Update 50 PTS – Week 4 Summary

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · May 8

Hi everyone! Welcome to our Update 50 PTS summary for week 4. In case you missed our update here, we are back to having five weeks of PTS this cycle and for the foreseeable future.

As with our previous PTS Weekly Summaries, this post compiles a high-level summary of the Update 50 PTS – Week 4 top feedback points and issues. The purpose of these weekly PTS summaries is to give you visibility into the main pieces of feedback and most prominent bugs we are tracking. As a gentle reminder, these summaries are not intended to be as comprehensive as our PTS weekly patch notes, so they will not include everything that will appear in those.

You may read our summaries here for Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3.

Thank you for your continued PTS bug reports and feedback, and as always, we welcome your thoughts on these PTS summaries.

Challenge Difficulty

Angof the Gravesinger [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. While playing on Master or Vestige, standing in Gabrielle Benele's Light magic does not save you from Angof's Vengeance as it should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.
Changes to Master and Seasoned Damage Output [Feedback]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. With PTS Week 5, we are making some changes to the damage output for Master and Seasoned Challenge Difficulty levels. We are making these changes to address the feedback that the damage output between Adventurer, Seasoned, and Master did not feel different enough. With the changes the Challenge Difficulty levels will look like this for PTS Week 5 as well as the Challenge Difficulty launch with Update 50 in June:
- Adventurer: No changes
- Seasoned: -50% (was -20%) Damage Done, +100% Damage Taken, +20% XP, +50% Gold
- Master: -65% (was -50%) Damage Done, +300% Damage Taken, +75% XP, +100% Gold
- Vestige: -80% Damage Done, +600% Damage Taken, +100% XP, +200% Gold
UI: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. UI elements for Challenge Difficulty do not update in real time on Keyboard UI and Console UI. This will be fixed in time for Update 50 launch in June.

Class Mastery

General [Feedback]: We have seen a variety of questions and concerns about some Class Mastery passives – particularly for Necromancers, Nightblades, Sorcerers, and Templars, feeling underwhelming compared to others, or generally not feeling like they match certain playstyles or function as well as you’d like for certain types of content. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.
Necromancer – Malevolent Promise [Feedback]: In addition to the info we provided in last week’s PTS Summary about the Malevolent Promise passive changes and PvP content, we wanted to address a follow-up question we saw. Some of you asked if this change was due to how Malevolent Promise behaves when paired with the Corpseburster item set. The short answer is yes. In our internal testing, we observed that certain combinations paired with Malevolent Promise and Corpseburster were overwhelmingly powerful in a way that created an oppressive gameplay experience, especially when multiple Necromancers are coordinating. It had no counterplay and was effectively a surefire “I win” combo – fun for the caster, not fun for the target, and not healthy for our overall PvP experience. We did try a few other solutions such as a cooldown per target, or only one Necro in the group getting the buff and the other not, etc. It also wasn’t a quick decision – we exhausted a lot of solutions and time internally exploring these other possible options to try to improve the PvP experience, and making Malevolent Promise usable on only non-player targets in PvP was were we landed for now. It is possible we'll revisit this in the future, potentially when we get to the Necromancer class refresh. We hope this additional context helps. (Related post.)
Sorcerer – Font of Power [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. This passive can occasionally go to a group member instead of the caster. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.
Sorcerer – Sphere of Influence [Bug]: There is a bug with Sphere of Influence not acting as it should. Currently it is only applying to one player instead of two, and it is not working with the Daedric Refuge AoE shield. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Favors

Rewards [Feedback]: This is a carry-over from previous PTS Weekly Summaries. We have seen your feedback that the rewards for Favors don’t feel substantial enough, so we have updated these rewards across the board. You will continue to see tweaks to this through PTS Week 5, but these all should be much more rewarding now as well as each Favor having a unique reward pull for completing them.

Player Experience Improvements

Guild Mail [Bug]: We have fixed an issue where guild mail was not showing a generic icon for guilds that had not yet chosen guild heraldry. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.
Path to Adventure Golden Pursuits Campaign [Bugs]: We have fixed several general polish and continuity bugs with this Golden Pursuits campaign. These fixes will be in PTS Week 5.

Thieves Guild & Sheogorath Content

Daggerfall Thieves Den [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are investigating reports of players getting flagged for stealing after taking items from inside the Daggerfall Thieves Den.
Quests – General: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are working on fixes for minor continuity and polish issues and some quest blockers across various quests in the Thieves Guild and Sheogorath content. Some of these fixes will be in PTS Week 5, and others will go in for Update 50 launch in June.
Racing to Nowhere Quest [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. Going through the portal in Quen's room can teleport you back to the start of her room or the nexus room. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Werewolf Refresh

General [Bugs]: We are investigating a number of miscellaneous visual-related issues with the new Werewolf model. These issues will be fixed with Update 50 in June. (Related post.)
General [Feedback]: Over the past few weeks and especially following last week’s changes to the Werewolf kit, we have seen both your PTS feedback and follow-up questions. These have ranged from concerns about the Werewolf’s general power in PvE and how the Werewolf kit is interacting with some Class Mastery passives, to questions about overall Werewolf power, damage output, tanking, and healing. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.

