PTS Patch Notes v2.4.0

Septimus_Magna

Lettigall wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Lettigall wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Francescolg wrote: »

Sorc shield is still on top of all re-castable absorb shields, just because each re-casting can proc Crystal Frag! Every skilled sorc knows how to combine shield-stacking + crystal frag procs in PvP battles, add some ports left and right (not streak^^) and this will work like a charm (still easy mode). You will have a little bit less dps but still mostly instant skills, no casted/channelled spells and very high mobility, while having best-def possible + max dmg output, all out of magicka/spell dmg.

My sorc sees no problems

The problem is that you can be put on the defensive really easy, if someone CCs you just before your shield runs out you'll have no defense unless you instantly break it and reapply the shield. Meanwhile you do 0 dps and the attacker can keep increasing the preassure. We all know some CCs take more time to break (Fear and Fossilze for example) which will make it easy to burst through the 22-25k health pool.

Sorcs will have a very hard time vs skilled stamina DKs and NBs, hard-CC > burst > ult > GG and GN

Welcome to the world of others classes and builds! Somehow we survived all those "horrid" CCs without shields!

So what class skills should sorcs use to mitigate dmg and heal themselves?
Casting hardened ward only gives a temporary health buffer, it does not restore any health.
Surge hardly works in pvp and the Twilight is clunky and unreliable.

The fact that sorcs have to recast their shields more often will require more magicka regen which means less spell dmg. And because sorcs will have to spend more time casting shields their dmg will drop even more. So their dmg output is nerfed in two ways and their defense is nerfed by 70%. Its not like sorcs are so OP at the moment that they need to be nerfed left, right and center.


p.s. I havent been played my sorc for months because its pretty bad in pvp groups but I have played one long enough to understand that this is a terrible dissension.

Break free and heal up! You have healing ward and rest of the Resto staff tree + potion to get your health up. Place 2 heavy armor in your build for survability. Sorcs aren't only class without class heal, heck even stambuilds depend from non-class heal abilities.

So whats the difference between a magicka sorc and magicka NB in terms of dmg mitigation?
Magicka sorc hardened ward + healing ward.
Magicka NB harness/dampen + healing ward.

The thing is, the NB has two other really good ways to mitigate dmg, Double Take (20% dodge) and Cloak (invisibility).
Templars will have the equivalent of hardened on top of their insanely strong self-heals. How can this be considered to be balanced? Sorc mitigation = dmg shield, there's no other option.


And like 2 heavy is going to make a difference. 5/1/1 is a lot beter for 2% extra tri-stats which increases health and shield size but thats a different discussion.

Surgee

Epona222 wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

Keryss wrote: »

I'm doing every day 2 dungeons with my tank (in leveling). The silver one and the random normal one (for the 100 000 XP bonus).

The thing i'm absolutely sure, is that only the silver one gives me undaunted XP.

You don't get Undaunted XP for random normal dungeons because there's no quest associated with them. You did get XP the first time you completed each of them, but after that you need pledges (i.e. quests).

You get undaunted xp for completing the dungeon damage dealer/blocker/healer achievements (each tier of those achievements grants undaunted xp), and those achievements can be fulfilled in delves and/or in some quest areas. Some of my (less sociable!) characters have never ventured into a group dungeon ever, but have got to level 3 in the Undaunted skill line just from xp gained when getting those achievements.

My wife got 5 characters. All of them are level 3 undaunted. You get to that level from quest line and then I think it's all pledges. Might be wrong though.

Epona222

Surgee wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

Keryss wrote: »

I'm doing every day 2 dungeons with my tank (in leveling). The silver one and the random normal one (for the 100 000 XP bonus).

The thing i'm absolutely sure, is that only the silver one gives me undaunted XP.

You don't get Undaunted XP for random normal dungeons because there's no quest associated with them. You did get XP the first time you completed each of them, but after that you need pledges (i.e. quests).

