Dark Brotherhood Combat Changes

ZOS_Wrobel

In this thread, we would like to give you some insights for some of the major combat changes in the Dark Brotherhood update. We are excited to get these changes into your hands, and hope you’ll hop on PTS to see them in action for yourself! When giving your feedback, it’s most helpful to us when you support your ideas with specific details, math, and logic.

Heavy Armor
A pillar of the ESO experience is freedom of exploration and being able to play how you want. We want you to create characters that are fun, while still being successful in combat. To support this goal, all three armor types need to be effective in multiple situations. Our changes to Heavy Armor focused on giving more resources and more damage, while retaining the feel of a character in heavy armor. We also needed to be careful of not invalidating light or medium armor usage; All 3 armor types must be desirable. This means Heavy Armor needs to be useful for tanking, but also effective at dealing damage. It’s a fine line to walk. To achieve this, we added a new passive that gives increased Weapon and Spell damage, but only when you are hit. This, in addition to the resource gains from Constitution, help distinguish the heavy armor playstyle from light and medium. The longer the battle goes and the more hits you take, the more of an advantage you accumulate. This makes using elemental spells, heals, or melee attacks in full heavy armor powerful. Heavy Armor has more resources and damage than before, but it’s still less than that of light or medium armor. Light and medium armor give you a little more damage and resources, while Heavy Armor gives you a little more survivability. Simply equipping Heavy Armor doesn’t make you an unkillable fortress, and wearing all light armor doesn’t make you a piñata. However, other customization options such as Enchantments, Traits, the Champion System, and attribute point spends will move you in the direction of your choosing.

Charges
For player abilities, reliability is our top priority. We have continued to improve the reliability and responsiveness of charge abilities (specifically Focused Charge, Critical Charge, Shield Charge) over the past few updates. Issues where you couldn’t activate an ability or weapon swap immediately after charging were fixed. With this update, we’ve worked to make charges fire more reliably when on uneven terrain. This issue was caused by having to wait for the server to calculate a path between the caster and target before starting the movement, and often times this calculation was failing. We’ve changed how charges work under the hood so you can now charge up hills and down stairs. In order to increase the reliability of these abilities, we’re also allowing you to charge across gaps in terrain. There is still a height restriction, so you won’t be able to charge up a keep wall. Our goal is to have abilities firing consistently while also maintaining as much realism as possible. We'll have additional fixes for this going into the next PTS update. Please provide us with as much detail as possible if you are still having issues with these abilities.

Damage Shields
Damage shields are extremely powerful because they allow you to build your character fully towards offense while still retaining a strong defense. When adjusting damage shields, it was important to us that they remained powerful abilities that players love to use. We also wanted to maintain the diverse range of shield strengths in the game to avoid homogenization. Some damage shields like the Tri Focus Frost Staff passive give small damage shields, the Magma Shell ultimate gives an entire health bar, and Steadfast Ward gives a dynamic value based on the target’s health

Ultimately, we want to see you commit to being either offensive or defensive when using damage shields, instead of both simultaneously. Decreasing the duration of all damage shields to 6 seconds means that they are just as powerful for stopping high amounts of burst damage. However, there is now less safety with the decreased duration and more skill is required to activate damage shields at the correct time. If you spend 6 seconds trying to finish off someone and get a kill, your shields will drop and you’ll be vulnerable to a counter attack. This change allows damage shields to be strong, lets you continue stacking shields if you wish, but is much more challenging to play offensively at the same time.

Vampire
We wanted the cool thing about Vampirism to be managing the disease. That means adding a reason to be in each stage, and making it easier to manage stages. Now, each stage makes you more vulnerable to Fire damage, but gives you cheaper abilities and activates more passives. This means there’s a reason to be stage 1, but there’s also a reason to be stage 2, 3, or 4 depending on your risk tolerance to Fire damage. Since stage 1 means you take no bonus damage from fire, it’s a great option when running a scorching dungeon like City of Ash. Stage 4 gives maximum cost reduction on abilities and full power from all passives, so it’s great when the fires are out. Stages are now 6 hours long, so you have plenty of time to complete a dungeon in your desired stage.

To give more control over vampirism stages, you can now activate a vampire ability to remove 30 minutes from the timer. Each ability activation plunges you deeper into vampirism, so use them carefully.