Miscellaneous

Dark Anchors & Zone Incursions: We identified an issue where Dark Anchor events, Geyers, Oblivion Portals, and Volcanic Vents were not granting rewards chests upon completion, as they should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Wuuffyy · May 8

As a long term werewolf player, before live I am once again asking for werewolf to to be excluded from Signet mythic for obvious reasons (an ult that doesn't consume ult in a normal fashion... guaranteed/high chance status effects in kit... still having an ult ~rampage~ that doesn't consume ult…feral guardian was impacted for less of a toxic interaction than this)...

A- It (again, Signet) is inflating parses on either end far above other classes due to the minor/major buffs and how werewolf interacts with this mythic which also heavily limits ‘viability’ of other options and especially other mythics and monster sets for werewolf in comparison.

Additionally, the bleed in PvP feels inappropriately, non-thematic to me. I believe that a 1 second bleed has more semblance to a direct damage 'hit' than it does an actual bleed. When I imagine a werewolf clawing at someone and causing them to bleed, I imagine that bleeding to occur over a period of time rather than a 'one and done' effect. That aside, with werewolf having a different light attack cadence, it's very easy to miss 'the optimal refresh window' and potentially need to wait until a 2nd light attack in the chain just to get your bleed tick (hence I had suggested re-increasing to 2 to 4 seconds).

B- I think that 2-4 seconds makes this feel thematic in that my target is continuously bleeding but also reinforcing they fact that I need to continue to stay on target to be rewarded.

I also want to recoup some of my damage in PvP that we've lost… (20-30% tooltip reductions across the board based on my control test here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/692088/werewolf-tooltips-pvp-significantly-nerfed-from-live-proof ~ for those that don't know... the visible disparity becomes worse as I put on more gear/specialized gear)… so I am wanting to use Hircine's Rage... but at the same time a 12% increase in damage taken for 20 seconds is just so very severe it makes any defense I build nearly obsolete.

C- Despite what was mentioned in the 'attached' thread to this summary, I do believe that Hircine's Rage would be an appropriate spot to healthily have 'minor resolve' (sourced very commonly out of kit) and make this morph a bit more feasible in PvP especially.

(quick reminder for all that Hircine's Rage is the heal that scales terribly with weapon and spell damage already and not health)

The obligatory tags (I do appreciate any and all engagement with these even if it isn't necessarily the 'mainstream' opinion): @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_Kevin

AlienatedGoat · May 8

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

[*] Changes to Master and Seasoned Damage Output [Feedback]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. With PTS Week 5, we are making some changes to the damage output for Master and Seasoned Challenge Difficulty levels. We are making these changes to address the feedback that the damage output between Adventurer, Seasoned, and Master did not feel different enough. With the changes the Challenge Difficulty levels will look like this for PTS Week 5 as well as the Challenge Difficulty launch with Update 50 in June:
Adventurer: No changes

Seasoned: -50% (was -20%) Damage Done, +100% Damage Taken, +20% XP, +50% Gold

Master: -65% (was -50%) Damage Done, +300% Damage Taken, +75% XP, +100% Gold

Vestige: -80% Damage Done, +600% Damage Taken, +100% XP, +200% Gold

If the damage nerf of Seasoned is being more than doubled from 20% to 50%, the XP gain should also reflect that difficulty bump. I'd propose a revised XP scale of 50%/75%/100%.

Erickson9610 · May 8

Thank you for addressing the visual bugs with the Werewolf model!

YandereGirlfriend · May 8

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

we observed that certain combinations paired with Malevolent Promise and Corpseburster were overwhelmingly powerful in a way that created an oppressive gameplay experience, especially when multiple Necromancers are coordinating. It had no counterplay and was effectively a surefire “I win” combo – fun for the caster, not fun for the target, and not healthy for our overall PvP experience.

These words also perfectly articulate the current situation in Live PvP with the massively oppressive Pulseganking and Signet meta.

Extremely long-range, status-effect-based one-shots with zero opportunity for counterplay other than to use the same build on the other player first. It is, on one hand, extraordinarily oppressive, as well as trivially easy to pull off. Which is not at all a healthy combination.

I can provide plenty of clips and gameplay footage of the issue in question if that would be helpful for the purposes of helping bring balance to the situation.

