Impact of change in ability cost formula on PTS gameplay

Asayre

There have been several post noting the increased cost of abilities on the PTS. I've determined the cost formula on the PTS and drawn some conclusions about the impact of the change.

The cost formula on Live is

The base cost is the cost at V16 with no points in Magician and without any skills or equipment that provide cost reduction. Magician is the tooltip of the Champion Point and can be replaced with Warlord for Stamina abilities. Flat Cost Reduction is typically from jewelry enchantments and Percentage Cost Reduction is from skills and passives. The denominator of Percentage Cost Reduction, which is 1.1625, is related to character level. For more information you can read a post by @Reorx_Holybeard (http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pts-2-1-2-sorcerer-arithmagic/page/27/#post-646518).

The cost formula on PTS is

The base cost used for this formula is the same as that on Live.

Based on this formula, I assumed a base cost of 2500 and calculated the cost on Live and on the PTS and plotted Cost_PTS / Cost_Live for 0 flat cost reduction, 203 flat cost reduction (1 legendary enchantment) and 609 (3 legendary enchantments). A complete list of ability cost on Live can be found at http://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php.







From this graphs, I conclude the following:

• Everyone will suffer a cost increase for abilities on the PTS between 5-15%. This is contrary to the patch notes claiming that most abilties will cost the same. In fact you need around 40% cost reduction for abilities on the PTS to be the same as on Live. This is not realistic as percentage cost reduction is about 20% for most players (15% from 5 pieces of Light/Medium armour and a bit more from class or racial passives). This 40% cost reduction is only achievable with 7 pieces of Light/Medium armour and Mages/Fighters guild ability.
• Effectiveness of Magician/Warlord is the same on PTS as on Live.
• Percentage Cost Reduction is significantly more important on PTS. This means that usage of non-dominant pool abilities (i.e. Stamina users using Magicka abilties or vice versa) are penalized heavier on the PTS. This also means Heavy Armour tanks are more severely penalized in this system. Also the cost of Molag Kena is increased substantially.
• Cost reduction glyphs are less impactful. Again tanks are penalized to a greater degree as tanks are more likely to rely on cost reduction glyphs.

CasNation

Thank you once again, @Asayre. It is very nice to have solid numbers backing up these claims. Hopefully things will be adjusted in the next PTS patch, and this is not ZoS' way of pushing players away from the burst meta.

ClockworkArc

On the heavy armor tanks being penalised bit.

Between the already improved numbers of Heavy Attack Restore, the new HA tenacity buff, and the significant Constitution restore amount, Heavy Armor users are gaining a lot more than they are losing. In PTS duels my heavy stamplar rarely seems to ever run out of resources. If anything the overall changes more significantly affect LA and MA users than they do the buffed HA users.

lolo_01b16_ESO

Rugz_Maulgoth wrote: »

On the heavy armor tanks being penalised bit.

Between the already improved numbers of Heavy Attack Restore, the new HA tenacity buff, and the significant Constitution restore amount, Heavy Armor users are gaining a lot more than they are losing. In PTS duels my heavy stamplar rarely seems to ever run out of resources. If anything the overall changes more significantly affect LA and MA users than they do the buffed HA users.

The "buffed" passive barely makes up for the missing bracing. So if you rarly block on your heavy armour pvp build, you might get buffed by the changes, but for "real" heavy armour tanks it will become noticable harder to manage ressources.

hrothbern

Asayre wrote: »

There have been several post noting the increased cost of abilities on the PTS. I've determined the cost formula on the PTS and drawn some conclusions about the impact of the change.

The cost formula on Live is

The base cost is the cost at V16 with no points in Magician and without any skills or equipment that provide cost reduction. Magician is the tooltip of the Champion Point and can be replaced with Warlord for Stamina abilities. Flat Cost Reduction is typically from jewelry enchantments and Percentage Cost Reduction is from skills and passives. The denominator of Percentage Cost Reduction, which is 1.1625, is related to character level. For more information you can read a post by @Reorx_Holybeard (http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pts-2-1-2-sorcerer-arithmagic/page/27/#post-646518).

