the bad news is that it would require a different sort of philosophical stance from the devs toward things like player and PTS feedback than what we generally have had for the last many years.

BardokRedSnow · October 3

My favorite combat change to the game was giving DK a hybrid whip, though that came at the cost of a nerf to whip as a whole. Even so it was nice to have a more sustainable option for whip for DK that arent exclusively mag. Hybridization of stam and mag was a mixed bag but it gave DK more ability to use their bag without being forced to rely exclusively on mag. This is good for build diversity and for class identity.

And then they introduced subclassing and made all of that moot.

Horace-Wimp · October 3

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Hello Everyone,

I've been playing this game for nearly six years...

There. I proved you wrong. What's my prize?

MasterSpatula · October 3

The time frame OP is talking about aligns pretty much with Wheeler's tenure as combat lead, and I would have to agree that there have been no combat updates during that time that were not negative.

The Wrobel era probably had more bad updates than good ones, but there were good ones. Since his departure, I can think of a few individual changes that were solid, but all the updates on the whole were bad.

This is all subjective, of course, but subjectivity doesn't make something meaningless.

spartaxoxo · October 3

The group finder indirectly improved combat by greatly improving access to hard content. I know it's not a direct combat change or combat oriented but it does feel like a huge miss not to give it an honorable mention.

fizzybeef · October 3

Hybridisation and subclassing are the begin and the biggest part of the downfall

moderatelyfatman · 8:09AM

Horace-Wimp wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Hello Everyone,

I've been playing this game for nearly six years...

There. I proved you wrong. What's my prize?

Gabriel_H · 8:18AM

React wrote: »

The sad thing is, I've never seen them admit they were wrong about a single thing related to combat or balance. Might be their biggest downfall, honestly.

I can't remember the exact dev quote but it was something like: "Animation cancelling was never intended but it is not an exploit."