Q&A with Eric Wrobel on ESO Live

ZOS_GinaBruno

During this Friday’s ESO Live, ESO Lead Combat Designer Eric Wrobel will join us to discuss the combat and gameplay changes that many of you have recently experienced on the PTS. He’ll also be talking about new fixes and changes that are on the way, and addressing any current issues. If you have any specific questions for Eric about the gameplay changes in Update 6 on the PTS, please post them in this thread—we’ll try to answer as many as we can!

Neizir

Will you ever be buffing Magicka Detonation?

AshySamurai

Will swap cooldown remain and migrate on live server from PTS or not? Are there any plans to get rid of it?

Haxnschwammer

Animation cancelling has been declared an exploit months ago. You stated the devs are working on it. But now customer service even states that using macros with keyboard and mouse to use animation cancelling are totally OK.

What is the actual position of ZOS about
Animation cancelling
Animation cancelling to increase damage
Using third party macros to a increase damage

Mujuro

It appears, at least on PTS, that 2H stamina build DPS exceeds that of other stamina-based DPS, and stamina DPS is able to out-do magicka-based DPS with all else equal. Is this the intention and, if not, what is being done to address the imbalance? As it stands now, unless you're a healer and/or enjoy having summoned pets, there's simply no reason to be magicka DPS if you want to be competitive with the top. Ironically, this was what stamina-builds contended with until recently when they got buffed (e.g., v1.2 back when end-game DPS was all skirt-and-stick).

yodased

Do you like Piña coladas? Or getting caught in the rain?

timidobserver

Question 1 : In 1.6 and the incremental patches to 1.6, you have made a great deal of balance changes. Could you go over, in detail, any still existing class and/or skill line imbalances that you think still need to be addressed in the future?

Question 2: Rather than changing certain class skill morphs over to stamina, have you considered simply making certain morphs into "universal" morphs that scale to your best stats like ultimates? That way, the morphs maintain usefulness to magicka builds while also gaining usefulness to stamina builds.

Elsonso

The change made each patch to the PTS seem somewhat random. Can you share with us in more detail the goals and numbers that you are trying to achieve with the balancing that is being done with weapons and classes?

ShadowHvo

Is there any plans to buff Leeching Strikes? (Morph from Siphoning Strikes)

Currently, Leeching Strikes is very bad in comparison to morphed counterpart, Siphoning Attacks. The 2% heal on each strike sounds fine on paper, but in practice it is really terrible, especially with the 25%-22% less weapon and spell damage added ontop of it. It generally feels very underpowered. Have you considered lowering the loss in weapon/spell damage, or even better, increase the % of health recieved from each attack?

Lettigall

I have questions not directly about 1.6 but close enough, are there plans to add some new skills to existing weapon skill lines? And will there be chance to morph weapon skill lines ether to stamina based or magicka somewhere in the future?

Dagoth_Rac

The 1.6 Patch Notes said that the cost of the Undaunted taunt was being "slightly" increased. But the increase was not slight, it was enormous! It is now one of the most expensive skills in the entire game. Was this on purpose? Was the ranged taunt being abused in some way? Heavy Armor tanks have poor resource management as it is, and having such a key tanking skill be such a resource hog is a real pain!

LonePirate

Are there any plans to make the DK skill Petrify more attractive for PVP? It is probably the least used stun skill in Cyrodiil due to its general ineffectiveness. Can the skill be changed to stun more targets or deal more damage?

AriBoh

Is the current huge effectiveness of damage shields intended?

Satiar

Is there any plan to make shields interact more normally with player effects? Things like Siphoning Strikes, weapon enchants, crit damage, etc. As it stands, why have HP when you can have a shield.

derpsticks

Could you talk about more under the hood type things with respect to the skills. For instance, what challenges in programming/execution are there when tweaking a skill? How efficient programming wise are skills and what sort of improvements can still be made?

I ask because I have a strong hunch that certain skills, when activated, may be the root cause of a large majority of lag in this game or at least the feeling of lag.

