Shadowy Disguise
It's definitely nice that the Born From Shadow buff will last 15 seconds. This is a minor thing, but I think that it would be a nice QoL change if Shadow Barrier's Major Resolve would now last for 15 instead of 12 seconds at base too. That way players don't have to overcast Shadowy Disguise to have 100% uptime on Major Resolve without wearing any Heavy Armor pieces in PvE.

Dragonfire Breath and Claw Fury
Even though I'm not really a fan of beam builds myself, I like the changes to both of these skills. Since Pragmatic Fatecarver offers a substantial damage shield, it's only fair that similar channeled abilities have some defensive benefit as well.

I tested a solo DK Breath setup against a couple of bosses in veteran Unhallowed Grave and Castle Thorn, and it performed quite well. I wanted to do the same on a build with Claw Fury, but sadly the Werewolf Maxer seems to be bugged because the Werewolf skills weren't fully leveled after using it. Hopefully that's fixed in a future PTS update.

The "pet" consistency pass
I like that you've made it clearer which abilities and sets deal pet damage. I was just testing the Sorcerer's Class Flourish, to see if it did work as intended when used alongside sets such as Aegis Caller and Icy Conjurer, and didn't notice any bugs or anything.

While I was testing that Class Flourish, a thought did occur to me. I personally think it'd be great if its effect would depend on having a "permanent summoned combat pet", instead of any summoned combat pet, so that it still deals damage when your only summon is the Sorcerer's Storm Atronach ultimate.

Edit: I do wonder if it would be a good idea to add the "is considered pet damage" line to the tooltips of other abilities that summon pets, such as Blastbones and Skeletal Mage, to make it consistent with the item sets.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for any combat or class changes coming in Update 51. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance and changes.

For context regarding timeline for changes, stats or number changes for skills are changes we can make within the PTS cycle. If the changes or suggestions require more technical changes, we will take those to the combat team and update timelines based on what the team is able to do.

Please nerf DK whip as well as it's sustain. PvP is not okay with DK being as strong as it is.

BasP wrote: »

Shadowy Disguise
It's definitely nice that the Born From Shadow buff will last 15 seconds. This is a minor thing, but I think that it would be a nice QoL change if Shadow Barrier's Major Resolve would now last for 15 instead of 12 seconds at base too. That way players don't have to overcast Shadowy Disguise to have 100% uptime on Major Resolve without wearing any Heavy Armor pieces in PvE.

Maybe give both the same duration + extra duration per piece of heavy armor so the buffs always line up? Should also consider making Shadow Barrier activate on invisibility ending in addition to the current proc conditions, now that invis is a toggle. It's kinda dumb to toggle a skill on, lurk and reposition for a bit only to have the defensive buff fade before you actually start fighting something.

Wuuffyy wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

Shadowy Disguise
It's definitely nice that the Born From Shadow buff will last 15 seconds. This is a minor thing, but I think that it would be a nice QoL change if Shadow Barrier's Major Resolve would now last for 15 instead of 12 seconds at base too. That way players don't have to overcast Shadowy Disguise to have 100% uptime on Major Resolve without wearing any Heavy Armor pieces in PvE.

Dragonfire Breath and Claw Fury
Even though I'm not really a fan of beam builds myself, I like the changes to both of these skills. Since Pragmatic Fatecarver offers a substantial damage shield, it's only fair that similar channeled abilities have some defensive benefit as well.

I tested a solo DK Breath setup against a couple of bosses in veteran Unhallowed Grave and Castle Thorn, and it performed quite well. I wanted to do the same on a build with Claw Fury, but sadly the Werewolf Maxer seems to be bugged because the Werewolf skills weren't fully leveled after using it. Hopefully that's fixed in a future PTS update.

The "pet" consistency pass
I like that you've made it clearer which abilities and sets deal pet damage. I was just testing the Sorcerer's Class Flourish, to see if it did work as intended when used alongside sets such as Aegis Caller and Icy Conjurer, and didn't notice any bugs or anything.

While I was testing that Class Flourish, a thought did occur to me. I personally think it'd be great if its effect would depend on having a "permanent summoned combat pet", instead of any summoned combat pet, so that it still deals damage when your only summon is the Sorcerer's Storm Atronach ultimate.

