Combat Updates – Update 51 PTS

Vaqual · August 13

More of this - at this pace - would be good for the game.

James-Wayne · August 13

Such a good Templar change for my brawler tank build!! Thank you!!

Ratzkifal · August 13

Sounds good! I agree with pretty much everything.
Looking forward to the Templar change. That sounds juicy but also warranted considering the state of Templar's current matchups. Judgement's Brand could maybe get buffed even more in PvP compared to their other options, but with the other buffs the class is receiving from Lancer and Balanced Warrior it's probably enough.

Now we only need to revisit the stealth changes, because they don't make much sense and are hitting everyone broadly rather than the tiny tiny number of problematic setups utilizing stealth (pulsegankers, which were already addressed by the patch in many other places). Prebuff skills should not pull you out of Sneak, with the only exceptions being abilities that are potentially so threatening that they need a "tell", like the initial cast of Proximity Detonation.

Otherwise I'm looking forward to monday, and hopefully towards all of U51 by next week!

Edit: Also consider buffing NBs for PvP a little. They are decent in PvE right now, but taking off the PvP-penalty from their class mastery would help them keep up with the other classes' newfound survivability. It couldn't make them worse than facing DKs and werewolves on Live.

CannedChicken · August 13

I really like the direction the combat team is taking with this. What stands out to me the most isn't any one individual change, but the willingness to actually listen to the PTS feedback and make adjustments based on what players are experiencing.

I also really like the idea of taking smaller, more targeted approaches instead of feeling like every issue needs to be solved with a massive overhaul. It feels like a much healthier way to handle balance, especially with Class Mastery still settling in.

Overall, this is the kind of communication and willingness to adapt that I like seeing. Hopefully we continue to see more of this going forward. Great job, combat team.

madmufffin · August 13

YffresTrill wrote: »

I am not thrilled by the Core of Flame change specifically for difficult solo PVE. This combined with the Elemental Sustainability nerf will quite significantly affect my ability to solo vet dungeons and play on Vestige.

Would it not be possible to nerf it further in PVP (since that is what PVP'ers seem to want) while keeping it as is in PVE, instead of this lukewarm change that pleases no one?

The other ele drain is still free if you need a breach source. You also get breach on DK with disintegrating so don't really need sus anyways.

YffresTrill · August 13

madmufffin wrote: »

The other ele drain is still free if you need a breach source. You also get breach on DK with disintegrating so don't really need sus anyways.

I use it primarily for the status effect spam as a free (and ranged) spammable. The breach is just a side effect.

Chrlynsch · August 13

Wuuffyy wrote: »

You are obliterating werewolf sustain significantly and hitting PvE as well for anything ‘outside of Rampage’. At first I thought with the community sentiment ‘to nerf CoE next’ (most suggestions were between 1-5% missing resources per tick in PvP) that ‘infinite sustain’ was going away and despite werewolf damage being removed and it shifting to a ‘sustain playstyle’ instead, that this was ‘how it was going to have to be’ due to belated future reworks-

-however, the actual and community-driven adjustment to Core of Flame (going from 15% to 12%) changes little to nothing in the way of actual Dragonknight sustain in PvP (so still near-infinite bi-stat sustain for them).

At 25,000 mag and only 2,000 mag left (in other words, 23k mag ‘missing’), casting CoE still results in an instant tick of roughly 2,760 mag instantly (and significant sustain, decent healing, and a burst move) and then that same tick again every 2 seconds for 4 seconds (so 8,280 mag in 4 seconds not including everything else it does)…

What else in the game even comes close? Not even werewolf has ‘infinite mag’ like that. I get usually 4-5 heals out of rampage and I’m completely out of mag on anything but a sorc… however now off of a sorc my sustain is hyper-limited, I have 0 burst moves outside of proc sets, and yet I’m meant to compete in the face of ‘infinite sustain’ reworks?

Not to mention the nerf to damage to rip and tear.

-Sustain nerfed
-Damage nerfed
-Healing nerfed

If wolves do not have high sustained damage then they should have access to burst damage.