I've especially noticed this with respect to the guard skills in both pvp and justice systems. When they use a skill everything seems to hiccup, sometimes a little sometimes a lot.

Drazhar14

Since Inner Light no longer detects stealthed players, can the orb floating around be removed? There is already the eye/hand glow, hence INNER light, not external light. The orb should be an indication for Magelight/Radiant magelight only.

Will players ever be able to break another player's block by using a melee heavy attack? To counter, if the person blocking sees the heavy attack charging, they can use a bash to interrupt the attacker.

Gyudan

Are there changes coming to the Sorcerer class to make Magicka builds viable outside of the crazy pet build with 3 toggles on each bar?
I really tried, but I can't reach the numbers that my stamina templar is getting with 2H sword.

Entropy from the Mages guild line seems very strong at the moment, with the Major Sorcery buff added in 1.6.0. Are there any plans to change it? Maybe to a Minor buff?
As a sorcerer, I don't see any reason to use Surge over Entropy.

Sharee

How do you feel about the fact that maxing out one stat (magicka) and completely ignoring the other two leads to characters with both very strong offense and very strong defense (shields)?

prototypefb

LonePirate wrote: »

Are there any plans to make the DK skill Petrify more attractive for PVP? It is probably the least used stun skill in Cyrodiil due to its general ineffectiveness. Can the skill be changed to stun more targets or deal more damage?

oh you got this so wrong!
least used stun skill is agony, petrify sound like a decent skill compared to agony.
see, petrify is instant cast large radius aoe stun but agony is single target stun with nasty channel time.

prototypefb

darkknightfkb16_ESO wrote: »

Is the current huge effectiveness of damage shields intended?

i'd like this answer too and also there are rumors damage shields are crit immune for some reason, and many spells don't proc heal/burning etc on them, that's totally wrong.

EsORising

• When will we get to kill players that have bounty on them? Also will those players with bounty get to fight back or kill people nearby or will it just be like a public stoning to death and the beating only comes from one side. Just curious how thats going to work.
• Is there any plan on fixing Accelerating drain vamp drain morph because the animation works but the movement speed isn't happening? Just wondering if you guys were aware of that because I can't wait to use that skill.
• How close are we to going live with update 6?

jelliedsoup

Are there any plans to make the blocking cost something (e.g stamina )so the permablocking and cast blocking isn't the dominant tactic?

EsORising

Gyudan wrote: »

Are there changes coming to the Sorcerer class to make Magicka builds viable outside of the crazy pet build with 3 toggles on each bar?
I really tried, but I can't reach the numbers that my stamina templar is getting with 2H sword.

Entropy from the Mages guild line seems very strong at the moment, with the Major Sorcery buff added in 1.6.0. Are there any plans to change it? Maybe to a Minor buff?
As a sorcerer, I don't see any reason to use Surge over Entropy.

Isn't the heal from entrophy a 15% chance. Plus you can morph the 2 skills different ways. Also surge is weapon damage based and entrophy strickly magic boost 20% Why are magicka builds not viable anymore? PVE and PVP isn't strickly based on DPS and mages still do a good bit of damage. Lets put it this way.. your not at the bottom of the totem pole.

sniserb16_ESO

Are there changes coming to the Sorcerer class to make Magicka builds viable outside of the pet build with 3 toggles on each bar? I want to play a pure caster and is not posible right know.

Will you ever do something about having so many toggles for pets or buffs? Sorcerer has too many toggles. Would be cool something like a 1 min buff you will need to recast-

Why the Force Shock / crushing shock 10% damage nerf? No one ever has complained about it

Enodoc

Will you be adding buff and debuff active effects to Active Effects in the Character screen? That's kinda what that bit is for...

prototypefb

sniserb16_ESO wrote: »

Are there changes coming to the Sorcerer class to make Magicka builds viable outside of the pet build with 3 toggles on each bar? I want to play a pure caster and is not posible right know.