The cost formula on PTS is

The base cost used for this formula is the same as that on Live.

Based on this formula, I assumed a base cost of 2500 and calculated the cost on Live and on the PTS and plotted Cost_PTS / Cost_Live for 0 flat cost reduction, 203 flat cost reduction (1 legendary enchantment) and 609 (3 legendary enchantments). A complete list of ability cost on Live can be found at http://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php.







From this graphs, I conclude the following:

• Everyone will suffer a cost increase for abilities on the PTS between 5-15%. This is contrary to the patch notes claiming that most abilties will cost the same. In fact you need around 40% cost reduction for abilities on the PTS to be the same as on Live. This is not realistic as percentage cost reduction is about 20% for most players (15% from 5 pieces of Light/Medium armour and a bit more from class or racial passives). This 40% cost reduction is only achievable with 7 pieces of Light/Medium armour and Mages/Fighters guild ability.
• Effectiveness of Magician/Warlord is the same on PTS as on Live.
• Percentage Cost Reduction is significantly more important on PTS. This means that usage of non-dominant pool abilities (i.e. Stamina users using Magicka abilties or vice versa) are penalized heavier on the PTS. This also means Heavy Armour tanks are more severely penalized in this system. Also the cost of Molag Kena is increased substantially.
• Cost reduction glyphs are less impactful. Again tanks are penalized to a greater degree as tanks are more likely to rely on cost reduction glyphs.

Awesome good overview and job @Asayre

code65536

Rugz_Maulgoth wrote: »

On the heavy armor tanks being penalised bit.

Between the already improved numbers of Heavy Attack Restore, the new HA tenacity buff, and the significant Constitution restore amount, Heavy Armor users are gaining a lot more than they are losing. In PTS duels my heavy stamplar rarely seems to ever run out of resources. If anything the overall changes more significantly affect LA and MA users than they do the buffed HA users.

There's your problem. The changes to HA are good if you are dealing with a single target.

With multiple targets on you--e.g., in PvE tanking--you will definitely feel the pain of the changes.

Mulcibur

@Wrobel @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Despite the patch notes stating that there would be almost no ability cost increase, there is a definite cost increase for all abilities even when at max level and max CP. Just over 10% base cost increase.

Could we kindly receive some feedback on this? This has a significant impact on our builds and the sets we'll run this patch.

Ishammael

Thanks for doing the diligence on this, @Asayre

I will likely be in the minority view here, but an across-the-board cost increase in actually something the game needed. It will force players to focus more effort on resources, mitigating the all-in damage builds which dominate nearly all aspects of the game.

r.jan_emailb16_ESO

Ishammael wrote: »

Thanks for doing the diligence on this, @Asayre

I will likely be in the minority view here, but an across-the-board cost increase in actually something the game needed. It will force players to focus more effort on resources, mitigating the all-in damage builds which dominate nearly all aspects of the game.

I agree.

But I also need something that sends me a notification every time @Asayre makes one of those great posts

Septimus_Magna

Asayre wrote: »

The cost formula on PTS is

The base cost used for this formula is the same as that on Live.

So without any cost reduction skill on PTS actually cost 10,8% more than the tooltip value?
Or has the tooltip value of skills been increased by 10,8% as well?

Maybe Im seeing this a bit simplified but how hard can it be to correctly calculate cost reduction?

Ability cost = ( Base - value reduction ) * ( 1 - percentage reduction )

value reduction = sum of reduced cost jewelry enchants.
percentage reduction = sum of Magican, passives and sets.

Kas

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

The cost formula on PTS is

The base cost used for this formula is the same as that on Live.

So without any cost reduction skill on PTS actually cost 10,8% more than the tooltip value?
Or has the tooltip value of skills been increased by 10,8% as well?

Maybe Im seeing this a bit simplified but how hard can it be to correctly calculate cost reduction?

