20 hours of PTS, my thoughts!

Kerioko

TL:DR

I like it overall but....

PVE is dead as farming gear from the 2 new dungeons is the only viable end-game.

PVP is dead if they do not find a way to keep zergs out of IC and stop door ganking.

New Gear:

Tanks have 2 viable sets with the changes:

- Black Rose - (2) + health, (3) + stam, (4) + stam, (5) 20% chance to return stam on block ~ decent set to pair with footman for the perma blockers
- Armor Master - (2) + health, (3) + physical resist, (4) + spell resist, (5) 5K armor when activating skills like immobile ~ boost your mitigation so you don't need to perma block

These are the two new armor sets I see most viable for tanks. Black Desert is gotten from PVP RNG bags at 8K tel var stones a piece. Armor Master is 9 trait crafted gear. If you are a tank get yourself prepared to live in PVP if you want to get your gear.

True healers look to have 3 viable sets, probably best paired with 5 piece healer and master resto (tanks need that stamina from springs).
- Redistributor Set - (2) + health, (3) + stam, (4) + magicka, (5) heal an ally for 1.5K when you are healed at full health ~ decent set for healers that stay in the back and never get hit
- Spell Power Cure - (2) + magicka, (3) + magicka, (4) + spell dmg, (5) heal an ally at 100% grants them 219 spell dmg ~ OP set when running with magicka dps
- Combat Physician - (2) + magicka, (3) + spell crit, (4) + spell crit, (5) crit heals give an ally a 4K damage shield ~ decent for maybe a DK healer with prayer set to maximize shielding allies

All these sets are obtained as drops. Be prepared to start farming the two new dungeons.

Magicka DPS will want the Overwhelming Surge Set with one + magicka and two + spell dmg bonuses. This is basically just an upgrade to the martial knowledge set and is gotten from drops.

Stamina DPS have a load of sets to chose from from poison stacking to weapon damage stacking. Most are drops and a few are bought with Tel Var stones. The sheer Venom set is probably the best as it offers one + stam, two + weapon damage, and a 5-piece bonus that adds poison damage to executes. The new Molag Kena monster mask gives weapon damage as a 1 piece bonus, so this set will probably become the valkyn skoria set for stam builds!

PVE Progression

Pledges are it as far as end-game PVE (if you want rewards with your PVE). Trials and VDSA will not be scaled and given the way leaderboards are filled with only the top 1-2%, these will become pointless aside from just side fun with guildies. IC does offer PVE in a PVP setting. It can be fun, but door gankers will quickly run off most of the PVE crowd looking for stones!

One good note about PVE, it looks like the most wanted gear will come from drops in the two new dungeons. This means you will want to farm them as much as possible to get yourself geared. Downside is, once you are geared and bored with farming these two dungeons, you will have nothing to do, unless you want to PVP!

PVP Progression

From a PVP perspective, I really like IC. The urban landscape with enemies everywhere makes small group PVP awesome. If you get overrun with enemies, pull them into a pile of mobs and pot an invisibility potion. The added PVE aspect to a PVP area is nice as well. However, I see 4 things that will quickly kill IC:

- Gankers standing at doors, spamming AOEs, killing people before they are able to load into the zone. Now we know what the mobs in VDSA go through trying to spawn while being killed in the process. Its nice to come out of a loading screen and find yourself dead with no stones!
- CP imbalance - IC seems to focus more on small scale PVP. This makes CP imbalance a lot bigger issue than it is in open world PVP zergfest. They need to either cap CP at around 300-400 or implement their catchup mechanic with IC release.
- Zergfest - IC is awesome when you have a bunch of 2-8 man groups running around. If the 20-40 man zergs hit, making loops to kill everything in site, IC will lose everything that makes it fun, the small group PVPVE. ZOS needs to really limit group size for IC.
- Lag, it is still here. I have yet to see 400 meteors dropping in the same place, but I did witness a 3 way battle of about 8-12 people and saw some lag spikes. If we are getting lag spikes with small group battles, I can only imagine how it will be when you toss in zergfest!