The claw fury needs the HPS increased or something, I swear.

The healing on an actual DPS build stacking stam was around 2k or something per second (I remember it being woefully low and around half or less than bite). Definitely nowhere near a 10k+ insta damage shield or even a 15% unique damage mitigation increase. Someone else mentioned that in here too but thought I’d provide that insight.

In other words, there is little stopping me from being killed in my channel, especially compared to Arc shield.

Yeah, I hadn't looked into Claw Fury's healing yet but ~10% of your Max HP per second isn't great, even if it can crit.

I quickly leveled the Werewolf skills so that I could morph them and try out Claw Fury, and am indeed a tad disappointed by the heal. It would be nice if that was increased a bit.

Why even remake the characters at all at this point if they're just going to be reverted back to uselessness like the original DK? Or my Warden which has been completely gutted. The DK rework AND the Werewolf were beautifully done and perfect.
The issue is that the rest of the reworks are not done. Not that the new refreshes are bad or need to be ruined. Instead of ruining brand new characters, improve the other ones. Why keep giving us anything just to ruin it? Shattered Path Signet for example. Why even add it to the game? These nerfs need to come to an end. Nothing good will happen with many of the combat changes I've seen with the upcoming update. And for the most part that has been happening since U46. Take a look at the state of the game population. You think changes like this are going to make people keep investing in or wanting to play the game? My Guilds are ghost towns and every one of them have reduced their event schedules and talk about finding another game because they're characters are RUINED. And now you want to ruin the new ones too. What is the excitement factor for waiting years for our characters when this is what happens to 2 reworked Classes that haven't even been around for a year?

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

How do you think you are seeing 10-20k anything in the death recap? They are all crit hits with Thief Mundus (obviously around 10k) Shadow Mundus (around 12k+ hits). On targets with mere 25k resistance fully buffed and below 3.5k crit resist, you can reach 20k easily with crit on anything with proc (such as Crystal Frag, Whip, Merciless/Relentless Resolve) without Onslaught and Corrosive. You only need extra penetration to accompany Major/Minor Breach.

You're making my point. 25K+ resistances and 3.5K crit resist shouldn't be a thing unless you're a tank in PvE who can't do any real damage. Exactly why PvP is broken now when people can make DK, Sorc and Werewolf builds with everything you mention above plus infinite sustain - in all in one build.

The rock, paper, scissors that the original devs built into ESO PvP has been lost.

And all the devs seem to want to do is keep everyone out of stealth. At the very least the Werewolf stealth detection needs a cooldown to counter all this new stealth nonsense. Rally takes you out of stealth now too? Just take stealth completely out of the game already ZOS because your idea of "balancing" it gets more and more insane each successive patch.

There have always been 10,000 counterplays to stealth that the average player doesn't use but the devs somehow think even more are needed when no NB base PVPer is even using anything other than Merciless from the Nightblade toolkit anymore unless they're still and old school brawler and even then you only have a couple of actual Nightblade skills.

Just take the class out of the game already ZOS. The company can't be taken seriously anymore when it comes to Nightblade, the lore of the class, how it was originally designed and how it fit into the rock, paper, scissors choices all PvPers had to make back in the day when the devs understood why they were making the combat system choices they made.

There has been nothing but power creep in the last 5 or 6 years. It's so bad in PvE that 4 people or less are completing trials originally designed for full trial groups. ZOS has completely unbalanced the game with ever increasing power creep and infinite sustain+tankiness+OP passive damage for everyone. Skills all do 15 things at once and they wonder why the server can't keep up in Cyrodiil. Then they added Scribing to make complexity and server load even worse. Then they added "sub-classing" (which is really multi-classing) and did it in the most unoriginal and lazy way possible, rather than creating actual subclasses for each class.

The people who were in charge of the game until recently have absolutely ruined a game that so many people held so dear for so long. Others are right. Guilds are ghost towns nowadays and more people are turning off ESO+ and leaving the game completely than ever before. The last regime thought all this new content was the right plan to save a broken game. Anyone can see they were wrong. Fix the game, ZOS. Seriously, fix the game. So many people don't want new pointless events and fetch a rock quest fesstivals like this utterly underwhelming Shegorath silliness. No one asked for that. Any of it. You introduce new grind fests like the Night Market and then just overnight make mythics unusable in PvP which people spent real time, effort and money to farm and get. And now you think we want "naval combat"? How tone deaf can anyone be.