To go hand in hand with the updates to how vampire works, we’ve also updated the abilities and made them more powerful. Mist Form removes roots currently on your character, making it much easier for vampires to escape sticky situations and helps combat players who use multiple snares. Drain Essence now heals for much more, but it continues to “snapshot” your health value on activation. This mean if you cast the ability at high health, it will heal you for a small amount, even if your health dips low. If you activate it when you are very low health, it will provide a strong heal every tick, even if you receive healing from another source. This helps provide the feeling we are looking for with vampire: High risk, high reward.

Fighters Guild
The Fighters Guild abilities were previously pretty niche and only useful in specific situations. We wanted to make them more broadly applicable, in the same way the Mages Guild is useful for all Magicka-based players who have always had more options in choosing skills. We wanted to broaden the toolkit for stamina, and now Fighters Guild abilities are useful for all stamina characters. At the same time, we also wanted to keep the flavor and personality that Fighters Guild offers. The first step we took was to remove the Undead or Daedra requirement from all abilities and make them deal their bonus effects to all types of enemies. To keep the monster hunter theme, we put a 20% damage bonus to Undead and Daedra on the Skilled Tracker passive. To make these all useful for stamina builds, we changed their damage type to physical so they scale with armor penetration, weapon critical, and the Champion star Mighty. We’re expecting to see a lot more players using Fighters Guild abilities specifically in overland, dungeon, and PvP areas.

Improved Item Traits
Every part of a boss fight should feel awesome in ESO. Combat is fluid and the bosses have a lot of cool abilities, but sometimes the loot can be disappointing. We want all item traits to be useful, and bosses to have more loot. Farming a boss for item drops is great for players who want to collect every set, or players looking to get a specific set with a specific trait. For example, the Exploration trait was a clear choice for redesign since the world is a finite size, and eventually it’s all revealed. We also wanted all traits to exclusively have combat bonuses. Exploration isn’t something you used while fighting monsters, just when running around. All of the newly updated traits are effective while in combat. Training is another example of a trait that, previously, could become less desirable as you progress through the game. Now, it increases XP from kills, so it will continue to help you progress after level 50 and your skill lines are maxed. Some traits like Divines and Infused Armor are already popular so we left them as-is. With this update, high-level content will be dropping items more frequently and with a wider variety of items. Maelstrom Arena now gives a guaranteed set drop after every level, and Sanctum Ophidia will give a set drop for every boss kill. Overall, expect to see set items dropping more frequently and in a greater variety of traits.

The combat team will continue throughout PTS working on bug fixes, balance, and polish of these new features. We'd love it if you hopped on PTS and let us know what you think.

Xsorus

I actually like this patch..some balance issues..but its mostly a positive change from previous patch.

Heavy Armor changes actually make that a viable choice.

bloodenragedb14_ESO

Translation: we dont care what you think, changes are here to stay

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

I like the changes of course I play a stamina based nightblade so dont think we got any nerfs at all. They killed wrecking blow but honestly i had stopped depending on it and went into dual wield. I find dual wield to be far superior to one hander.

ShadowHvo

Thank you Wrobel, the changes you guys have made to Vampirism is absolutely brilliant. I do sincerely hope they stay like this!

But fyi, Dark Stalker passive seems to be bugged, as it doesn't appear to grant the stealth movement speed upon first activation.

Zheg

As a whole, the combat changes in this patch are a great improvement over the balance (or lack there of) in the TG patch. I have some initial concerns over bone shield - largely that shields were a magicka build's defense, and now medium armor folks have shuffle, insane capacity to dodge roll (with well fitted scaling with both the MA passive AND CP stars), plus the same shield capacity as a magicka build. I think unbreakable negates (that can damage/heal) are a little overtuned as well, but nothing as blatantly broken like the bombard spam and rapids nerf you gave us in TG.

With that said, you're still not hitting the mark when it comes to class changes. The usual suspects are getting stronger and the red-headed stepchild keeps getting significant nerfs disguised as buffs. I'd also point out that the large skill cost increase via vet level removal only furthers class imbalances when it comes to resource management. Do you think a NB cares if funnel health is 16% more expensive when the base cost is negligible? Probably not, and probably even less so since they have siphon attacks. Do you think a templar cares about the cost increase when BoL is already one of the most expensive skills in the game? This templar cared enough to write off ever trying out heavy armor when healing.