Magicka NBs and Racial Balance:

Quick points on racials:
- Some races (altmer, bosmer) that didn't need buffs got them.
- Some races that needed complete overhaul (argonians and nords) barely saw any improvement.

Quick points on magicka NB:
- Yes I can cloak forever, but detect pots and magelight still go through cloak. With the size of most sewer areas, it will be impossible to stay cloaked if someone has a detect pot or magelight going!
- With the 50% damage reduction in PVP, you have to be AFK while reading your map to get ganked in under 1 sec. My best burst combo does about 20K damage in 1 sec. If you have more than 20K health, you will survive my burst, and a glass cannon NB is very easy to kill....pop magelight and CC them!
- I got on my stam templar and 1 shot someone with a wrecking blow from stealth. NB's are not the only viable gankers!

Overall View Of IC:

I like both PVE and PVP, meaning I really like this DLC, atleast in theory. If you are strictly PVE or PVP, it will probably be a turn off. PVE players are going to have to learn to PVP some if they want something to do other than dungeon farm. PVP players will have to run dungeons to get certain desired gear sets. I think this is good for the game, but many will disagree as they like PVP and PVE seperate.

Even though I like it, I find several key issues that could make it a complete bust. These issues both deal with the game itself and the people that play it.
- Number one, if ZOS does not do something about lag and CP imbalance, this game will fail.
- Number two, just because you can exploit certain functions of the game for your benefit doesn't mean you should. Door camping and Zerg blobs will run players from this game, meaning eventually no one to play with and no one to pay to keep the lights on. We need to keep the casuals happy because they are the main source of income for the game!

WhiskeyJac

Nice review..... Without any new end game trials or anything I don't see any reason why I should be farming PVE dungeons over and over , if we at least had the trials scaled we would run them again but now donno what to do with all sets without anything to try them on

Naphariel

Do you honestly believe limiting group size would accomplish anything?
People will just run more than one group.

Beesting

@Kerioko nice post, did you also see any jewelry that is as good or better to combine with the new sets?

You explained healer and footman will be nice to combine, but what about ravager and cyrodill light for dps ?

NobleNerd

PvE farm of the new dungeons to get geared...... for what?

So you farm your brains out to get gear in the only 2 places that is PvE in the DLC and then you use the gear for what?

Content is very lacking in this so called DLC.

Even if you are a PvPer IC will get old after a month, especially if you are the faction that can't regularly get into it (if the hold x keeps to enter goes live).

I have played on PTS for a couple of hours so far last night and I am not very impressed with the volume of content offered.

Kerioko

Naphariel wrote: »

Do you honestly believe limiting group size would accomplish anything?
People will just run more than one group.

Yeah this is more on the player base to fix than something zos could fix!

NobleNerd wrote: »

PvE farm of the new dungeons to get geared...... for what?

So you farm your brains out to get gear in the only 2 places that is PvE in the DLC and then you use the gear for what?

Content is very lacking in this so called DLC.

Even if you are a PvPer IC will get old after a month, especially if you are the faction that can't regularly get into it (if the hold x keeps to enter goes live).

I have played on PTS for a couple of hours so far last night and I am not very impressed with the volume of content offered.

I am vary impressed coming from someone that likes PVE games with PVP servers as I like PVPVE. Aside from that, I agree with you 100%

Beesting wrote: »

@Kerioko nice post, did you also see any jewelry that is as good or better to combine with the new sets?

You explained healer and footman will be nice to combine, but what about ravager and cyrodill light for dps ?

For DPS, the two new jewelry sets seem the best since they give + spell dmg and magicka or + weapon dmg and stam as 3 piece sets. Running 5 ravager or two adoitness, two cyrodil light still seems perfectly viable, however, the nerf to caltrops will kill ravager procs, and I would just run 4 healers instead of the 2 spell dmg sets due to the nerf to dmg stats on gear!

Pirhana7_ESO

I think the big fix to the system will be when alliances can cut access to other alliances from entering IC.

Rioht

Uuugh I don't understand why they wouldn't just allow all of the new IC gear sets to be available through ALL activities.