Brassmoose · August 13

While accessibility is important in games it should not come at a sacrifice of skill expression, more options rather than reducing the skill ceiling of the game , for instance there is a whole other morph of Goliath that goes largely unused that could have been reworked into a lower than pummelling cpm damage morph. It always feels incredibly bad to players when skill expression is reigned in no matter the goal.

xencthlu · August 14

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

[*]Nightblade
Strife now grants a unique damage bonus that increases your damage done by 1% for every 10% Health you have, while it is active.
We’ve also seen pushback on the cost increases, which we are still evaluating further adjustments to. We’re very cautious to reintroduce the skill to the same degree of power it was in the Summerset era.

Glad to hear of some tempered and measured balance tweaks overall, instead of whiplash back and forth adjustments. But this quote here made me stop -- sorry, are you balancing Nightblades for fear of a meta that's been dead and gone for eight years? Is that why in the two some years I've been playing, I've seen nothing but Nightblade nerf after Nightblade nerf?

Gee whiz, guys. Summerset was eight years ago. Please take a look at where Nightblades have been at in PVE for the past three years. It's sad. I'm sad.

BetweenMidgets · August 14

DKs still have a knockback on their snare removal. Would appreciate the team to look at that, as well.

Personofsecrets · August 14

It's interesting that the team will pick on DK, but won't touch the long time best class that has had infinite sustain and huge burst damage forever.

Danz_Macabre · August 14

I will never understand why you don't just seperate pvp and pve.
Why start nerfing before the class refreshes are even finished?
Maybe just get on with doing that? No news on the warden either apparently. 🥴

tomofhyrule · August 14

I am happy with this. Just looking at the numbers, it does seem like Core of Flame may still give a bit too much sustain and the Corrosive/Lash combo may still be a bit oppressive, but I am very happy to see that the Combat Team is moving towards taking a smaller precision nerf instead a blanket that would leave the Class in dire straits. I am happy with this so far as an initial pass.

I am also happy to finally see an official admission that the Warden refresh is underway. I know the Week 1 PTS analysis thread said that the team was developing a writeup for the upcoming refreshes, and I am very excited to see it.

CannedChicken · August 14

Really happy with the direction things are going.

I like seeing adjustments being made based on PTS feedback instead of everything being locked in from the start.

Hopefully we keep seeing more of this going forward. 👍

Erickson9610 · August 14

Chrlynsch wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

You are obliterating werewolf sustain significantly and hitting PvE as well for anything ‘outside of Rampage’. At first I thought with the community sentiment ‘to nerf CoE next’ (most suggestions were between 1-5% missing resources per tick in PvP) that ‘infinite sustain’ was going away and despite werewolf damage being removed and it shifting to a ‘sustain playstyle’ instead, that this was ‘how it was going to have to be’ due to belated future reworks-

-however, the actual and community-driven adjustment to Core of Flame (going from 15% to 12%) changes little to nothing in the way of actual Dragonknight sustain in PvP (so still near-infinite bi-stat sustain for them).

At 25,000 mag and only 2,000 mag left (in other words, 23k mag ‘missing’), casting CoE still results in an instant tick of roughly 2,760 mag instantly (and significant sustain, decent healing, and a burst move) and then that same tick again every 2 seconds for 4 seconds (so 8,280 mag in 4 seconds not including everything else it does)…

What else in the game even comes close? Not even werewolf has ‘infinite mag’ like that. I get usually 4-5 heals out of rampage and I’m completely out of mag on anything but a sorc… however now off of a sorc my sustain is hyper-limited, I have 0 burst moves outside of proc sets, and yet I’m meant to compete in the face of ‘infinite sustain’ reworks?

Not to mention the nerf to damage to rip and tear.

-Sustain nerfed
-Damage nerfed
-Healing nerfed

If wolves do not have high sustained damage then they should have access to burst damage.