You get undaunted xp for completing the dungeon damage dealer/blocker/healer achievements (each tier of those achievements grants undaunted xp), and those achievements can be fulfilled in delves and/or in some quest areas. Some of my (less sociable!) characters have never ventured into a group dungeon ever, but have got to level 3 in the Undaunted skill line just from xp gained when getting those achievements.

My wife got 5 characters. All of them are level 3 undaunted. You get to that level from quest line and then I think it's all pledges. Might be wrong though.

What quest line? The only quest you ever need to do is the first one, and the only thing you need to do to complete that is enter the dungeon solo and then come back out the way you came in and go back to the tavern and speak to the head of the undaunted in the starting town. You don't even need to do the dungeon. There isn't really an undaunted quest line as such.

skrigger

Epona222 wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

My wife got 5 characters. All of them are level 3 undaunted. You get to that level from quest line and then I think it's all pledges. Might be wrong though.

What quest line?...

I think he meant Undaunted Skill Line.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO

Ah well, time to whine like every non-shield user did to get everything else nerfed unnecessarily too I guess.

Epona222

skrigger wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

My wife got 5 characters. All of them are level 3 undaunted. You get to that level from quest line and then I think it's all pledges. Might be wrong though.

What quest line?...

I think he meant Undaunted Skill Line.

Ah OK if he was talking about skill line then we were both talking about the same thing, no worries

It is possible to get to undaunted level 3 without ever doing a group dungeon, just because of the achievements that clock up damage/block/healing in delves, and grant xp when you complete them, those achievements grant xp to the Undaunted skill line.

Surgee

Epona222 wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

Keryss wrote: »

I'm doing every day 2 dungeons with my tank (in leveling). The silver one and the random normal one (for the 100 000 XP bonus).

The thing i'm absolutely sure, is that only the silver one gives me undaunted XP.

You don't get Undaunted XP for random normal dungeons because there's no quest associated with them. You did get XP the first time you completed each of them, but after that you need pledges (i.e. quests).

You get undaunted xp for completing the dungeon damage dealer/blocker/healer achievements (each tier of those achievements grants undaunted xp), and those achievements can be fulfilled in delves and/or in some quest areas. Some of my (less sociable!) characters have never ventured into a group dungeon ever, but have got to level 3 in the Undaunted skill line just from xp gained when getting those achievements.

My wife got 5 characters. All of them are level 3 undaunted. You get to that level from quest line and then I think it's all pledges. Might be wrong though.

What quest line? The only quest you ever need to do is the first one, and the only thing you need to do to complete that is enter the dungeon solo and then come back out the way you came in and go back to the tavern and speak to the head of the undaunted in the starting town. You don't even need to do the dungeon. There isn't really an undaunted quest line as such.

You're probably right. Messed it up with dungeon quests. Seems like our chars are stuck on level 3 for a long time. Finished the dungeons 1 time but never did the pledges.

Anyway, I went a little offroad here...let's get back to it.... New shields duration suck!

Pomaikai

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

Potency runestones no longer need to be harvested, with every tier of both polarities now available for purchase from any enchanting vendor, including Alliance Point enchanting vendors.

Does this mean you CAN'T harvest them anymore? Or just that they are now available for sale?

They cannot be harvested anymore; all Enchanting runestones now give Aspect and Essence. You can still get them by deconstructing glyphs, though, but the main way is to just buy what you need from a vendor.

Does this mean that, like most vendor sold items, they are becoming gold sinks and will be very expensive compared to current MM's and harvesting?

Fallen_Ray

The 6 second shield duration on healing ward its understandable as it heals when the shield dismisses. But on Annulment, Conjured Ward and Obsidian Shield? That's a 70% reduction from their original duration at the same resource cost. For that duration you could reduce their costs by at least 25% to make up for the huge duration reduction or reduce the duration to 10 seconds, I think a 10 sec duration is more than enough. Not to mention these shields don't have a secondary effect unlike Healing Ward.


Buffing and nerfing skills will get us nowhere. You can achieve true balance by starting over each class. Making them all with their strengths and weaknesses. No class or skill should overpower the other.