Urvoth · May 8

I appreciate the response regarding Malevolent Promise, but I still think there are better solutions that would allow its use in PvP. For instance, since the issue is with the Corpseburster interaction, why not disable Corpseburster in PvP or significantly decrease the set's damage while Battle-Spirit is active? Corpseburster is already a niche PvP set and it would be much better for Necros as a whole to lose only a single set compared to an entire mastery passive. There's many other viable PvP sets, yet only 5 mastery passives per class.

There's a major use case for Malevolent Promise in PvP outside of using Corpseburster. Necro has forever lacked a strong class "sticky" dot, and Malevolent Promise would allow the tether to finally be viable in PvP. The fast ticks, alternate cost, unique damage bonus, and regen/aoe damage make it a conceptually solid skill, but its static nature and small aoe radius unfortunately mean that it's nonviable in dynamic PvP environments. This is of course on top of also being able to get faster corpse generation for skills like Deaden Pain.

Necro's identity goes a lot further than corpse bursting, and many necro players also aren't interested in a Corpseburster playstyle. It seems rather unfair to give Necro one less mastery option than other classes in PvP purely because of one interaction that can be mitigated in other ways.

I also have to question why this passive is being added in the first place if the intention after playtesting was to disable it completely in PvP. If you don't want to restrict Corpseburster in any way, why add a passive that is removed in half the game's content? Corpseburster is already fairly viable in PvE without Malevolent Promise, whereas skills like siphon are otherwise completely nonviable in PvP. Why not add a proc dot or mastery passive that leans into alternate necro themes that could work in all modes of content?

Once again, I don't think pushing this back to the necro rework and/or telling players to just wait for the rework is appropriate here. The necro rework is the second to last and isn't coming for another 2 years. That's far too long to address an issue where an already struggling class gets access to one less passive than other classes (that are also being reworked earlier).

shadoza · 1:07AM

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone! Welcome to our Update 50 PTS summary for week 4. In case you missed our update here, we are back to having five weeks of PTS this cycle and for the foreseeable future.

As with our previous PTS Weekly Summaries, this post compiles a high-level summary of the Update 50 PTS – Week 4 top feedback points and issues. The purpose of these weekly PTS summaries is to give you visibility into the main pieces of feedback and most prominent bugs we are tracking. As a gentle reminder, these summaries are not intended to be as comprehensive as our PTS weekly patch notes, so they will not include everything that will appear in those.

You may read our summaries here for Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3.

Thank you for your continued PTS bug reports and feedback, and as always, we welcome your thoughts on these PTS summaries.

Challenge Difficulty
Angof the Gravesinger [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. While playing on Master or Vestige, standing in Gabrielle Benele's Light magic does not save you from Angof's Vengeance as it should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Changes to Master and Seasoned Damage Output [Feedback]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. With PTS Week 5, we are making some changes to the damage output for Master and Seasoned Challenge Difficulty levels. We are making these changes to address the feedback that the damage output between Adventurer, Seasoned, and Master did not feel different enough. With the changes the Challenge Difficulty levels will look like this for PTS Week 5 as well as the Challenge Difficulty launch with Update 50 in June:
Adventurer: No changes

Seasoned: -50% (was -20%) Damage Done, +100% Damage Taken, +20% XP, +50% Gold

Master: -65% (was -50%) Damage Done, +300% Damage Taken, +75% XP, +100% Gold

Vestige: -80% Damage Done, +600% Damage Taken, +100% XP, +200% Gold

UI: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. UI elements for Challenge Difficulty do not update in real time on Keyboard UI and Console UI. This will be fixed in time for Update 50 launch in June.

Class Mastery
General [Feedback]: We have seen a variety of questions and concerns about some Class Mastery passives – particularly for Necromancers, Nightblades, Sorcerers, and Templars, feeling underwhelming compared to others, or generally not feeling like they match certain playstyles or function as well as you’d like for certain types of content. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.

Necromancer – Malevolent Promise [Feedback]: In addition to the info we provided in last week’s PTS Summary about the Malevolent Promise passive changes and PvP content, we wanted to address a follow-up question we saw. Some of you asked if this change was due to how Malevolent Promise behaves when paired with the Corpseburster item set. The short answer is yes. In our internal testing, we observed that certain combinations paired with Malevolent Promise and Corpseburster were overwhelmingly powerful in a way that created an oppressive gameplay experience, especially when multiple Necromancers are coordinating. It had no counterplay and was effectively a surefire “I win” combo – fun for the caster, not fun for the target, and not healthy for our overall PvP experience. We did try a few other solutions such as a cooldown per target, or only one Necro in the group getting the buff and the other not, etc. It also wasn’t a quick decision – we exhausted a lot of solutions and time internally exploring these other possible options to try to improve the PvP experience, and making Malevolent Promise usable on only non-player targets in PvP was were we landed for now. It is possible we'll revisit this in the future, potentially when we get to the Necromancer class refresh. We hope this additional context helps. (Related post.)

