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 wrote: »

This is considered to the week 4 summary, I assume?

No, but we are linking to this in the Week 4 Summary. This was long enough that we wanted to give it its own post/thread.

Hello everyone!

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve seen a lot of great questions, commentary and feedback about many combat and gameplay-related changes that are currently on the PTS, and we’d like to take some time to give a bit more clarity on some current topics. Please note this doesn’t encompass every piece of feedback, but we tried to answer and address as much as we could!


Werewolf Refresh

To start things off, we’ve seen some general frustration that some of the Werewolf kit has been nerfed in PvE, leading to the skill line feeling like it is in a weaker state than what’s currently on live, to some. From what we have observed, Werewolves have been extremely strong on the PTS and have been dominating the damage parses. In general, Werewolves also benefit from a lot of things that aren't exclusive to just the Werewolf, and we don’t want to balance the Werewolf in isolation where you only get buffs from one skill line. We feel doing so would create a stale experience where you don’t get to build-craft with the Werewolf like you can with other classes, and there’s already a limitation of having one skill line.

It’s also worth mentioning that the way we balance is based around the “floor” and, more importantly, the “ceiling”. What this means is that when we are making adjustments, we consider if we can reduce the ceiling without harming the floor. In the specific case with Werewolf’s base damage, its floor is higher than most other builds and there isn’t as much wiggle room as there is with classes. We also compare stats against other classes, weapon builds, etc., and we leverage a lot of both internal and PTS data. The latter is typically a combination of data from ESO Logs and target dummy logs provided by PTS testers, and internally, we run extensive playtests covering a variety of content including dungeon runs, trials, solo arenas, and PvP.

We are trying to be a bit more conservative with the adjustments heading into launch and will absolutely be keeping an eye on this. We would rather err on the side of being conservative and possibly add small increases later, than start out too high and have to nerf things later down the road. We also don’t want to discount anyone’s feedback and will continue digging into what specifically is making Werewolf feel worse; please keep citing any examples you have from PTS testing, when possible. It does help us.

We’ve also seen some commentary that Werewolf continues to create some problem spaces with certain Class Mastery passives. What we can say is that some Class Masteries affect Werewolf in ways that we didn’t plan for, and this will be adjusted over time. Just to reiterate, the Class Mastery passives are part of the experimental content we’ve been talking about and they are all going through iterations. We wanted to provide a way for you to focus on just your class and be impactful without needing to worry about subclassing, but these are far from final. Our main focus is on the class refresh work, which is really addressing the core feedback and concerns with each of the classes. This also means the Class Mastery passives are a bit of a stopgap in the meantime and will absolutely be adjusted as the class rework continues.

All that being said, because these passives are a bit more generic, they are being used in ways that we never accounted for, including Werewolf benefiting from a lot of the passives in ways that we hadn’t planned for or considered.

We’ve seen a number of concerns surrounding the single-target burst potential for Werewolves, and what feels like weaker light/heavy attacks overall with reduced bleed damage. What we can say here is that Werewolves are not subject to the light attack caps that other classes have, plus their damage scaling is buffed. We also buffed bleed damage in PvE, but reduced it in PvP since we were getting feedback that it was overwhelming in that mode of play. The Werewolf, by design, should be terrifying as it’s running toward you. You’re going to be in trouble if it jumps on you, and you either run away or kill it. That said, we do want there to be a healthy balance and that’s something we are experimenting with more, in particular around separating PvE from PvP scenarios. Doing this is something we haven’t done much in the past, and we do expect there to be some growing pains. There may be times when we don’t get the numbers quite right, and this is where we’d like to continue to get feedback from all of you.

For those mentioning that Werewolf tanking and healing doesn’t feel like it’s been improved, we did buff defensive capabilities and gave more mitigation to make Werewolves tankier. You do need to pick the right morphs to get that harder-to-kill build, though, and you also need to pick one or the other. It’s not realistic or fair to make an unkillable build where you do a ton of damage and also heal yourself indefinitely; there needs to be a balance. If you’re feeling like the tanking experience is still lacking, we encourage you to continue sharing specifics to help us understand why.