Take a Dark souls game for example. It's a very well respected game by it's pvp community and it's because their classes are very well balanced, and it relies on player skill and how well you distributed your skill points.

I'm not saying this game needs to be like Dark Souls, as they are 2 different realms. But the idea of class balance. Study how they balance classes, game play, understand it and apply your own personalized balance into Elder Scrolls Online. You'd be surprised the ideas that spring up from looking at other creations.

A few tweaks once in a while don't hurt. But massive changes every time there's a new DLC gets really bothersome. Even more bothersome when we actually have to pay up gold we don't plan on spending because you refuse to reset our skill points at no extra cost so each DLC feels more like a punishment than a blessing when we have to change skills because the ones we had pre-patch just won't cut it.

Kwivur

Shuffle should also get the nerf hammer to 6 seconds as well.

AdAstra

@ZOS_GinaBruno

this is probably my favorite patch since the launch of the game. Not even for the Dark Brotherhood either. I've played E.S. 1-5 and never really got into D.B. content. It just isn't my play style. The reason why I am so ecstatic however is just because of the direction of the game. Reading these notes just filled me with optimism for the game's future. It proves to me that ZOS is listening. It also shows that ZOS isn't cutting corners and force feeding us basic content just because we asked for it either. They are taking their time, considering our requests and figuring out ways to add it into the game in creative, seamless and thematic ways. There are a considerable amount of new features we are all desiring from this development team and this game in the future. I believe that if we stay vocal, positive, respectful and specific about our requests we will inevitably see them in game, done way better than we could have imagined or done ourselves. We just might hear "no e.t.a" a few more times than we'd like to.. = P The point is here, thank you ZOS. Please take your time delivering to us this premium content and I shall remain patient for it's release.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO

AdAstra wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno

this is probably my favorite patch since the launch of the game. Not even for the Dark Brotherhood either. I've played E.S. 1-5 and never really got into D.B. content. It just isn't my play style. The reason why I am so ecstatic however is just because of the direction of the game. Reading these notes just filled me with optimism for the game's future. It proves to me that ZOS is listening. It also shows that ZOS isn't cutting corners and force feeding us basic content just because we asked for it either. They are taking their time, considering our requests and figuring out ways to add it into the game in creative, seamless and thematic ways. There are a considerable amount of new features we are all desiring from this development team and this game in the future. I believe that if we stay vocal, positive, respectful and specific about our requests we will inevitably see them in game, done way better than we could have imagined or done ourselves. We just might hear "no e.t.a" a few more times than we'd like to.. = P The point is here, thank you ZOS. Please take your time delivering to us this premium content and I shall remain patient for it's release.

They cut corners still though, they didn't fix shield stacking, just put a band aid on it and called it fixed. Same with lots of other things.

Arkascha

ShalidorsHeir wrote: »

ofc - stam dk -> a balanced class -> gets poison dmg
mana nb -> a balanced class -> gets desease dmg
mana sorc -> a balanced class (that will be less strong if all others classes are buffed) -> GET A 6secs SHIELD?!?!
stam sorc -> IS STILL THE WORST SHIAT INAGME!

ZOS -- fakk yuo! biatches"

n@ShalidorsHeir
Gute Mage schaffen das

Das ist kein großer schmerz für nen Mage. jetzt ist halt mehr Einsatz gefragt

Blackfyre20

PLEASE do something about the light weaver passive for templars. Saw this comment earlier and just want to agree that it is the worst class passive in the game, completely useless

rmatthendrick

Seriously, ever new patch hurts the Sorcerers. What do you have against them Zenimax?

Blackfyre20

Why did anyone complain about the free respec after IC? If you don't want to change anything, it takes 5 minutes to allocate your skillpoints again. With big changes like this I feel like a lot of people could use the free respec.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

Blackfyre20 wrote: »

Why did anyone complain about the free respec after IC? If you don't want to change anything, it takes 5 minutes to allocate your skillpoints again. With big changes like this I feel like a lot of people could use the free respec.