Rip and Tear had its damage nerfed during the Update 50 PTS, not the Update 51 PTS. What changed in the Update 51 PTS was a tooltip update; specifically, to fix this inconsistency seen on Live:

If you compare the damage of Rip and Tear with and without Blood Hunger stacks, it remains the same. But if you compare the healing, you'll notice that the healing is higher when a stack of Blood Hunger is consumed. There was no change to Rip and Tear in Update 51 aside from the cost increase; we've been fighting without this supposed damage buff the entire time this patch.

This is not something that is reflected in the tooltip, and if you want to test this for yourself, you'll want to make sure you isolate the increase from Blood Hunger from the increase from Ferocious Roar's Major Courage, Feeding Frenzy's Minor Force and 6% Damage Done, and Bloodclaws' healing.

albertberku · August 14

Hallelujah! What an amazing round of changes! 👍

And also couldn't agree more to this. Conservation of Energy is simply too much. If you were to make a 50% cut for all Healing and sustain in this passive, it would still continue being good. That good it is now.

KahunaKhan wrote: »

While the combat team is on the topic of balance adjustments I would like to throw into the ring taking a look at Sorcerer's Conservation of Energy / Blood Magic healing? I might be a minority opinion but I think the healing should be toned down by a minor amount-- they've already got the best defensive/mobility skill in the game with streak which every sorc in bgs, ic, whatever can and does spam multiple times in a row. The constant healing is also arguably one of the stronger factors as to why sorc ww is so beefy. Maybe a change like making it so it doesn't proc off of core combat abilities like break free or bash.

Put simply it's just tedious and obnoxious to play against in a similar way to how current dk with heart of flame is.

ceruulean · August 14

Whip changes are good. Landslide QOL is good. Spammables should do poke damage instead of insane burst. It seems Power Lash will become the PvE morph and Molten goes back to being the PvP morph.

Core of Flame probably needs more of a nerf, like 10% max resources. Heart of Flame morph should deal 0 damage and actually be an opportunity/GCD cost for DK instead of another free delayed burst in Corrosive/Onslaught. Then the interrupt morph has a purpose.

Sorc COE class mastery needs to be adjusted and nerfed in some way, then werewolf skill costs put into a middle value between U50 (which are too low) and current PTS (which are too high for non-sorcs).

Also I would suggest making execute on WW Gnash PvE/monsters only. No reason for a WW to have an execute on their spammable.

Chrlynsch · August 14

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Chrlynsch wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

You are obliterating werewolf sustain significantly and hitting PvE as well for anything ‘outside of Rampage’. At first I thought with the community sentiment ‘to nerf CoE next’ (most suggestions were between 1-5% missing resources per tick in PvP) that ‘infinite sustain’ was going away and despite werewolf damage being removed and it shifting to a ‘sustain playstyle’ instead, that this was ‘how it was going to have to be’ due to belated future reworks-

-however, the actual and community-driven adjustment to Core of Flame (going from 15% to 12%) changes little to nothing in the way of actual Dragonknight sustain in PvP (so still near-infinite bi-stat sustain for them).

At 25,000 mag and only 2,000 mag left (in other words, 23k mag ‘missing’), casting CoE still results in an instant tick of roughly 2,760 mag instantly (and significant sustain, decent healing, and a burst move) and then that same tick again every 2 seconds for 4 seconds (so 8,280 mag in 4 seconds not including everything else it does)…

What else in the game even comes close? Not even werewolf has ‘infinite mag’ like that. I get usually 4-5 heals out of rampage and I’m completely out of mag on anything but a sorc… however now off of a sorc my sustain is hyper-limited, I have 0 burst moves outside of proc sets, and yet I’m meant to compete in the face of ‘infinite sustain’ reworks?

Not to mention the nerf to damage to rip and tear.

-Sustain nerfed
-Damage nerfed
-Healing nerfed

If wolves do not have high sustained damage then they should have access to burst damage.