Sorcerer – Font of Power [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. This passive can occasionally go to a group member instead of the caster. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Sorcerer – Sphere of Influence [Bug]: There is a bug with Sphere of Influence not acting as it should. Currently it is only applying to one player instead of two, and it is not working with the Daedric Refuge AoE shield. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Favors
Rewards [Feedback]: This is a carry-over from previous PTS Weekly Summaries. We have seen your feedback that the rewards for Favors don’t feel substantial enough, so we have updated these rewards across the board. You will continue to see tweaks to this through PTS Week 5, but these all should be much more rewarding now as well as each Favor having a unique reward pull for completing them.

Player Experience Improvements
Guild Mail [Bug]: We have fixed an issue where guild mail was not showing a generic icon for guilds that had not yet chosen guild heraldry. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Path to Adventure Golden Pursuits Campaign [Bugs]: We have fixed several general polish and continuity bugs with this Golden Pursuits campaign. These fixes will be in PTS Week 5.

Thieves Guild & Sheogorath Content
Daggerfall Thieves Den [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are investigating reports of players getting flagged for stealing after taking items from inside the Daggerfall Thieves Den.

Quests – General: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are working on fixes for minor continuity and polish issues and some quest blockers across various quests in the Thieves Guild and Sheogorath content. Some of these fixes will be in PTS Week 5, and others will go in for Update 50 launch in June.

Racing to Nowhere Quest [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. Going through the portal in Quen's room can teleport you back to the start of her room or the nexus room. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Werewolf Refresh
General [Bugs]: We are investigating a number of miscellaneous visual-related issues with the new Werewolf model. These issues will be fixed with Update 50 in June. (Related post.)

General [Feedback]: Over the past few weeks and especially following last week’s changes to the Werewolf kit, we have seen both your PTS feedback and follow-up questions. These have ranged from concerns about the Werewolf’s general power in PvE and how the Werewolf kit is interacting with some Class Mastery passives, to questions about overall Werewolf power, damage output, tanking, and healing. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.

Miscellaneous
Dark Anchors & Zone Incursions: We identified an issue where Dark Anchor events, Geyers, Oblivion Portals, and Volcanic Vents were not granting rewards chests upon completion, as they should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Regarding class changes, please remember that each change made to make PvP better is also changing PvE behavior. It is a shamed that so many good skills are getting nerfed because of PvP complaints.
Perhaps PvP can have a dedicated skills so the rest if the game does not have to be nerfed.

ImPoStier · 1:53AM

shadoza wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone! Welcome to our Update 50 PTS summary for week 4. In case you missed our update here, we are back to having five weeks of PTS this cycle and for the foreseeable future.

As with our previous PTS Weekly Summaries, this post compiles a high-level summary of the Update 50 PTS – Week 4 top feedback points and issues. The purpose of these weekly PTS summaries is to give you visibility into the main pieces of feedback and most prominent bugs we are tracking. As a gentle reminder, these summaries are not intended to be as comprehensive as our PTS weekly patch notes, so they will not include everything that will appear in those.

You may read our summaries here for Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3.

Thank you for your continued PTS bug reports and feedback, and as always, we welcome your thoughts on these PTS summaries.

Challenge Difficulty
Angof the Gravesinger [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. While playing on Master or Vestige, standing in Gabrielle Benele's Light magic does not save you from Angof's Vengeance as it should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Changes to Master and Seasoned Damage Output [Feedback]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. With PTS Week 5, we are making some changes to the damage output for Master and Seasoned Challenge Difficulty levels. We are making these changes to address the feedback that the damage output between Adventurer, Seasoned, and Master did not feel different enough. With the changes the Challenge Difficulty levels will look like this for PTS Week 5 as well as the Challenge Difficulty launch with Update 50 in June:
Adventurer: No changes

Seasoned: -50% (was -20%) Damage Done, +100% Damage Taken, +20% XP, +50% Gold

Master: -65% (was -50%) Damage Done, +300% Damage Taken, +75% XP, +100% Gold

Vestige: -80% Damage Done, +600% Damage Taken, +100% XP, +200% Gold

UI: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. UI elements for Challenge Difficulty do not update in real time on Keyboard UI and Console UI. This will be fixed in time for Update 50 launch in June.

Class Mastery
General [Feedback]: We have seen a variety of questions and concerns about some Class Mastery passives – particularly for Necromancers, Nightblades, Sorcerers, and Templars, feeling underwhelming compared to others, or generally not feeling like they match certain playstyles or function as well as you’d like for certain types of content. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.