There are many mistakes and broken skills that still need to be remedied when it comes to class balance. On paper, this patch seems like it will be far more successful for you than last one, but you still have a lot of work to do. As an example, you gave templars a new morph of Eclipse that is made substantially worse by one of the passives in the skill line. Just because players have endured and gotten tired of complaining about issues, it doesn't mean it's ok for the issues to never be addressed. There is some really bad class specific feedback on these forums, but there is also some really insightful feedback. You should be able to tell the difference. Please do leverage the good feedback, because some of your goals for classes still do not seem to line up with the reality of how players actually use those classes. I could rant on and on about templar issues, but I wouldn't want to detract from the many issues that stamina sorcs face, or the remaining issues DKs have. Why can't all classes be in as a good a balance position as NBs ?

notimetocare

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

Translation: we dont care what you think, changes are here to stay

Can't satisfy everyone. Devs first lesson on player feedback

code65536

Wrobel wrote: »

Heavy Armor has more resources and damage than before

@Wrobel, thank you for clarifying your intent, but as I and others have pointed out, if this is a statement of your intentions, then the changes that you have made fail at fulfilling this intention, and your statement does not describe reality. Yes, the resource return from Constitution is quite generous, and in a single-target encounter, it makes up for the resources lost via the removal of Bracing.

But the problem here is that Constitution does not scale in multi-target encounters because of its cooldown. The old Bracing afforded you resources by reducing the block cost of every single blocked hit. Constitution affords you resources just once every cooldown period, regardless of how often you are hit each period. If, hypothetically, Bracing had been "reduce the cost of one blocked hit every 4 seconds", then the new Constitution would be a comparable replacement. But that's not the case, and as people have reported, tanking is now much more resource-intensive in multi-target encounters than before.

If your intent is to give heavy armor users "more resources", then your change accomplishes the exact opposite of that intent in a number of important scenarios (e.g., tanking the bannermen pulls in vMoL).

Suggested solution: Either bring back heavy armor cost reduction in one form or another, or remove Constitution's cooldown (while scaling down its effects, of course).

Edit: You could replace Rapid Mending with Bracing, and reduce Constitution's resources for blocked hits (while leaving it as-is for unblocked hits). This compromise restores the status quo resource management for traditional tanking, particularly in multi-target scenarios, while also enabling the more offensive role that HA could play with Wrath+Constitution.

Wrobel wrote: »

Improved Item Traits

While I do welcome most of the item trait improvements, your handling of nirnhoned seems rather haphazard. This is a rare, hard-to-get trait. And appropriately, it was the best weapon trait for magicka users. Now it is a distant 2nd or 3rd best. Have you done the math on the new traits? Because @Asayre has, and his results have been roughly confirmed by people testing on the PTS: Sharpened is, by a wide margin, the best DPS weapon trait. Was it really your intent to nerf a rare and difficult-to-acquire trait to oblivion and force people who have expended considerable resources acquiring nirnhoned weapons to replace them? And what's the point of adding nirnhoned weapons to the loot tables if it is so vastly inferior that it would serve only to dilute the chance of people getting the trait that they actually want?

Leingod

Silver leash (not other morph) was niche and a cool way to get an individual to us. & CC replaced with a 40% snare? Gutted the skill completely. We all have access to gap-closers which do more than this.

Definitely taking this out of my repertoire

PS: News flash, excluding Meteor, Mage Guild skills were/and always have been extremely niche unless you count Entropy which was entirely used for Major Sorcery and Empower(for those who couldn't get them elsewhere)

CP5

Nice to get this write up, a few comments about them however.

For heavy armor you mention how you gave heavy armor more damage so it would be more widely useful over long fights. I would suggest making the Wrath passive have a longer duration or decay in single stacks since in real long fights there are windows where you need to disengage and recover. If that is 6s long, anyone in medium or light armor would be at a much greater advantage. Also the difference between light/medium and heavy are much greater than hinted to here. You need sustain over long fights, and light/medium make skills cheaper, make them hit much harder, and give more reliable methods to stay alive, the sacrifice to wear heavy armor for more durability pales in comparison.

And about the fighters guild skills, you mention that you want to "broaden the toolkit of stamina builds," what about stamina sorcerers? I run a bow stam-sorc so boundless storm will always win out over whatever the other morph provides, and outside of bound armaments the class doesn't offer much any more. The magicka utilities are very expensive, the passives are hard to take advantage of, and overall, and I think I speak for many people in saying this, the stamina sorcerer community feels left out. Are there any plans that are in the works for sooner than zos soon* to look forward to for this play-style, or should we just wait for the next dlc/major update?

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so. Or make each hit they take deduct from the cooldown, making the regen come faster for each attacker.

code65536

CP5 wrote: »

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so.

Xsorus

CP5 wrote: »

Nice to get this write up, a few comments about them however.