A lot of people dont want to redo all their skill points, attribute points and champion points. It takes way longer than 5 minutes even if you wrote it all down how you had it before. A better solution instead of forcing respec on us is to mail a respec token to all characters. Bound to that character cannot be sold or put in the bank. Then if you want to you can. If not you can just delete the email.

Drummerx04

I do not think sorc ward nerf (or dk obsidian nerf) is a good idea, and the other shield modifications are not too huge if the idea was to try to limit shield stacking... With the 6 second timer, It is still entirely possible to tank fairly large amounts of damage by just repeatedly spamming the shield when under pressure, so the nerf won't stop people from complaining about that.

From either a pvp or pve standpoint, the 20s duration for conjured ward and morphs is crucial. The maximum practical C ward strength in PVP zones is ~12k, and there are plenty of build combos that can burst that down in an instant, so it is by no means OP. And besides streaking away like a coward, mag sorcs do not have another reliable class defense skill or heal.

I have something stupid like 50+ days of play time on my sorc and I have tried many builds. Surge heals are occasionally nice in pve, but with the cooldown and tiny medium staff attacks triggering the cooldown, it is fairly rare to get a nice CFrag crit heal. Blood magic is nice but the heal is pretty darn small - 8% on Dark Magic damage amounts to maybe 2k health per second if you are doing something really right. A light attack from an arrow can deal 3k damage or more. Dark exchange heals a healthyish 4k health per second in pve as well as a resource, but the heal is horridly pathetic in pvp.

Oh, but what about the new twilight heal? It's great, I can even heal vWGT as a sorc now and crit heal up to 18k! Unless the twilight dies, in which case you can actually get caught animation canceling your own summon with another summon while healing nobody and dying because you don't have a shield up either.


Lets look at the other class defenses while also keeping in mind that every magicka build can get good utility out of Harness and Healing Ward:

Templars:
These guys are laughing at sorc saying, "welcome to the 6 second shield club and BOL got nerfed last patch suck it up," while conveniently omitting that their shields also explode and they have a skill which can burst heal a VERY large percentage of their health bars in one shot... and that jabs restores health. Or that they have an entire class skill line dedicated to healing themselves and others, and that technically the total heal of BOL was reduced by around 25%. (extra targets healed by half of what the temp gets iirc)

Nightblades:
Fairly strong HOT attached directly to some pretty powerful single target and AOE skills in the siphoning line and the ability to disengage most fights at will via cloak. Yes cloak can be countered, but at the end of the day it is still extremely powerful.

Dragonknights:
30% burst heal, reflect spells, damage mitigation galore. Admittedly, I'm less familiar with DKs, but they are notoriously hard to kill in pvp and pve, so logically they don't lack survivability.

Stamina Builds:
rally, vigor, dodge roll + any magicka defense buff like scales. Basically, the only reliable way I've seen to kill this combo is jesus beams, curse, or hope they are really bad.

Now why does the 6 second shield make a difference? Because sorc survivability is based avoiding damage in the first place rather than healing after the fact. Basically, there is going to be a lot of *sees sorc cast shield, wait 3 seconds queue up some damage, stun sorc, shield drops BY ITSELF, sorc dies.

If you really want to lower complaints about sorcs in pvp, leave c ward duration alone, and straight double the cost of streak. Any move that acts as an instacast unblockable area stun and major gap widener is as OP as nb cloak.

tl;dr
Don't nerf sorc shield (and for fairness obsidian shield) time. You can nerf harness shield time to limit shield stacking if you must. Players with any sort of skill or coordination can take out or scare off a shield stacking sorc.

Thank you.

AdAstra

@cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO you are correct about them not fixing it. You are correct about them putting on an adhesive bandage (that is probably not band-aid brand because that would be expensive but that is a different topic). The thing i would like to mention as that the bandage that they applied is meant to heal the wound. I wouldn't say it is cutting corners as much as i would say mending an issue temporarily as they work towards a solution. Cutting corners would have been throwing that fix in a random update and leaving it linger forever. Nevertheless, this is just my opinion and i could very well be completely incorrect. Either way it is a solid point of discussion and an problem i hope they resolve. I do not have a build that functions off of shields at the moment so i am probably not as passionate as some others.