Necromancer – Malevolent Promise [Feedback]: In addition to the info we provided in last week’s PTS Summary about the Malevolent Promise passive changes and PvP content, we wanted to address a follow-up question we saw. Some of you asked if this change was due to how Malevolent Promise behaves when paired with the Corpseburster item set. The short answer is yes. In our internal testing, we observed that certain combinations paired with Malevolent Promise and Corpseburster were overwhelmingly powerful in a way that created an oppressive gameplay experience, especially when multiple Necromancers are coordinating. It had no counterplay and was effectively a surefire “I win” combo – fun for the caster, not fun for the target, and not healthy for our overall PvP experience. We did try a few other solutions such as a cooldown per target, or only one Necro in the group getting the buff and the other not, etc. It also wasn’t a quick decision – we exhausted a lot of solutions and time internally exploring these other possible options to try to improve the PvP experience, and making Malevolent Promise usable on only non-player targets in PvP was were we landed for now. It is possible we'll revisit this in the future, potentially when we get to the Necromancer class refresh. We hope this additional context helps. (Related post.)

Sorcerer – Font of Power [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. This passive can occasionally go to a group member instead of the caster. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Sorcerer – Sphere of Influence [Bug]: There is a bug with Sphere of Influence not acting as it should. Currently it is only applying to one player instead of two, and it is not working with the Daedric Refuge AoE shield. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Favors
Rewards [Feedback]: This is a carry-over from previous PTS Weekly Summaries. We have seen your feedback that the rewards for Favors don’t feel substantial enough, so we have updated these rewards across the board. You will continue to see tweaks to this through PTS Week 5, but these all should be much more rewarding now as well as each Favor having a unique reward pull for completing them.

Player Experience Improvements
Guild Mail [Bug]: We have fixed an issue where guild mail was not showing a generic icon for guilds that had not yet chosen guild heraldry. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Path to Adventure Golden Pursuits Campaign [Bugs]: We have fixed several general polish and continuity bugs with this Golden Pursuits campaign. These fixes will be in PTS Week 5.

Thieves Guild & Sheogorath Content
Daggerfall Thieves Den [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are investigating reports of players getting flagged for stealing after taking items from inside the Daggerfall Thieves Den.

Quests – General: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are working on fixes for minor continuity and polish issues and some quest blockers across various quests in the Thieves Guild and Sheogorath content. Some of these fixes will be in PTS Week 5, and others will go in for Update 50 launch in June.

Racing to Nowhere Quest [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. Going through the portal in Quen's room can teleport you back to the start of her room or the nexus room. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Werewolf Refresh
General [Bugs]: We are investigating a number of miscellaneous visual-related issues with the new Werewolf model. These issues will be fixed with Update 50 in June. (Related post.)

General [Feedback]: Over the past few weeks and especially following last week’s changes to the Werewolf kit, we have seen both your PTS feedback and follow-up questions. These have ranged from concerns about the Werewolf’s general power in PvE and how the Werewolf kit is interacting with some Class Mastery passives, to questions about overall Werewolf power, damage output, tanking, and healing. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.

Miscellaneous
Dark Anchors & Zone Incursions: We identified an issue where Dark Anchor events, Geyers, Oblivion Portals, and Volcanic Vents were not granting rewards chests upon completion, as they should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Regarding class changes, please remember that each change made to make PvP better is also changing PvE behavior. It is a shamed that so many good skills are getting nerfed because of PvP complaints.
Perhaps PvP can have a dedicated skills so the rest if the game does not have to be nerfed.

They are trying that it’s called vengeance and everyone hates it

shadoza · 3:06AM

ImPoStier wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone! Welcome to our Update 50 PTS summary for week 4. In case you missed our update here, we are back to having five weeks of PTS this cycle and for the foreseeable future.

As with our previous PTS Weekly Summaries, this post compiles a high-level summary of the Update 50 PTS – Week 4 top feedback points and issues. The purpose of these weekly PTS summaries is to give you visibility into the main pieces of feedback and most prominent bugs we are tracking. As a gentle reminder, these summaries are not intended to be as comprehensive as our PTS weekly patch notes, so they will not include everything that will appear in those.

You may read our summaries here for Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3.

Thank you for your continued PTS bug reports and feedback, and as always, we welcome your thoughts on these PTS summaries.

Challenge Difficulty
Angof the Gravesinger [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. While playing on Master or Vestige, standing in Gabrielle Benele's Light magic does not save you from Angof's Vengeance as it should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Changes to Master and Seasoned Damage Output [Feedback]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. With PTS Week 5, we are making some changes to the damage output for Master and Seasoned Challenge Difficulty levels. We are making these changes to address the feedback that the damage output between Adventurer, Seasoned, and Master did not feel different enough. With the changes the Challenge Difficulty levels will look like this for PTS Week 5 as well as the Challenge Difficulty launch with Update 50 in June:
Adventurer: No changes

Seasoned: -50% (was -20%) Damage Done, +100% Damage Taken, +20% XP, +50% Gold

Master: -65% (was -50%) Damage Done, +300% Damage Taken, +75% XP, +100% Gold

Vestige: -80% Damage Done, +600% Damage Taken, +100% XP, +200% Gold

UI: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. UI elements for Challenge Difficulty do not update in real time on Keyboard UI and Console UI. This will be fixed in time for Update 50 launch in June.