As for the feedback about the lack of a ranged taunt, we totally hear you. At this time, we just haven’t found the right solution without reworking an existing morph and having that affect something else. Whatever solution we implement, we want to make sure it’s thematically appropriate as well (for example, Werewolves don’t use magic!)

Finally, in regard to Pack Leader feeling underwhelming, Werewolf healing isn’t really something we support and isn’t a fully fleshed-out experience. And as far as requests to use Battle Spirit to help offset the changes to PvE, we try to avoid situations where we are balancing PvE based on PvP issues or concerns, and vice versa.


Class Mastery Passives

As mentioned above, we’re far from finished adjusting Class Mastery passives and are actively going through iterations as we continue working on class reworks, which are taking priority.

Touching on Necromancer first, we’ve seen folks looking for clarification on what the issue was with Malevolent Promise in PvP. The reason behind this change was specifically when it was paired with Corpseburster, it was doing insane damage in PvP – far higher than is fair, especially with multiple Necromancers. Additionally, there was no counterplay, and certain combinations with this set created some really overwhelming and oppressive gameplay experiences. 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. We exhausted a lot of solutions to try and improve the PvP experience, and this is where we landed for now. We will say it’s possible we may revisit this in the future – potentially when we start doing the Necromancer class refresh.

Nightblades have seen commentary that their Class Mastery passives feel weaker to those of other classes, and it doesn’t help with burst-damage or resource sustainability. We do want to note we buffed the Nightblade crit cap to be higher than other classes and this also applies to healing. However, there may be some specific subclassing builds that are overperforming, and we’ll keep an eye on this.

In general, Nightblades gained a lot from the PTS changes because we understand there is moderate room for improvement with their core kit. While we recognize some of these problems still exist, this isn’t something we can comprehensively solve until we do the refresh work for the Nightblade class. What we were able to adjust on the PTS helps, but it is intended to be a stopgap until the class refresh.

Similar to Nightblade, we’ve seen some feedback that the Sorcerer Class Mastery kit feels underpowered and not competitive with other classes. We’d like to better understand why some of you are feeling this way. In PTS Week 1, Sorcerers were actually doing the most damage out of all classes by quite a large margin; we did reduce the strength to account for that and later reverted some of the nerfs. Now, it’s worth noting that there is a bug with Sphere of Influence where it’s only applying its damage shield to one player instead of two, and it also doesn’t currently work with Daedric Refuge (this should be fixed in the next PTS patch).

For Templar, we’ve seen your concerns about damage sustainability and the damage passives generally not feeling as worthwhile as you would like, especially Judgement’s Brand in PvP scenarios. We appreciate this feedback and will keep an eye on it for future iterations. We may have been too conservative since the damage is separated between PvE and PvP, and we recognize it may currently be too penalizing for PvP situations.


General Class Feedback

As we continue working on adjustments for Update 50 and beyond, we will continue looking to you, our community, for feedback. We’ve seen concerns about ongoing issues with resource sustainability for Sorcerer; Conservation of Energy should be helping to solve this. We’ve also seen the concerns that Necromancers feel underpowered overall, and Nightblades feel lacking in PvP. Again, we’d like to reiterate that we are purposely being conservative with our changes since this is the first time we’re separating PvE from PvP, and we’d rather start with things a little on the weaker side and slowly increase than make them too strong from the start and later have to course correct with heavy nerfs. If you have specific concerns, such as with Grim Focus, we would love to get some more information about that and appreciate specific examples you can share from your testing/playing.

Thanks to everyone for your continued feedback and passion. We’re excited to continue working with you all to make ESO the best it can be!

Thank you all for the continued bug reports for the Werewolf! The team is still actively keeping an eye on this and other threads and we have been investigating the issues that are being called out. While all the issues may not be resolved within the PTS cycle, we are looking into solutions and will provide updates when we can.