Gameplay Updates and Q&A with Eric Wrobel

Tyrion87

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] Magelight: We plan on making a few changes to this ability based on some feedback we’ve seen including reducing the radius of the reveal, and increasing the cost of the ability. Ultimately, we want it to be a little more difficult to find stealthed enemies unless you specifically use the Radiant Magelight morph, and want it to be more expensive to get the Major Empower buff from toggling Magelight.

This is exactly what I feared! That you'll consider the nightblades' groans as a 'constructive feedback'. You know that ANY nerf to cloak ability (introduced indirectly via magelight or directly to the cloak itself) will cause the discontent among the nightblades' players, no matter how much it is expected by other players and how much it is actually needed to restore the balance to the game. Those grumblings are nothing but subjective opinions and expressions of fears of people who cannot play the nightblades without using the cloak. I can only tell them: L2P. As I've seen lately on the forums, most people were really satisfied with the changes to be made to magelight.
If somebody thinks that the argument to nerf the magelight is the fact that it will be using by most magicka based classes in PvP, I'd like to turn your attention to the fact that nowdays the cloak is the most overused skill in PvP while other classes have also the same or almost the same sets of skills on their bars.

Zinaroth

Soulac wrote: »

Could I get a reliable defense ability as nightblade?

What's wrong with passively getting Major Ward and Major Resolve from using your highest damage skill, a class ability that give Major Evasion and Major Expedition and Cloak, the only ability that now can evade Meteor?

Turelus

What's the thought process behind the new gear sets which have PvE/PvP specific bonuses? Why are they not viable in both styles of gameplay and will there be a continuation down this route of dividing the gear between the two types of gameplay?

Brrrofski

Turelus wrote: »

What's the thought process behind the new gear sets which have PvE/PvP specific bonuses? Why are they not viable in both styles of gameplay and will there be a continuation down this route of dividing the gear between the two types of gameplay?

There's PvE sets for pvp, and pvp set's for pvp.

Only available from doing said acttivity.

Way more important things to cover than that...

EsoRecon

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hello everyone!

On this Friday’s ESO Live Twitch show, we’ll be joined by Lead Combat Designer Eric Wrobel to discuss some of the ability and balance changes going into the Thieves Guild base game patch. This will include what’s been done so far, some upcoming changes we plan to make, and answering some of your questions live. First, we’d like to address a few popular topics we’ve seen over the past week from the PTS forums:

• Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.
• Magelight: We plan on making a few changes to this ability based on some feedback we’ve seen including reducing the radius of the reveal, and increasing the cost of the ability. Ultimately, we want it to be a little more difficult to find stealthed enemies unless you specifically use the Radiant Magelight morph, and want it to be more expensive to get the Major Empower buff from toggling Magelight.
• Meteor: This was the only Ultimate that you were previously able to reflect, so this change was simply bringing it in line with all other Ultimates. We also plan on making a slight reduction to the snare on the Ice Comet morph.
• Siphoning Attacks: We plan on increasing the resources provided by this ability in the next incremental patch.
• Leeching Strikes: Also in the next incremental patch, we plan on increasing the amount of health restored from this ability, based on your feedback.
• Alliance War Skill Line: Rich Lambert posted a very detailed response in this thread that we encourage you to check out, but in short, we based our changes on what we found to be the average amount of AP gained based on our data. That said, what’s currently on the PTS is lower than intended, and will be fixed in the next incremental patch.
• Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.

With all that said, please post any combat or itemization-related questions for Eric in this thread, and we’ll do our best to answer as many as we can on Friday’s show. Remember to check today’s PTS patch notes first as we included a few fixes in this most recent update.

Thanks, everyone, and we look forward to talking with you later this week!

@ZOS_GinaBruno No changes for Stam Sorcs still?

Targuris

add heavy attack damage to igneous weapons morph. This would make it more appealing. I don't see why you constantly make almost useless morphs for noone to use. A huge example of this is crystal blast... make it a stam move for stam sorcs. It could be a storm hammer or something. You need to give stamina better options, because stamina is getting very boring.

eliisra

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time.

If ZoS want templars to use Healing Ritual they need to decrease the cast time way way more than 25% as well as slightly buffing the radius.

You cant wait 1.5 sec to heal in a game with short TTK, like ESO. Healing needs to be close to instant or someone dies. That goes for both PvE and PvE. Neither can you predict when a player is going to take big hits. This isn't WoW you know, with some boss mod and a timer telling you to heal in 1 2 3 now lol.

Developers nerfed the only good heal in the entire Restoring Light skill line. But you did nothing to make other heals in the skill line viable replacements. No wonder templars are salty and mad. Healing Ritual is still the worse skill in the game. Rite of Passage is situational at best.