Class Mastery
General [Feedback]: We have seen a variety of questions and concerns about some Class Mastery passives – particularly for Necromancers, Nightblades, Sorcerers, and Templars, feeling underwhelming compared to others, or generally not feeling like they match certain playstyles or function as well as you’d like for certain types of content. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.

Necromancer – Malevolent Promise [Feedback]: In addition to the info we provided in last week’s PTS Summary about the Malevolent Promise passive changes and PvP content, we wanted to address a follow-up question we saw. Some of you asked if this change was due to how Malevolent Promise behaves when paired with the Corpseburster item set. The short answer is yes. In our internal testing, we observed that certain combinations paired with Malevolent Promise and Corpseburster were overwhelmingly powerful in a way that created an oppressive gameplay experience, especially when multiple Necromancers are coordinating. It had no counterplay and was effectively a surefire “I win” combo – fun for the caster, not fun for the target, and not healthy for our overall PvP experience. We did try a few other solutions such as a cooldown per target, or only one Necro in the group getting the buff and the other not, etc. It also wasn’t a quick decision – we exhausted a lot of solutions and time internally exploring these other possible options to try to improve the PvP experience, and making Malevolent Promise usable on only non-player targets in PvP was were we landed for now. It is possible we'll revisit this in the future, potentially when we get to the Necromancer class refresh. We hope this additional context helps. (Related post.)

Sorcerer – Font of Power [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary, with a timing update. This passive can occasionally go to a group member instead of the caster. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Sorcerer – Sphere of Influence [Bug]: There is a bug with Sphere of Influence not acting as it should. Currently it is only applying to one player instead of two, and it is not working with the Daedric Refuge AoE shield. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Favors
Rewards [Feedback]: This is a carry-over from previous PTS Weekly Summaries. We have seen your feedback that the rewards for Favors don’t feel substantial enough, so we have updated these rewards across the board. You will continue to see tweaks to this through PTS Week 5, but these all should be much more rewarding now as well as each Favor having a unique reward pull for completing them.

Player Experience Improvements
Guild Mail [Bug]: We have fixed an issue where guild mail was not showing a generic icon for guilds that had not yet chosen guild heraldry. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Path to Adventure Golden Pursuits Campaign [Bugs]: We have fixed several general polish and continuity bugs with this Golden Pursuits campaign. These fixes will be in PTS Week 5.

Thieves Guild & Sheogorath Content
Daggerfall Thieves Den [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are investigating reports of players getting flagged for stealing after taking items from inside the Daggerfall Thieves Den.

Quests – General: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are working on fixes for minor continuity and polish issues and some quest blockers across various quests in the Thieves Guild and Sheogorath content. Some of these fixes will be in PTS Week 5, and others will go in for Update 50 launch in June.

Racing to Nowhere Quest [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. Going through the portal in Quen's room can teleport you back to the start of her room or the nexus room. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Werewolf Refresh
General [Bugs]: We are investigating a number of miscellaneous visual-related issues with the new Werewolf model. These issues will be fixed with Update 50 in June. (Related post.)

General [Feedback]: Over the past few weeks and especially following last week’s changes to the Werewolf kit, we have seen both your PTS feedback and follow-up questions. These have ranged from concerns about the Werewolf’s general power in PvE and how the Werewolf kit is interacting with some Class Mastery passives, to questions about overall Werewolf power, damage output, tanking, and healing. We have compiled some of the main topics we’ve seen from you and have answered them in this longer post here.

Miscellaneous
Dark Anchors & Zone Incursions: We identified an issue where Dark Anchor events, Geyers, Oblivion Portals, and Volcanic Vents were not granting rewards chests upon completion, as they should. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Regarding class changes, please remember that each change made to make PvP better is also changing PvE behavior. It is a shamed that so many good skills are getting nerfed because of PvP complaints.
Perhaps PvP can have a dedicated skills so the rest if the game does not have to be nerfed.

They are trying that it’s called vengeance and everyone hates it

Not everyone.

Nebula_DooM · 4:55AM

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

we observed that certain combinations paired with Malevolent Promise and Corpseburster were overwhelmingly powerful in a way that created an oppressive gameplay experience, especially when multiple Necromancers are coordinating. It had no counterplay and was effectively a surefire “I win” combo – fun for the caster, not fun for the target, and not healthy for our overall PvP experience.