For heavy armor you mention how you gave heavy armor more damage so it would be more widely useful over long fights. I would suggest making the Wrath passive have a longer duration or decay in single stacks since in real long fights there are windows where you need to disengage and recover. If that is 6s long, anyone in medium or light armor would be at a much greater advantage. Also the difference between light/medium and heavy are much greater than hinted to here. You need sustain over long fights, and light/medium make skills cheaper, make them hit much harder, and give more reliable methods to stay alive, the sacrifice to wear heavy armor for more durability pales in comparison.

And about the fighters guild skills, you mention that you want to "broaden the toolkit of stamina builds," what about stamina sorcerers? I run a bow stam-sorc so boundless storm will always win out over whatever the other morph provides, and outside of bound armaments the class doesn't offer much any more. The magicka utilities are very expensive, the passives are hard to take advantage of, and overall, and I think I speak for many people in saying this, the stamina sorcerer community feels left out. Are there any plans that are in the works for sooner than zos soon* to look forward to for this play-style, or should we just wait for the next dlc/major update?

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so. Or make each hit they take deduct from the cooldown, making the regen come faster for each attacker.

This would be insanely overpowered

Xsorus

code65536 wrote: »

Wrobel wrote: »

Heavy Armor has more resources and damage than before

@Wrobel, thank you for clarifying your intent, but as I and others have pointed out, if this is a statement of your intentions, then the changes that you have made fail at fulfilling this intention, and your statement does not describe reality. Yes, the resource return from Constitution is quite generous, and in a single-target encounter, it makes up for the resources lost via the removal of Bracing.

But the problem here is that Constitution does not scale in multi-target encounters because of its cooldown. The old Bracing afforded you resources by reducing the block cost of every single blocked hit. Constitution affords you resources just once every cooldown period, regardless of how often you are hit each period. If, hypothetically, Bracing had been "reduce the cost of one blocked hit every 4 seconds", then the new Constitution would be a comparable replacement. But that's not the case, and as people have reported, tanking is now much more resource-intensive in multi-target encounters than before.

If your intent is to give heavy armor users "more resources", then your change accomplishes the exact opposite of that intent in a number of important scenarios (e.g., tanking the bannermen pulls in vMoL).

Suggested solution: Either bring back heavy armor cost reduction in one form or another, or remove Constitution's cooldown (while scaling down its effects, of course).

Wrobel wrote: »

Improved Item Traits

While I do welcome most of the item trait improvements, your handling of nirnhoned seems rather haphazard. This is a rare, hard-to-get trait. And appropriately, it was the best weapon trait for magicka users. Now it is a distant 2nd or 3rd best. Have you done the math on the new traits? Because @Asayre has, and his results have been roughly confirmed by people testing on the PTS: Sharpened is, by a wide margin, the best DPS weapon trait. Was it really your intent to nerf a rare and difficult-to-acquire trait to oblivion and force people who have expended considerable resources acquiring nirnhoned weapons to replace them? And what's the point of adding nirnhoned weapons to the loot tables if it is so vastly inferior that it would serve only to dilute the chance of people getting the trait that they actually want?

Its called Sturdy.

and you have more resources then before when factoring it in.

Zakor

Hi Eric,

I'll just link some things I've stated earlier.

Vampire changes:
forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2921093/#Comment_2921093

Blood altar change:
forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2916194/#Comment_2916194

DK Obsidian Shield:
forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2915168/#Comment_2915168

Overall I like the changes done in DB but the above and some others don't seem well thought out.
In fact you (stealth) nerfed the DK-Heal (again) in this patch since the Igneous Shield is one of his main abilities to keep his group alive. On live i don't have to use heal if my group members still have a (too tiny) shield. Now I have to spam the shield just to get the major mending and keep up with healing.

I don't want to repeat everything I already wrote down but this point is important to me: Don't nerf us DK-Heals! TG was great for us so please don't ruin it now.

Regards,
Zakor

CP5

Xsorus wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Nice to get this write up, a few comments about them however.

For heavy armor you mention how you gave heavy armor more damage so it would be more widely useful over long fights. I would suggest making the Wrath passive have a longer duration or decay in single stacks since in real long fights there are windows where you need to disengage and recover. If that is 6s long, anyone in medium or light armor would be at a much greater advantage. Also the difference between light/medium and heavy are much greater than hinted to here. You need sustain over long fights, and light/medium make skills cheaper, make them hit much harder, and give more reliable methods to stay alive, the sacrifice to wear heavy armor for more durability pales in comparison.