We're still seen as the weakest dps- and burst class.

If you're going to keep nerfing templar healing, you need to make improvement in other areas.

Solariken

I really hope Wrobel comes bearing more Templar love than that though.

Also, I REALLY hope some improvements to heavy armor make it into this update!

SorataArisugawa

BoL:
I understand the change. The skill was to powerfull before. It was nearly a gamebreaker. Templer were to centred around this skill.

Stam Temp and Sorc:
For Sorcs: to less skills, still no stam scalling of pets
For Temps: The Aedric Spear Ulty would benefit from a higher range, you should fix the charge already(!!!), More healing for all Abilities through focus is great!

Magica Sorcs:
nice changes, Pets are interesting now. Consider a direct lightning spamable cast maybe (with right amount of damage)? So we don't have to use Destrostaff always? Could be a Morph of Magerage.

RAGUNAnoOne

Why can't wrobel post this himself? he does have a forum account...

kirk_lewis_ESO

Every time I thing of the Templar class, I remember Harry Potter sleeping in the stair-case. Most Templar users just want to know why the class takes a beating so hard. The class wasn't the best at anything but healing and now it won't be good at much besides taking a beating. Sharing your rationale would go a long way.

Sarousse

Swernik wrote: »

Isn't overload ultimate also reflectable?
This makes no sense to make meteor un-reflectable !

This.

@ZOS_GinaBruno what do you have to answer to this ?

Anhedonie

I do appreciate your explanations. I really do.
But I really hate the way you nerf things. BoL, Healing Ritual, Focused Healing...it's just awful.

Go easy on your nerf-hammer. Instead of careful balancing, step by step, you just hit useful abilities several times with your nerf-hammer until they turned into complete ***.

Bfish22090

Can you please ask Eric Wrobel if he has a moment to talk about our lord and savior, cthulhu?

Elsonso

Tyrion87 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] Magelight: We plan on making a few changes to this ability based on some feedback we’ve seen including reducing the radius of the reveal, and increasing the cost of the ability. Ultimately, we want it to be a little more difficult to find stealthed enemies unless you specifically use the Radiant Magelight morph, and want it to be more expensive to get the Major Empower buff from toggling Magelight.

This is exactly what I feared! That you'll consider the nightblades' groans as a 'constructive feedback'. You know that ANY nerf to cloak ability (introduced indirectly via magelight or directly to the cloak itself) will cause the discontent among the nightblades' players, no matter how much it is expected by other players and how much it is actually needed to restore the balance to the game. Those grumblings are nothing but subjective opinions and expressions of fears.

I think that Wrobel and his team are more than aware that people complain, or compliment, based on their own perspective of the game. I highly doubt that they get up in the morning and browse the forums, streams, videos, and reviews looking for today's changes to make. They have to know that anything that comes in is biased in some manner. While players can make comments and suggestions, they come from a specific perspective and almost all of these lack the context that needs to be there in order to make an actual change to the game. Wrobel's team puts these into context and evaluates them.

This is why I show no concern that Wrobel is just a robot following the orders of the streamers and 'elite' players, or is somehow being convinced to do what they say by harsh words and critical reviews. If he follows a suggestion from that player base, it is because, when put into context, it is a good suggestion.

Of course, my suggestions are always in perfect context and have the entire game scope in mind. Wrobel can drop those in as needed, without changes. I try to hold back because I think he needs to do his own work.

On other subjects...

Stamina Sorcerers. I have no problem with Sorcerers that want to use stamina. I do not think that any of the class skills should draw from the stamina pool directly. Weapons, blocks, dodges, and non-class direct stamina skills can be used. To that extent, the only stamina ability that might be interesting to me is an active skill that, when cast, removes all remaining stamina and adds it temporarily one time per cast to the magicka pool. Stamina would not regenerate while this effect is in play and magicka regen would only kick in once the stamina boost was used up. This would be drawing upon your physical strength (constitution) to boost magical power. This is a very powerful feature and I have not thought about it enough to figure out how it might be balanced against the rest of the game.

Templars. Last year at this time, around the time of Update 6, I got the distinct impression that Templars were the reference class. At that time, it seemed like the Sorcerer, DK, and NB classes were being incrementally balanced around Templars. I got this impression due to long periods of nerfing and buffing everything else, while seemingly ignoring Templars. They did not ignore Templars this time, in fact they made some modest changes. However, I still wonder whether they were a reference class for balance a year ago, and if so, whether they still are today. I still think that Templars need to be more healers than fighters, though. I am talking more about healing options than healing power. A Templar with a resto staff should be a powerful group healer. A Templar with a damage weapon should be an acceptable healer for self and a self-sufficient group.