Rip and Tear had its damage nerfed during the Update 50 PTS, not the Update 51 PTS. What changed in the Update 51 PTS was a tooltip update; specifically, to fix this inconsistency seen on Live:

If you compare the damage of Rip and Tear with and without Blood Hunger stacks, it remains the same. But if you compare the healing, you'll notice that the healing is higher when a stack of Blood Hunger is consumed. There was no change to Rip and Tear in Update 51 aside from the cost increase; we've been fighting without this supposed damage buff the entire time this patch.

This is not something that is reflected in the tooltip, and if you want to test this for yourself, you'll want to make sure you isolate the increase from Blood Hunger from the increase from Ferocious Roar's Major Courage, Feeding Frenzy's Minor Force and 6% Damage Done, and Bloodclaws' healing.

Oh fancy.

Thal · August 14

Massively well done on Templar. Dramatic step in right direction across all changes mentioned. Can’t wait to play AL post update.

Wuuffyy · August 14

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Chrlynsch wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

You are obliterating werewolf sustain significantly and hitting PvE as well for anything ‘outside of Rampage’. At first I thought with the community sentiment ‘to nerf CoE next’ (most suggestions were between 1-5% missing resources per tick in PvP) that ‘infinite sustain’ was going away and despite werewolf damage being removed and it shifting to a ‘sustain playstyle’ instead, that this was ‘how it was going to have to be’ due to belated future reworks-

-however, the actual and community-driven adjustment to Core of Flame (going from 15% to 12%) changes little to nothing in the way of actual Dragonknight sustain in PvP (so still near-infinite bi-stat sustain for them).

At 25,000 mag and only 2,000 mag left (in other words, 23k mag ‘missing’), casting CoE still results in an instant tick of roughly 2,760 mag instantly (and significant sustain, decent healing, and a burst move) and then that same tick again every 2 seconds for 4 seconds (so 8,280 mag in 4 seconds not including everything else it does)…

What else in the game even comes close? Not even werewolf has ‘infinite mag’ like that. I get usually 4-5 heals out of rampage and I’m completely out of mag on anything but a sorc… however now off of a sorc my sustain is hyper-limited, I have 0 burst moves outside of proc sets, and yet I’m meant to compete in the face of ‘infinite sustain’ reworks?

Not to mention the nerf to damage to rip and tear.

-Sustain nerfed
-Damage nerfed
-Healing nerfed

If wolves do not have high sustained damage then they should have access to burst damage.

Rip and Tear had its damage nerfed during the Update 50 PTS, not the Update 51 PTS. What changed in the Update 51 PTS was a tooltip update; specifically, to fix this inconsistency seen on Live:

If you compare the damage of Rip and Tear with and without Blood Hunger stacks, it remains the same. But if you compare the healing, you'll notice that the healing is higher when a stack of Blood Hunger is consumed. There was no change to Rip and Tear in Update 51 aside from the cost increase; we've been fighting without this supposed damage buff the entire time this patch.

This is not something that is reflected in the tooltip, and if you want to test this for yourself, you'll want to make sure you isolate the increase from Blood Hunger from the increase from Ferocious Roar's Major Courage, Feeding Frenzy's Minor Force and 6% Damage Done, and Bloodclaws' healing.

They were likely referring to this:

Source: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/692088/werewolf-tooltips-pvp-significantly-nerfed-from-live-proof#latest

(includes also, lost damage from wep and spell passive which went from 18 to 10).

Namacc · August 14

I get that work is focused on the warden refresh and the listed changes aren't extensive for that reason and I appreciate that you're focused on quality over meeting a deadline, however the warden changes don't help fix or lessen balance issues in pvp for pure warden.

Here's some tweaks I would consider the minimum to help with balance on warden:

Pure warden burst damage is too weak in pvp. Buff the damage of shalks/ Subterranean Assault and Deep Fissure's first and second hit to be the same damage as nb's merciless resolve.

In future consider adding something that limits or prevents the stacking of multiple burst skills from different class lines. This will become a bigger problem as you refresh classes and is already possible to stack fissure with dks inferno and soul of flame.