Let us decide what path we want to take to get them, as long as one way isnt 10x easier than another.

Also why not scale all the old content??? I don't rub trials etc but seriosuly why not?

Xjcon

I found that i could survive with a glass cannon single target dk dps build so long as I was in a group with a healer. Healing debuffs are going to play a big role in pvp now as the damage is so low that one big heal and you have to start all over.

The big bosses are very strong in IC and some of their damage is so big if a large group wasn't paying attention and aoe the boss or its adds they will get aggro. In the short period I played I farmed up 700 stones and while heading back to try and turn them in we got hit by a group while fighting mobs and died losing all our stones.

Stealth pots are going to be in high demand for IC.

Rhaegar75

how is healing going to be in 2.1?

t.claudio.usnub18_ESO

A cool idea would be to add some crazy overpowered guards that can see through stealth around the spawn and a wall of some sort around the spawn point.

This will make it so that if you want to try to gank go for it but you will most likely die and keep the spawned player kind of safe maintaining that sense of danger.

Xjcon

t.claudio.usnub18_ESO wrote: »

A cool idea would be to add some crazy overpowered guards that can see through stealth around the spawn and a wall of some sort around the spawn point.

This will make it so that if you want to try to gank go for it but you will most likely die and keep the spawned player kind of safe maintaining that sense of danger.

I agree! after watching some of the Streamers sneak around and 1 shot people.

Thymos

Is there a mechanic much like public group dungeons that prevents you from creating a group bigger than 4 players?

Kerioko

Rioht wrote: »

Uuugh I don't understand why they wouldn't just allow all of the new IC gear sets to be available through ALL activities.

Let us decide what path we want to take to get them, as long as one way isnt 10x easier than another.

Also why not scale all the old content??? I don't rub trials etc but seriously why not?

If all the gear was available outside of IC, and all the current end game was scaled at the same time as IC release, there would be little incentive for people to stay subscribed or purchase the DLC. ZOS is a business running a b2p MMO. Considering they haven't really taken the P2W approach with the cash shop (except xp potions), the next best way to make money is to put new content and gear behind a pay wall.

I am sure in the future, they will upgrade VDSA and trials to v16, but it won't happen while IC is still fresh. We will probably see trials and current gear sets upgraded in an incremental patch a month or 2 after IC goes live!

Kerioko

Rhaegar75 wrote: »

how is healing going to be in 2.1?

Healing is the same as it is currently in the two PVE dungeons. In the PVP area, small hots, like mutegen and funnel health, are pretty pointless. Breath of Life or Healing Ward (non-temp), Springs, Purge, and Barrier will be the go to healing set-up for PVP!

Sharee

Kerioko wrote: »

TL:DR

PVP is dead if they do not find a way to keep zergs out of IC and stop door ganking.

I did not have any problems with this. There is no door that i had to go through while playing that could have possible gankers on the other side. Alliance base has 7 exits into IC, and all lead to an elevated platform unreachable by enemies, so i can get everywhere safely. Getting back is best done by suiciding to mobs, 10% of my stones is something i consider a 'safe travel fee'

Anlaemar

Great review. Need more like this for ZOS so they know what they need to fix. I'm not particularly happen about the 3% health boost Nords got.

Kerioko

Sharee wrote: »

Kerioko wrote: »

TL:DR
PVP is dead if they do not find a way to keep zergs out of IC and stop door ganking.

I did not have any problems with this. There is no door that i had to go through while playing that could have possible gankers on the other side. Alliance base has 7 exits into IC, and all lead to an elevated platform unreachable by enemies, so i can get everywhere safely. Getting back is best done by suiciding to mobs, 10% of my stones is something i consider a 'safe travel fee'

Most doors either lead to a safe zone or have a Truce buff that is applied when you are near them. There are a few that do not however in the sewers, between districts, and in cyrodiil at the entrances to IC. ZOS has acknowledges this issue and they are looking into ways to fix the doors where this type of ganking is still possible!

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Besides the large central doors between districts, there are two doors to the left and right down the walls which lead to an elevated safe location in the neighboring district. We will however look at solutions at the main doors as well.