These words also perfectly articulate the current situation in Live PvP with the massively oppressive Pulseganking and Signet meta.

Extremely long-range, status-effect-based one-shots with zero opportunity for counterplay other than to use the same build on the other player first. It is, on one hand, extraordinarily oppressive, as well as trivially easy to pull off. Which is not at all a healthy combination.

I can provide plenty of clips and gameplay footage of the issue in question if that would be helpful for the purposes of helping bring balance to the situation.

Back when I used to pulse gank in 2021. There were once again very few counters. Ironblood when it gave a flat 30% damage reduction was one of them or you have to block and throw shields up. It got heavily nerfed once they changed draugrkin to a flat 330 damage on everyone instead of single target as well as adding the Crit Damage soft cap, and elemental weapon taking you out of stealth for guaranteed crits. The build primarily worked on Draugrkin and Critical Damage; I was pushing upwards of 160% crit damage with 7 pieces of medium armor, not to mention running resto ult sometimes, that's 180% critical damage easily obtainable.

The issue arising now stems from 3 things. The Mythic, albeit a minor issue imo. Snipe (because of the minimum travel time). And because of subclassing opportunities where you can add additional attacks through sorc crystal weapon and arcanist tome-bearer.

The reason why the Mythic is crazy is because people are finding sources of damage, where you can cast and forget about. The Mythic itself and Force Pulse is fine. But then you start adding Snipe (Poisoned Arrow), Crystal Weapon, Tome-Bearer, and on top of that, charged trait, and you are getting free damage. You don’t have to run the asylum staff, because of the abundance of status effect chances being added.

I'd wager, take away subclassing from pulse ganking now, it will destroy the build, but you are unravelling all the work that has been done for subclassing. Therefore, Force Pulse def needs to be looked at (especially its interaction with draugrkin). The behaviour of Crystal weapon and Tome-Bearer needs to be looked at (these are free-casts, in the sense that they don't affect your GCD). Take away Status effects for a moment. You are using Snipe (takes time to travel so you bar swap), light attack, Force Pulse, Crystal Weapon and Tome-Bearers. Procs damage all within 1 second. You are getting 3 spammables to hit at the same time (I don't consider Tome-Bearers to be a spammable, its damage is comparable to status effects.) Add Enchants or Damage Health Poisons + status effects into the mix and thats how you get 15-20 attacks in a single GCD, all while being buffed by Draugrkin + any damage modifiers like Berserk and Vulnerability.

I also think another reason why this hasn't been addressed yet is because, everyone can easily access detect pots, or its hard to fit the Shadow Class Skill Line when you are running sorc / arc skill lines. But it just doesn't matter anymore. you are many metres away from whoever you are fighting. Even worse, just run a support skill and you get even more range out of pulse ganking. The highest range I got my force pulse to hit from was 48 metres, at least the tooltip was showing that.

Arunei · 6:55AM

Nothing about Berserker Form sustain, huh? Numerous people, myself included, are still finding it too hard to keep Berserker up. Yes, even with Minor Heorism, even with LA/HA, even with the tweak that was done to CotH, longer fights with nothing to Devour and when you don't have the time to proc Rampage are VERY hard to keep your Form up during.

I haven't seen anything about Shapeshiffter's Chain having any sort of changes, even though it's largely pointless how it is now:

WW only costs 100 Ult to use and pretty much all the Skills except Hircine's Bounty and its Morphs cost next to nothing to use now. The Max stats boost is...not really much in the grand scheme of things.

Why hasn't this Mythic been touched AT ALL with WW's rework into being something actually helpful? Make it reduce the cost to MAINTAIN WW form by like half or something, or give it a unique buff that lets a transformed WW generate like 4 Ult per second while in combat or something. Literally any number of things could be done to make this a worthwhile Mythic for WWs. It's supposed to be THE WW Mythic but as it is now, it's pointless.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

nightbringer1993 · 7:34AM

Necromancer – Malevolent Promise [Feedback]: In addition to the info we provided in last week’s PTS Summary about the Malevolent Promise passive changes and PvP content, we wanted to address a follow-up question we saw. Some of you asked if this change was due to how Malevolent Promise behaves when paired with the Corpseburster item set. The short answer is yes. In our internal testing, we observed that certain combinations paired with Malevolent Promise and Corpseburster were overwhelmingly powerful in a way that created an oppressive gameplay experience, especially when multiple Necromancers are coordinating. It had no counterplay and was effectively a surefire “I win” combo – fun for the caster, not fun for the target, and not healthy for our overall PvP experience. We did try a few other solutions such as a cooldown per target, or only one Necro in the group getting the buff and the other not, etc. It also wasn’t a quick decision – we exhausted a lot of solutions and time internally exploring these other possible options to try to improve the PvP experience, and making Malevolent Promise usable on only non-player targets in PvP was were we landed for now. It is possible we'll revisit this in the future, potentially when we get to the Necromancer class refresh. We hope this additional context helps. (Related post.)