Current stun options are terrible. Since the arctic change in patch v10.1.5 (Update 43) wardens have no good stun. Update 43 also introduced scribing giving wardens access to charm. Healing soul with warden charm became our new 7 second stun on stamden or ulfsiids contingency with charm on magden. This was a terrible change.

Firstly, the stun applies to an area and can be easily countered by moving outside the radius by sprinting or streak. Against good players you never stun them and against even the weakest sorcs you never stun them as they just streak out.

Secondly, pure warden has no pressure on typical direct damage builds like dizzy builds or burst focused magden. Arctic blast dot with chill proc was our pressure through block, and was the only good source of chill on a stamina warden dizzy build.

Lastly, a stamina warden has no use for the winter's embrace line since this change. We don't have bar space to slot arctic blast like a magden. So the only reason as a stamina warden to use winter's embrace is for the armor buff and class masteries, which also don't benefit a typical direct damage burst focused warden. The major brittle mastery would be good on a burst focused warden but as a stamden dizzy build we don't have a source of chill to proc this.

Please revert the change done to arctic blast in update 43. Keep it as a okay burst heal with good dot, chill proc with a strong unblockable BUT dodgeable stun. As a trade off, the healing should be lower compared to other heals.
I understand this might be too much to change to this skill outside of a simple numbers tweak, but please consider for this pts or in the rework.

Tommy_The_Gun · August 14

Techwolf_Lupindo wrote: »

Hmm...Sorc is missing there. The SORC is the reason werewolves are so strong now. That one class passive by itself is buffing the werewolf massly. Fix that and werewolf will be properly balanced without all the other nerfs in U51 PTS.

Yep. Better way to solve the issue would be to make WW skill cost increase way less steep & instead add % reduction to Conservation of Energy passive while battle spirit is active.

I mean this class master passive is very strong on its own & I am really surprised that it does not have any PvP restrictions build in (just like many nb class mastery passives do) since the star. A lot of troubles could have been avoided if most class mastery passives (the ones with balance - breaking potential) had some form of PvP limitation.

Cuz what this WW skill increase will end up doing is that all of the "weaker" builds would be punished to the point of becoming useless even in PvE (like for example magick WWs), but the ones that caused this nerf (the ones that use sorc class master passive) will remain almost unaffected, leading to further, even more severe ww nerfs in the future.

Four_Fingers · August 14

Would have been better to wait till all class updates were done instead of releasing just DK.
Then balance accordingly. Now Will DK end up weaker than the other class updates when released?
Well, there is my Warplar!

SneaK · August 14

Oh fantastic, Nightblade got a buff to strife. This makes everything so much better.

BardokRedSnow · August 14

See yall in the sorcs are too strong threads next since people know complaining gets zos to act.

Nothing new of course.

KingLogix · August 14

Very good round of pts notes! Awesome job to the ZOS team.

Pinktraining · August 14

Wait, why isn't Arc and Vampire mentioned in this updat list? Does this mean ZOS thinks their current situation is good enough?Especially since Arc is the only class left out, even though Arc is clearly not at an advantage in PvP, and is even at a disadvantage.

ESO_Nightingale · August 14

Wow, im really happy to see a bunch of incremental class changes. Can we see more of these moving forward? Especially in incremental patches.

nb_rich · August 14

Thanks for listening about Templars, especially Aethric Lancer set 😊.

Aces-High-82 · August 14

Good and welcomed changes so far.
There are still some minor things that should be addressed.
Riposte CP: 33% increased damage is a tad too much. This CP esp. enabled some of the unhealthy damage spikes in PvP environments in the first place. 15% would be a reasonable value here.
DK Wings: projectile damage reduction is a nice idea on that skill but 50% is clearly overtuned for an already packed skill. Tweaking it down by half would be welcomed.
Sorcerer: now granting an unnamed penetration buff instead of minor prophecy funnels the class even more into dots in order to proc crit surge reliably on class without a single viable dot. A passive granting 1% crit chance for every 5k of max magicka would at least help justifing to still slot surge in the first place.