Digiman

Ignoring Sorcerer toggles and pet problems... considering this is their focus I would at least like an actual goal of sorcerers design for combat this patch.

Jesh

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel
Healer Templars being "useful to the group" and "managing to heal" and "functioning well on livestreams" (which healer streamer are you watching BTW? would love to watch the healer livestream. Which one would you recommend? I hope you were watching livetreaming healers at least, right?) does not equate to your previously stated goals that you "want players to have their characters feel powerful" - your words! Your justifications as to keeping these changes are using a language antithetical to your "powerful character" statements: either you allow healer templars to be powerful healers OR you let them "manage" to heal, be "useful" to a group, and "function well", BUT lets not pretend these are the same thing.
So you don't want me to feel like a powerful healer? Fine. But don't go around telling players about 'feeling that their characters are powerful'. BoL was THE skill that made Templars Powerful healers more than any other. Yes, you can be an awesome healer without it, but lets not kid ourselves that this is an important skill to Templar Healing.
Just my opinion.

FENGRUSH

Ultimately a response will be needed on stam sorcs. FENGRUSH will ensure it happens. Would be nice if its done sooner than later.

shugg

Question:

Do you plan to look into skills vs rolls especially tanking. A lot of the changes are for casters and pvp however there is no balance for tanking pve content. Despite the stam blocking it is still a bit underwhelming, the current content is to easy and there isn’t enough time to be offensive in raids. Could have the bosses hit harder but less often which may make health mean something. (other 2 stats are better than health at the moment for attribute points)

just some thoughts below:

Some DPS morphs should be directed to tanking like we have healing morphs for classes within Dps talents. (dont think i could find a healing morph in sorcs though)
Ideas would be:
NB agony - when the dot ends the caster gets a shield based on 30% of health of the caster for the same amount of time the dot was active.
DK stone fist - Stam morph, melee rang - When you hit the target you gain armoured shell which increases healing received by 8%
Templers - blazing shield last for 10seconds - after it expires you gain holy presence, reduces all damage by 5% for 5 seconds, i would also up the damage of this so its more of a dps thing for tanks, scale of health.
Sorc - they need a stam morph same as DK, change mages wrath -charges you melee weapon with lightning - deal x amount of damage that will chain lightning damage to nearby targets dealing x amount of splash damage - you gain a shield based on the amount of enemy’s hit (like brawler)


please take the stats with a pinch of salt as some may seam op buti tried to make them health staking attribute related which tanks should be (not in this game though)

Targuris

Ya or wait another 6 months before they think about class balance. Stamina needs some changes to make the classes feel more unique and less dependent entirely on weapon skill lines.

Zinaroth

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Ultimately a response will be needed on stam sorcs. FENGRUSH will ensure it happens. Would be nice if its done sooner than later.

Feel the same way about Stamplars. Most overlooked builds in the game right now.

Lysette

MissBizz wrote: »

Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.

Oh.

I sincerely hope you did read the feedback given to you once everyone got their marbles together. I still don't understand needing to take away the third heal. Could have just toned down the heal to make it "less effective".

I second this - especially when there are often groups of 4, it makes more sense to let the 3rd heal and reduce the amount of healed points instead.

VelociousLegend

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel

Here are some topics I would like discussed in this week's ESO live:

1) With the upcoming changes to the CP system to mitigate physical damage and the lack of Stam Sorc improvements, are there any plans to improve Stam Sorc builds to be less at a disadvantage? Crystal Blast stamina morph or other class options??
2) Heavy armor is not that advantageous. Currently, it is a smarter move to go all medium and have the extra damage and stam without sacrificing too much physical resistance. Maybe improve tanky-ness of heavy armor or better passives skills?
3) AOE caps. I noticed that a lot of PTS changes brought a lot of the abilities in line with the 6 player cap or closer to it (better but not great). I think this cap should be completely remove or at the very least greatly increased. This change would mean it will no longer be advantageous to cluster together and for players to play more tactical or skillfully. Added side effect would be more dispersion of players in Cyrodiil - possibly reducing the load on servers to improve performance.

Thank you. I look forward to this week's ESO Live.

Jesh

Itemization-related questions for Eric @Wrobel :
1. Why do I receive v14 loot/set pieces from v16 bosses when running v16 dungeons?
2. Why can I not find some of the awesome sets you have created at level v16? Why are 90% of sets in this game essentially wasted? Eg. (Healer's Habit, Warlock, Fiord's Legacy, Quick Serpent, Undaunted Infiltrator, Akatosh's Blessed Armor, and so many more)
3. Why do quests throughout the game give terrible rewards? (with the possible exclusion of jewelry)

Just some of my questions.

FENGRUSH

Zinaroth wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Ultimately a response will be needed on stam sorcs. FENGRUSH will ensure it happens. Would be nice if its done sooner than later.

