Stamicka wrote: »

It goes both ways and I’d like to see PvP and PvE hard separated because of this. It’s been something I’ve been arguing for for a long time now.

That being said, so many of PvPs biggest problems come from PvE balancing. ZOS really showed their hand with update 35 when they stated that they wanted to bring the damage at the low end up to boost PvE participation rates. ZOS has been on a mission for a long time now to make higher damage in PvE easier to achieve so that people can more easily clear content.

They’ve been pretty successful with their goal , but they’ve achieved it by adding damage through low effort high reward sources.

A lot of things about balance start to make sense when you think of it this way. So much of the damage inflation in PvE comes from the constant addition and buffing of group support sets and a buffing of Major/Minor Buffs. Individual damage isn’t nearly as inflated as group damage when you compare it to where it was 8 years ago or so.

Unfortunately this is the very thing that buffs ball groups. You can get so much extra damage, sustain, and tankiness when you coordinate sets in a PvP group. These sets often have little to no drawbacks and they are easy to proc. Even small organized groups can achieve an extra 1000+ extra weapon/spell damage pretty easily on top of many other buffs. It’s a huge issue.

Another big issue is status effects and heavy attack builds. Status effects are literally free damage. They help in inflating PvE parses by a lot (with no extra effort), but they also give free effortless damage in PvP too. We saw this in its most extreme form with the status effect Werewolves. I also notice how much damage someone who simply lightning staff heavy attacks me can do now in PvP. It used to negligible damage, but now it puts out a lot of pressure despite its little effort.

I’m not personally a fan of how much of a joke PvE has become with the inflated damage, but I understand wanting to boost participation rates. If ZOS wants to continue down this path of making damage in PvE higher, they need to hard separate PvE and PvP. Those design philosophies do not mix well AT ALL.

As of right now PvP is in a spot where damage feels simultaneously too high and too low. The problem is that the damage is in the wrong places. Damage in PvP belongs on burst skills, but instead so much of it comes from procs, status effects, and DoTs. Players need to be more directly responsible for the damage they deal in PvP.