Fix. The. Game.

If you have less resources, people and time, then narrow your focus and just fix. the. game.

Rock. Papers. Scissors.

It used to be the essence of this game. You had to make choices when creating a build. The choices you had to make about damage vs. sustain vs. survivability were real. Now they're not and U51 so far looks like it makes them worse.

Stop wasting the company's scarce resources and money on things no one asked for, like "hey lets completely re-tune stealth again so no one can really use it because I go ganked off my horse once when I was in Cyro".

Fix the skills to go back to doing less. Make people make choices. Make it impossible again to make builds that have it all. If you don't, you're making the same mistakes the last leadership did.

Who knows, maybe someone at Bethesda will read this and help ZOS correct their mistaken focus on content over everything else.

Fix. The. Game.

How are sorcerer supposed to get minor savagery with prophesy gone?

Does not make sense to me. It was one of the few group buffs you would welcome a sorc in group but pen can be sourced in so many ways. Would have almost been better if you made it give savagery. Yes it would be same as Nightblades but hey you wanted to hybridize. Or we are all expected to run assassination or cloak now?

Did I miss something?

Templar losing minor sorcery and getting an armour buff in it's place is absolute garbage. As someone who mains a Templar I currently use solar barrage which takes my spell damage from 3977 to 5108 which no doubt happens because of the class mastery passives I selected and the illuminate passive.

The Templar has been repeatedly nerfed into the ground since the day this game launched and I know that as I played the Beta. In battlegrounds last night I had people moaning in group chat saying templar was useless and that's not a fun experience at all.

Its about time that instead of nerfing the Templar you actually brought it in line with all the other classes and made it competitive when it comes to damage. Taking away a damage passive in exchange for an armour one is a stupid idea. Isn't that what armour and gear traits are for or are Templars just there to buff all the other classes instead being able to enjoy playing the game themselves? I don't just want to play as a buff machine.

How is this buff going to affect my dps? my heals etc? I'm pretty sure spell damage affects heals as well so you'll effectively be nerfing the templar damage and healing abilities or am I mistaken?

PLEASE change Nightblade's Max resource passives to be active on both bars


Dark vigor: Increases your Max Health by 5% for each Shadow ability slotted.

Magicka Flood: WITH A SIPHONING ABILITY SLOTTED Increases your Max Magicka and Stamina by 6%

Please, please, please Zos, can we get these passives to work while slotted on EITHER bar? At least for dark vigor? I lose 3k-4k hp for switching bars and it just feels so bad and clunky and hurts my soul. It feels like a wasted passive in a lot of ways. This has been outdated for a long time and I just really wish we Nightblades could have this ONE QoL change please. I would sell my soul to yet another daedric prince for this change

Much love, wishing y'all a good work week and sending my encouragement during these rougher times

So how does the new Balanced Warrior interact with breach debuffs, alkosh and the like in pvp?

It really is starting to feel like you saw templar complaints and said "stop whining or we'll nerf it again".

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Thal wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin i love the spirit of what’s being attempted with the update to Balanced Warrior, but it’s actually an inadvertent additional nerf.

On live, my PvE Templar Solo hits ~7k spell damage (roughly 420 from balanced warrior) - for solo, this is theoretically a buff to 500 pending the armor requirements being analyzed.

In any group, I’m over 9,000 (cue Vegeta pun). Now it’s another nerf to Plar.

Love the idea, but hoping for some actual oomph in the coming weeks. This is nowhere near the 10% Templar is losing.

1. The buff works as written it adds your physical resistance and your spell resistance, and takes 1% of that. So if you have 20k res each, that would be 400 w/s damage.
2. The buff is a base value buff that is buffed by percent buffs, so that 400 example is 480 with major brutality.

I don't know what all the flat bonuses vs percent bonuses to w/s damage are so I don't know if it's actually a buff or nerf, but the math is not as simple as what you wrote.

Completely fair. I was trying to articulate that it’s kind of case dependent but nowhere near replacing 10% sorcery loss.