Feel the same way about Stamplars. Most overlooked builds in the game right now.

You will not be forsaken - either way these builds fall to the wayside in the next meta with det buffs and necessity on magicka builds but I mean.. come on.

Zinaroth

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Zinaroth wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Ultimately a response will be needed on stam sorcs. FENGRUSH will ensure it happens. Would be nice if its done sooner than later.

Feel the same way about Stamplars. Most overlooked builds in the game right now.

You will not be forsaken - either way these builds fall to the wayside in the next meta with det buffs and necessity on magicka builds but I mean.. come on.

Stamina in general is getting gutted. Don't even think we will be running with stamina DPS in the new trial in Hodor. Maybe a single or two because they are being too stubborn to change and are too good players to not include on the team, but magicka definately seem to be the way to go again. Back to pre 1.6 days I guess.

Targuris

Basically they gave all magicka builds insane burst. If you are decent and geared killing people in seconds as any magicka class will be insanely easy.

Bfish22090

Zinaroth wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Ultimately a response will be needed on stam sorcs. FENGRUSH will ensure it happens. Would be nice if its done sooner than later.

Feel the same way about Stamplars. Most overlooked builds in the game right now.

untrue.
jabs does 10k damage, is an execute, cc and interrupt.
plus javelins hit through roll dodge and they have repentance
do not compare stamina sorcs to stam templars

bowmanz607

kkravaritieb17_ESO wrote: »

Just revert the nerf to bol

Tyrion87 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] Magelight: We plan on making a few changes to this ability based on some feedback we’ve seen including reducing the radius of the reveal, and increasing the cost of the ability. Ultimately, we want it to be a little more difficult to find stealthed enemies unless you specifically use the Radiant Magelight morph, and want it to be more expensive to get the Major Empower buff from toggling Magelight.

This is exactly what I feared! That you'll consider the nightblades' groans as a 'constructive feedback'. You know that ANY nerf to cloak ability (introduced indirectly via magelight or directly to the cloak itself) will cause the discontent among the nightblades' players, no matter how much it is expected by other players and how much it is actually needed to restore the balance to the game. Those grumblings are nothing but subjective opinions and expressions of fears of people who cannot play the nightblades without using the cloak. I can only tell them: L2P. As I've seen lately on the forums, most people were really satisfied with the changes to be made to magelight.
If somebody thinks that the argument to nerf the magelight is the fact that it will be using by most magicka based classes in PvP, I'd like to turn your attention to the fact that nowdays the cloak is the most overused skill in PvP while other classes have also the same or almost the same sets of skills on their bars.

O because non nb players are not su jectective about a drastically large buff to an ability that directly counters one class? OK sure. Let's take an old jective look at it. It cost half as much or more than revealing flare which is the same ability with a travel time essentially whereas magelight is is instant. It even cost less then piercing mark which renders that ability useless for because you get so much more from mage light. So let's see so far we have a very cheap ability that renders 2 other abilities useless in the game because it is so much better. Why is it better? Well let's contknue. Not only does the morph that most players will use have a large range, but it also gives you crit, reduced stealth damage for u AND allies and prevents stun in stealth all while not ever having to activate the ability just merely slotting it. O and not only does it have a very cheap cost, have a large range, prevent players from going into stealth for 5 seconds, decrease damage, immune you to stun, and render 2 other abilities useless in comparison, but it also gives a 20%damage ability. So upon activating this extremely cheap ability you reveal players for x time, have increased defesne, but you also get offensive firepower. I ya and no longer a toggle.

Those are all objective facts about the abikity. This is the type of constructive feedback offered by more than just nb. For many it is about game balance and this ability is not balanced. It does too much for too little. I also don't know what forum posts ur reading but the majority of players did not find it fine as 8s on these forums.

Zinaroth

Bfish22090 wrote: »

Zinaroth wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Ultimately a response will be needed on stam sorcs. FENGRUSH will ensure it happens. Would be nice if its done sooner than later.

Feel the same way about Stamplars. Most overlooked builds in the game right now.

untrue.
jabs does 10k damage, is an execute, cc and interrupt.
plus javelins hit through roll dodge and they have repentance
do not compare stamina sorcs to stam templars

Stam Sorcs have:
- superior movement with armor buff included
- better self healing until PTS patch hit
- better rescource management

Jabs is high damage but impossible to hit on people moving around.
How is it an execute?
Burning Light doesn't proc on shield.
The interrupt part is crap, it's 0.5 sec knockback granting free CC immunity.
Repentance almost useless in PvP unless you're mowing down noobs.

Both build suffer in different areas.
Don't make this a discussion on which one sucks the most.
They both need attention.