Epona222

Blackfyre20 wrote: »

Why did anyone complain about the free respec after IC? If you don't want to change anything, it takes 5 minutes to allocate your skillpoints again. With big changes like this I feel like a lot of people could use the free respec.

Completely agree, I'd rather take a few minutes per character than spend 15k per character for a respec. For 8 characters on my main account on NA, 3 characters on my 2nd account on NA and 3 on the EU server, that's a total of 210k gold every blimmin major update, just because a few people got whiney on the forums about spending 10 minutes reallocating their skills - and as a result ZOS thinks that skill reset is 'unpopular'.

PLEASE RESET OUR SKILLS WHEN THERE IS AN UPDATE THAT CHANGES THEM, WE ARE NOT MADE OF MONEY

MercTheMage

Well I guess I'm deleting my *** sorcerer then. 6 second ward that does nothing, might as well use healing ward then, at least it heals me after the 6 *** seconds of protection. Zenimax people. Living down to our expectations.

frozywozy

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Changes to Imperial City
We’ve introduced a number of changes and improvements to Imperial City in this update:
Districts can now be captured via mechanics similar to Resources in Cyrodiil.
A single flag is located in each District, and is guarded by a few Alliance Guards.
Ownership of a District confers a 33% Tel Var Stone bonus to all Tel Var Stone gains in the Districts.
Ownership of a District also controls whether you can respawn in that District via a PvE or PvP death.
If your Alliance doesn’t control any Districts and you die in the Districts, you will respawn in the Sewers.
You will now lose 50% of your Tel Var Stones for both a PvE or PvP death. Previously, you would lose 10% of your Stones for a PvE death, and 80% for a PvP death.
Rebalanced the monsters in Imperial City to make moving around the city easier for the solo player.
Bosses remain targeted at two player characters.
Patrolling Horrors and Xivkyn elite are best handled by four or more, but their attacks are now less likely to kill you in one hit.

@ZOS_GinaBruno - Could we get a confirmation that controlling a district generate points for your faction on the campaign scoreboard? With populations still shared between Cyrodiil and Imperial City, if the district capture system doesn't have any incentive with the war happening in Cyrodiil, it will be a huge problem for people who care about the campaign.

kylewwefan

Man that was a lot of stuff to read through. I'm stoked for the next DLC now!

G0DS_DEMON

“The Alchemist’s Crate” contains 200x of every kind of Water, every kind of Alchemy Reagent, and every kind of Oil (used in poisoncrafting). This includes the new Reagents introduced with Poisoncrafting, as well.

“The Crafter’s Materials Crate” contains 200x of every kind of Refined Material, of every level, for Clothiers, Blacksmiths, and Woodworkers. It also contains 200x of each kind of improvement material.

“The Crafter’s Limitless Library” contains the full Style Book for every Style that your character does not know. This allows you to pick and choose which styles you’d like to learn, or you can just read all the books and learn everything.

“The Traveled Crafter’s Crate” contains 200x of every Trait item (including both Nirncrux variants), ever refined Style Item currently available, and 200x Crown Mimic Stones.

Just a couple observations: ]I see these making the guild store prices go way down with all these (Crafter's Materials Crate, Traveled Crafter's Crate, and the Alchemist's Crate)in everyone's hands.


Crafters Limitless Library: Says, contains full style books for the styles you don't know. If you know just a few chapters or almost all of a style, does it consider you knowing that style and will not give you the book to get the rest of that style ??

StrangerTelvani

Nirnhoned: This trait now increases the damage of the weapon.
My gold nirnhored staff will turns into garbage for my sorc!

phreatophile

Experience gain rules will continue to function as they did for Veteran Ranks:

•Mobs 40 Champion Points below your level will grant 75% of their normal XP.
•Mobs 50 or more Champion Points below your level will grant 30% of their normal XP.