Firstmep wrote: »

Thal wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Thal wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin i love the spirit of what’s being attempted with the update to Balanced Warrior, but it’s actually an inadvertent additional nerf.

On live, my PvE Templar Solo hits ~7k spell damage (roughly 420 from balanced warrior) - for solo, this is theoretically a buff to 500 pending the armor requirements being analyzed.

In any group, I’m over 9,000 (cue Vegeta pun). Now it’s another nerf to Plar.

Love the idea, but hoping for some actual oomph in the coming weeks. This is nowhere near the 10% Templar is losing.

1. The buff works as written it adds your physical resistance and your spell resistance, and takes 1% of that. So if you have 20k res each, that would be 400 w/s damage.
2. The buff is a base value buff that is buffed by percent buffs, so that 400 example is 480 with major brutality.

I don't know what all the flat bonuses vs percent bonuses to w/s damage are so I don't know if it's actually a buff or nerf, but the math is not as simple as what you wrote.

Completely fair. I was trying to articulate that it’s kind of case dependent but nowhere near replacing 10% sorcery loss.

Looks more like a side grade than anything else.
I don't understand why they are so averse to give templar a speck of power.

Not to mention, this still isn’t necessarily incentivizing bringing templars in content outside of maybe a second healer (first likely pure Arc/Warden, I’d assume) while using masteries. I guess if that’s their goal, emmmmmm….

Just don’t know why *they are being continuously subjugated to a ‘supportive role’ when they’ve had multiple identities aside from just supporting for quite a while.

I will premise this

Firstmep wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Thal wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Thal wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin i love the spirit of what’s being attempted with the update to Balanced Warrior, but it’s actually an inadvertent additional nerf.

On live, my PvE Templar Solo hits ~7k spell damage (roughly 420 from balanced warrior) - for solo, this is theoretically a buff to 500 pending the armor requirements being analyzed.

In any group, I’m over 9,000 (cue Vegeta pun). Now it’s another nerf to Plar.

Love the idea, but hoping for some actual oomph in the coming weeks. This is nowhere near the 10% Templar is losing.

1. The buff works as written it adds your physical resistance and your spell resistance, and takes 1% of that. So if you have 20k res each, that would be 400 w/s damage.
2. The buff is a base value buff that is buffed by percent buffs, so that 400 example is 480 with major brutality.

I don't know what all the flat bonuses vs percent bonuses to w/s damage are so I don't know if it's actually a buff or nerf, but the math is not as simple as what you wrote.

Completely fair. I was trying to articulate that it’s kind of case dependent but nowhere near replacing 10% sorcery loss.

Looks more like a side grade than anything else.
I don't understand why they are so averse to give templar a speck of power.

Not to mention, this still isn’t necessarily incentivizing bringing templars in content outside of maybe a second healer (first likely pure Arc/Warden, I’d assume) while using masteries. I guess if that’s their goal, emmmmmm….

Just don’t know why are being continuously subjugated to a ‘supportive role’ when they’ve had multiple identities aside from just supporting for quite a while.

This change is defo a nerf for endgame pve templar. 6% is way more valuable than 500 flat when you get major/minor courage etc from support.

My biggest caveat is ZOS's current take on Templar in the upcoming months/years.
To speculate:
Class
Templar
Aedric Spear
Balanced Warrior: This passive now grants a flat amount of Weapon and Spell Damage based on your total Armor stat (Physical + Spell Resistance, .5%|1% of each), up to a cap of 250|500, rather than granting 3|6% Weapon and Spell Damage.

[Developer Comment]
Spoiler
This change is a bit early as it's originally planned with future ideation of the Templar kit in mind - but we've heard a lot of feedback about how the loss of Weapon and Spell Damage in solo application is felt, as well as the class lagging a little further behind others. This won't solve those problems entirely, but this should at least give a slight boost to help out the class based on your feedback where the new Armor effect from Illuminate is no longer a damage buff.
This essentially reads to me that either:
1. Templar is going to be locked in to a tanking class. Robust defense, no movement (house) and no damage.
2. Templar is going to only have offensive power equal to defensive power. which means that while all the other classes can build for full defense or full offense, Templar is pigeon-toed into only one viability.