Ability cost = ( Base - value reduction ) * ( 1 - percentage reduction )

value reduction = sum of reduced cost jewelry enchants.
percentage reduction = sum of Magican, passives and sets.

the problem with this, is that percentage based reduction would get significantly stronger with CP.

this of this made up example with numbers that are easy to calculate:

skill cost: 1000
precentage-based reduction: 10%

case a) 0CP
skill costs: 1000 vs 900
--> skill costs 10% less with the percentage-based reduction active

base b) 25% reduction through CP:
skill costs: 750 vs 650
--> skill costs 13.3% less with the percentage-based reduction active

doesn't soudn too terrible but assume you could stack 50% reduction from items (think of light armor passive + seducer + worm + your-next-spell-costs-$x-less)

then we'd be looking at 1000->500 vs 750->250

basically, the complicated *** is ZOS' shot at counter balancing stacking certain things with CP effects

Asayre

@Mulcibur

Wrobel has commented on the increase in ability cost at https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/267979/dark-brotherhood-sorcerer-q-a

Here is the section that you are looking for

Wrobel wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Magicka Costs Increasing: Can you please look into this? I understand that this is happening to every class across the board, but with the costs of everything going up, this change is adding insult to injury. And there is already plenty of injury here, and that's being as polite about this patch as I am realistically able.

With the removal of Veteran Ranks we wanted ability costs to increase in a more reliable and understandable way. Veteran Ranks used a different calculation for ability cost increase from the level 1-50 experience. With this change, abilities now continue to increase their costs at the same linear pace. This also means cost reduction passives and gear should now return the values listed in the tooltips instead of using a more complex formula.
There are quite a few builds that generate a large number of resources and we expect some players will end up changing their current setup. While costs are higher, note that you can now get increased resource returns from heavy attacks that now scale their return as you gain Champion Points. Additionally, enchantments are now more powerful and restore more resources than they used to. There are also poisons which give you additional options for getting more resources.

@Septimus_Magna

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

So without any cost reduction skill on PTS actually cost 10,8% more than the tooltip value?
Or has the tooltip value of skills been increased by 10,8% as well?

The base tooltip of skills has increased by 10.8% compared to Live. The tooltips on DB are correct. Base refers to when you are naked without any skills/passive/CP.

I believe @Kas answered your second question quite well. They want CP cost reduction and Skill cost reduction to be multiplicative presumably to limit the power of each.

flguy147ub17_ESO

Asayre, so would you recommend then magicka recovery glyphs on jewelry now instead of spell cost reduction glyphs on my jewelry?

Vangy

Yup, this coupled with increasing blocking costs = heavy armour in PvP GG. Ty ZOS. Now I will join the horde of medium armour stamina shuffle dodge roll monkey builds......

Asayre

@flguy147ub17_ESO, in PvE spell cost reduction glyphs are still better than magicka recovery glyphs.

flguy147ub17_ESO

Asayre wrote: »

@flguy147ub17_ESO, in PvE spell cost reduction glyphs are still better than magicka recovery glyphs.

Thanks, i am more of a PVP player so things maybe different in that situation. But you are much smarter than me on this stuff lol

Minno

Ishammael wrote: »

Thanks for doing the diligence on this, @Asayre

I will likely be in the minority view here, but an across-the-board cost increase in actually something the game needed. It will force players to focus more effort on resources, mitigating the all-in damage builds which dominate nearly all aspects of the game.

Your not alone. I'm actually thinking about ways to position better in pvp to give myself better moments to rest my magicka bar/stamina. If we can get used to this, I think PvP will be fine and PvE will have to gauge burst/sustain dps mechanics to use for each situation.

Blevil

@Asayre do you have a formula of calculating how much magicka recovery needed to equal 1% spell cost reduction?

or are the two equal meaning 100 in cost reduction = 100 magicka recovery?

Reorx_Holybeard

Blevil wrote: »

@Asayre do you have a formula of calculating how much magicka recovery needed to equal 1% spell cost reduction?

or are the two equal meaning 100 in cost reduction = 100 magicka recovery?

It all really depends on how often you are casting spells. If you're like a typical DPS and casting things as fast as you can and have Magicka/Stamina for then you're going to need a lot of recovery to equal cost reduction.

On the other side, if you're a tank build that doesn't cast too often then recovery might be better.