I've seen this asked about in several places but I have yet to see an answer.

It sounds like the max level of enemies will be 160CP, so, If I understand this correctly, there will be no place where players with over 210 champion points can get more than 30% experience for Mob kills.

This, unless I have misunderstood, is a pretty big nerf to XP. Today I can take a VR16 to Wrothgar and get 680XP (approx.) for a certain mob kill. If this is structured the way it's worded, when Dark Brotherhood goes live that will change to 204XP, is this correct?

Epona222

G0DS_DEMON wrote: »

“The Alchemist’s Crate” contains 200x of every kind of Water, every kind of Alchemy Reagent, and every kind of Oil (used in poisoncrafting). This includes the new Reagents introduced with Poisoncrafting, as well.

“The Crafter’s Materials Crate” contains 200x of every kind of Refined Material, of every level, for Clothiers, Blacksmiths, and Woodworkers. It also contains 200x of each kind of improvement material.

“The Crafter’s Limitless Library” contains the full Style Book for every Style that your character does not know. This allows you to pick and choose which styles you’d like to learn, or you can just read all the books and learn everything.

“The Traveled Crafter’s Crate” contains 200x of every Trait item (including both Nirncrux variants), ever refined Style Item currently available, and 200x Crown Mimic Stones.

Just a couple observations: ]I see these making the guild store prices go way down with all these (Crafter's Materials Crate, Traveled Crafter's Crate, and the Alchemist's Crate)in everyone's hands.


Crafters Limitless Library: Says, contains full style books for the styles you don't know. If you know just a few chapters or almost all of a style, does it consider you knowing that style and will not give you the book to get the rest of that style ??

This is just on the PTS - the crates/books etc are there for testing purposes on the test server so that people can try out the new goodies and report back any bugs. These crates of items won't be available on live servers.

RedneckProphet

I DESPISE the fact my vet ranks are being judiciously removed after I worked so hard for them. Champion points don't give half the progression or accomplishment VR do. If I can no longer level and all I get is a bunch of points that are capped (lowly I might add) and only add a fraction of a percent of progression, I really see no sense in playing any longer.

cpuScientist

dimensional wrote: »

cpuScientist wrote: »

Francescolg wrote: »

Funny how Sorc's always claim to have no heals and nobody speaks about Blood Magic, 8% passive heal, which they get every time they use Crystal Frags, or for each single Daedric Mine proc.

8% passive heal is huge, if and only if you know how to use it! If you understand that, we don't even need to discuss that!

The "new" Negate Magic should work with the Blood Magic passive, giving you 8% health per target hit, so you can spec in 2 (!) GT AE (Mines+Negate) and the strongest DD in game and each time you hit somebody, you get 8% free health.

But, psssst, nobody talks about that passive ability, as you haven't the last two years..
Sorc self-healing is not all about Power Surge, there are many more ways...

The new duration of the absorb shield doesn't matter for me, as long as every move I do can proc Crystal Frags and give me another free 8% passive heal

This is the silliest post I have read yet. This is our solution to getting beat down? Use an ability with a cast time that will do 50% less damage in pvp, hope they don't dodge/block the frag or just sidestep the mines, so we can get 8% of this halved damage back as health. Well hoooray we are healed back to nothing lol. Templar Burst heal and single target/AOE heals, DK burst heal AOE sap heal and single target slash heal that's instant, NB single and AOE heals. Sorc crit heal that doesn't work and Blood magic... lololol come on now troll somewhere else.

I can't tell you how many countless sorcs I've played that use frags with great success, myself included. It's a great skill and if you can't see that you're doing it wrong.

The skill is fine, I love it for the burst the knockdown. The heal though from the passive which is what I was talking about is not prfound, it has a cool down, is weakened more in PvP, if you use this as your heal in PvP then great for you, teach us how to use a 4% heal that has a cool down on its use and the best skill to process it with can be dodged and has a cast time.

BuggeX

Finally changes to Heavy Armor