@ZOS_Kevin Neither of the above scenarios is what Templar players want. Please listen to reason.
1. AETHERIC LANCER needs the treatment you just gave Pyrebrand.

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

Aetheric Lancer should still proc on Burning Light for Magic Damage and read:

(2 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage

(3 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance

(4 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage

(5 items) Dealing damage with Burning Light twice within 30 seconds creates an Aura on the caster for 5 seconds. While the Aura is active, using an Aedric Spear ability launches a spear at your target and all enemies within 8 meters, dealing 1684 Magic Damage and applying Sundered and increasing your Damage by 300 for 6 seconds.
Aetheric Lancer deals 2% more damage for each Templar ability slotted. And scales off your Damage.

**Damage inserted to replace Weapon or Spell Damage for the hybridization changes.

The Templar class set should not be made as a whack-a-mole mini game, especially with the fast pace of the games movement in combat.

2. Templar needs some in-class DPS.
3. Templar needs some better access to mobility. The house design is long dead and needs to be removed.
4. Jabs, being a lockable and dodgeable SPAM ability needs to be exempt from Evasion.
5. Brutality needs to be at least 20 seconds and/or moved to a utility skill that can better be cast out of combat for pre-buffing.

Firstmep wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Thal wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Thal wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin i love the spirit of what’s being attempted with the update to Balanced Warrior, but it’s actually an inadvertent additional nerf.

On live, my PvE Templar Solo hits ~7k spell damage (roughly 420 from balanced warrior) - for solo, this is theoretically a buff to 500 pending the armor requirements being analyzed.

In any group, I’m over 9,000 (cue Vegeta pun). Now it’s another nerf to Plar.

Love the idea, but hoping for some actual oomph in the coming weeks. This is nowhere near the 10% Templar is losing.

1. The buff works as written it adds your physical resistance and your spell resistance, and takes 1% of that. So if you have 20k res each, that would be 400 w/s damage.
2. The buff is a base value buff that is buffed by percent buffs, so that 400 example is 480 with major brutality.

I don't know what all the flat bonuses vs percent bonuses to w/s damage are so I don't know if it's actually a buff or nerf, but the math is not as simple as what you wrote.

Completely fair. I was trying to articulate that it’s kind of case dependent but nowhere near replacing 10% sorcery loss.

Looks more like a side grade than anything else.
I don't understand why they are so averse to give templar a speck of power.

Not to mention, this still isn’t necessarily incentivizing bringing templars in content outside of maybe a second healer (first likely pure Arc/Warden, I’d assume) while using masteries. I guess if that’s their goal, emmmmmm….

Just don’t know why are being continuously subjugated to a ‘supportive role’ when they’ve had multiple identities aside from just supporting for quite a while.

This change is defo a nerf for endgame pve templar. 6% is way more valuable than 500 flat when you get major/minor courage etc from support.

Correct, that was my original point. Only care about PvE 😂

Firstmep wrote: »

After comparing same setups on live vs pts, assuming solo play, and starting around 4.4k base spell damage unbuffed, triple protective, fully buffed, the changes on pts(both balanced warrior and illuminate) net about 4k extra armor and the same ish spell damage(6k).

Keep in mind you need to overshoot the 25k armor for the max value by about 9k, so 34k resist, since major and minor breach are fairly easy to apply in pvp. Even with the change to illuminate you need to get extra armor from other sources like nord/protective to reach around 34-35k armor.

It's an interesting change but realisticly its another defensive buff to templar, the cap makes it difficult to truly capitilize on building armor for offense. Id propose raising the cap to 750 weapon and spell damage. It may seem like a lot, but it is replacing 6% spell damage and requires stacking a different stat altogether(armor) which comes with its own downsides.

This sounds extremely depressing for Templar. For PVP, if i am understanding correctly....When you are debuffed by and breach skill you are also being debuffed on your damage???
Well then...that means:
1. Templar is debuffed by Evasion on jabs.
2. Debuffed on all damage by breach.
3. Further debuffed by any Cowardice applied.
4. Restricted to sets that provide Armor in order to buff damage.

@ZOS_Kevin if this is the case, and the future plans for Templar you are going to lose A LOT of longstanding player base, both PVP and PVE...