Will you ever do something about having so many toggles for pets or buffs? Sorcerer has too many toggles. Would be cool something like a 1 min buff you will need to recast-

Why the Force Shock / crushing shock 10% damage nerf? No one ever has complained about it

i don't know your build but stop spreading false info, please!
Magicka dps is little below melee for a reason but it is still very feasible!
Pet build will be sick dps, nevertheless magicka caster will be decent dd(yeah, sure, no more top shelf but it's for a reason - this is not Elder Staff & Light Armor Online no more after 1.6)

LonePirate

sniserb16_ESO wrote: »

Why the Force Shock / crushing shock 10% damage nerf? No one ever has complained about it

I recently added the skill to my primary PVP bar. I must have obliterated some dev playing in their casual time and they are probably exacting their revenge by nerfing the skill.

LunaRae

Weapon swap feels fine on live (1.5) - what is the reasoning behind changing it again, what issue are you addressing that you see on live and is the PTS working out as you expected?

Currently I am not enjoying the feel of weapon swap on PTS. I cast an ability or use an affect and end up not swapping weapons at all, frequently. I have to delay myself .5 second after animations to ensure I weapon swap properly.

sniserb16_ESO

prototypefb wrote: »

sniserb16_ESO wrote: »

Are there changes coming to the Sorcerer class to make Magicka builds viable outside of the pet build with 3 toggles on each bar? I want to play a pure caster and is not posible right know.

Will you ever do something about having so many toggles for pets or buffs? Sorcerer has too many toggles. Would be cool something like a 1 min buff you will need to recast-

Why the Force Shock / crushing shock 10% damage nerf? No one ever has complained about it

i don't know your build but stop spreading false info, please!
Magicka dps is little below melee for a reason but it is still very feasible!
Pet build will be sick dps, nevertheless magicka caster will be decent dd(yeah, sure, no more top shelf but it's for a reason - this is not Elder Staff & Light Armor Online no more after 1.6)

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/151142/1-6-2-sorc-magicka-builds-still-ruined-im-done#latest

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/151261/1-6-2-nerf-crushing-shock#latest

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/151232/pve-pvp-and-sorcerers#latest

All this post is because I'm lying... of course
Go to PTS and test please before blaming to someone as liar

prototypefb

sniserb16_ESO wrote: »

prototypefb wrote: »

sniserb16_ESO wrote: »

Are there changes coming to the Sorcerer class to make Magicka builds viable outside of the pet build with 3 toggles on each bar? I want to play a pure caster and is not posible right know.

Will you ever do something about having so many toggles for pets or buffs? Sorcerer has too many toggles. Would be cool something like a 1 min buff you will need to recast-

Why the Force Shock / crushing shock 10% damage nerf? No one ever has complained about it

i don't know your build but stop spreading false info, please!
Magicka dps is little below melee for a reason but it is still very feasible!
Pet build will be sick dps, nevertheless magicka caster will be decent dd(yeah, sure, no more top shelf but it's for a reason - this is not Elder Staff & Light Armor Online no more after 1.6)

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/151142/1-6-2-sorc-magicka-builds-still-ruined-im-done#latest

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/151261/1-6-2-nerf-crushing-shock#latest

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/151232/pve-pvp-and-sorcerers#latest

All this post is because I'm lying... of course
Go to PTS and test please before blaming to someone as liar

QQ threads doesn't count for nothing, sorry.
CS was OP enough so it was decreased a little bit, it's still powerfull just not solely dps-wise, it still procs elements/stuns target/sets target off balance!
it's not just damage spell, it's powerfull utility. if you want to do more damage, go melee!

Soulshine

Are there any plans to incorporate more variety to dungeon combat?

The vast majority of PvE dungeon fights in this game do not require coordinated, timed CC use or debuffing of enemies to win, especially since bosses in particular have such straightforward mechanics.

Especially at vet level, it would be nice for dungeons to include a focus on critical need for coordinated utility skills use across the team. This would make the dungeon experience more dynamic and more on par with what raids in other games entail, rather than reducing them to a mere matter of dodge roll, block, and bringing the most DPS.