Refresh necromancer this year then! Winter 2027 is too late!

DoofusMax · 3:17PM

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thieves Guild & Sheogorath Content
Daggerfall Thieves Den [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are investigating reports of players getting flagged for stealing after taking items from inside the Daggerfall Thieves Den.

Quests – General: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. We are working on fixes for minor continuity and polish issues and some quest blockers across various quests in the Thieves Guild and Sheogorath content. Some of these fixes will be in PTS Week 5, and others will go in for Update 50 launch in June.

Racing to Nowhere Quest [Bug]: This is a carryover from last week’s PTS Summary. Going through the portal in Quen's room can teleport you back to the start of her room or the nexus room. This will be fixed in PTS Week 5.

Hi @ZOS_JessicaFolsom. Thank you for the great update on what's in the chute. One item of note is that most things in the Thieves Den and Outlaw Refuge are not lootable. The bug I reported on this was regarding items which were stolen outside, so learning stolen recipes, opening stolen shipments, and that kind of thing. The Justice system is generally turned off in Outlaw Refuges, so those stolen shipments and such can be opened or used with impunity prior to fencing/laundering. If your reports aren't that, then it's a different problem.

danko355 · 3:58PM

So pure nightblade is acknowledged to be a weak (actually weakest) class with weak class masteries, but nothing will be done about it because.. you want to wait until the class refresh? I thought the exact purpose of these masteries was to lower the gap between already reworked classes, sub classes and lacking classes, yet nightblades can’t get decent passives, while already reworked DKs get further buffs to their skills and decent class masteries?

Wuuffyy · 4:06PM

@Arunei - it goes without saying but the Salvation set is equally in a sorry state:

-horrible, non-keystone bonuses for either PvE DPS or your standard PvP build

-a measly 150 wep and spell damage ONLY while transformed (this compared to MANY other ‘specialized’ sets that receive anywhere from 400-600 wep and spell)

-a reduction that I believe only focuses on the initial transformation or at least becomes a moot point after you throw on a whole set providing nothing truly meaningful to fulfill role-based duties

Arunei · 4:23PM

Wuuffyy wrote: »

@Arunei - it goes without saying but the Salvation set is equally in a sorry state:

-horrible, non-keystone bonuses for either PvE DPS or your standard PvP build

-a measly 150 wep and spell damage ONLY while transformed (this compared to MANY other ‘specialized’ sets that only receive anywhere from 400-600 wep and spell)

-a reduction that I believe only focuses on the initial transformation or at least becomes a moot point after you throw on a whole set providing nothing truly meaningful to fulfill role-based duties

It's feels like such an oversight that only two WW Sets were changed (and those only a small amount) instead of ALL of them being updated for reworked WW.

autocookies · 4:25PM

I would like to request that this be considered:

When casting the Werewolf Ultimate to enter Werewolf form, the Werewolf timer starts paused for 20 seconds to allow players time to build Fury or generate additional Ultimate.

The biggest pain point for me with the PTS Werewolf is starting with low Ultimate and losing Werewolf form after only 10 seconds. Any adjustment to help rectify this would be greatly appreciated.

Wuuffyy · 5:32PM

autocookies wrote: »

I would like to request that this be considered:

When casting the Werewolf Ultimate to enter Werewolf form, the Werewolf timer starts paused for 20 seconds to allow players time to build Fury or generate additional Ultimate.

The biggest pain point for me with the PTS Werewolf is starting with low Ultimate and losing Werewolf form after only 10 seconds. Any adjustment to help rectify this would be greatly appreciated.

I agree and I feel a 15-20 seconds buffer would keep the current systems impactful while raising the floor for mostly QoL reasons. I think this will be really rough on new/less knowledgeable players and/or those that don’t meticulously analyze patch notes.

The loop will quite literally look like a bit like this, I bet:

Oh cool, I have werewolf ult!

*Uses it and de-transforms within 10 or so seconds potentially regardless of active combat.

-This happens several times over and the player is very likely to become frustrated with the experience whether temporarily (as they have to research to understand this non-streamlined ‘bar of entry’) or permanently.

The current ‘near-immediate ult tick’ system doesn’t give a new player a large amount of time to truly understand ‘what they did wrong’ to self-correct.

coop500 · 6:10PM

Please for the love of everything, disable the Signet Path mythic on werewolf, do not let this go to live.

- Signed, a WW player who wants to be viable outside of one toxic ring and not suffer a year of nerfs because of it.