And about the fighters guild skills, you mention that you want to "broaden the toolkit of stamina builds," what about stamina sorcerers? I run a bow stam-sorc so boundless storm will always win out over whatever the other morph provides, and outside of bound armaments the class doesn't offer much any more. The magicka utilities are very expensive, the passives are hard to take advantage of, and overall, and I think I speak for many people in saying this, the stamina sorcerer community feels left out. Are there any plans that are in the works for sooner than zos soon* to look forward to for this play-style, or should we just wait for the next dlc/major update?

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so. Or make each hit they take deduct from the cooldown, making the regen come faster for each attacker.

This would be insanely overpowered

The return would have to be balanced around the idea of being attacked by several people, but as is heavy armor fails to give the sustain needed to outlast enemies in fights.

code65536

Xsorus wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Nice to get this write up, a few comments about them however.

For heavy armor you mention how you gave heavy armor more damage so it would be more widely useful over long fights. I would suggest making the Wrath passive have a longer duration or decay in single stacks since in real long fights there are windows where you need to disengage and recover. If that is 6s long, anyone in medium or light armor would be at a much greater advantage. Also the difference between light/medium and heavy are much greater than hinted to here. You need sustain over long fights, and light/medium make skills cheaper, make them hit much harder, and give more reliable methods to stay alive, the sacrifice to wear heavy armor for more durability pales in comparison.

And about the fighters guild skills, you mention that you want to "broaden the toolkit of stamina builds," what about stamina sorcerers? I run a bow stam-sorc so boundless storm will always win out over whatever the other morph provides, and outside of bound armaments the class doesn't offer much any more. The magicka utilities are very expensive, the passives are hard to take advantage of, and overall, and I think I speak for many people in saying this, the stamina sorcerer community feels left out. Are there any plans that are in the works for sooner than zos soon* to look forward to for this play-style, or should we just wait for the next dlc/major update?

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so. Or make each hit they take deduct from the cooldown, making the regen come faster for each attacker.

This would be insanely overpowered

No, because there would still be 4s cooldown per attacker, and of course, it would require some rescaling of the base Constitution figures. Right now, in a slow single-target fight, Constitution is overpowered. In a fast multi-target fight, Constitution is but a footnote in the larger resource picture. Making Constitution target-scalable means you can reduce its base effect (thus reducing the imbalance on the "slow single-target" end of the extreme) and the better scalability means that it would be less useless at the other end of the picture.

PainfulFAFA

You forgot to balance stam sorcs!

Xsorus

code65536 wrote: »

Xsorus wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Nice to get this write up, a few comments about them however.

For heavy armor you mention how you gave heavy armor more damage so it would be more widely useful over long fights. I would suggest making the Wrath passive have a longer duration or decay in single stacks since in real long fights there are windows where you need to disengage and recover. If that is 6s long, anyone in medium or light armor would be at a much greater advantage. Also the difference between light/medium and heavy are much greater than hinted to here. You need sustain over long fights, and light/medium make skills cheaper, make them hit much harder, and give more reliable methods to stay alive, the sacrifice to wear heavy armor for more durability pales in comparison.

And about the fighters guild skills, you mention that you want to "broaden the toolkit of stamina builds," what about stamina sorcerers? I run a bow stam-sorc so boundless storm will always win out over whatever the other morph provides, and outside of bound armaments the class doesn't offer much any more. The magicka utilities are very expensive, the passives are hard to take advantage of, and overall, and I think I speak for many people in saying this, the stamina sorcerer community feels left out. Are there any plans that are in the works for sooner than zos soon* to look forward to for this play-style, or should we just wait for the next dlc/major update?

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so. Or make each hit they take deduct from the cooldown, making the regen come faster for each attacker.

This would be insanely overpowered

No, because there would still be 4s cooldown per attacker, and of course, it would require some rescaling of the base Constitution figures. Right now, in a slow single-target fight, Constitution is overpowered. In a fast multi-target fight, Constitution is but a footnote in the larger resource picture. Making Constitution target-scalable means you can reduce its base effect (thus reducing the imbalance on the "slow single-target" end of the extreme) and the better scalability means that it would be less useless at the other end of the picture.

No..it would be insanely overpowered.

They'd have to drop it back down to the old level for it not to be insanely overpowered..and then you'd just make it *** again in 1v1 or small fights and insanely overpowered in large fights..

code65536

Xsorus wrote: »

Its called Sturdy.

and you have more resources then before when factoring it in.

According to people's testing, Sturdy has diminishing returns, and 7p Legendary (yes, that's 56 gold mats) doesn't actually give you 21% block cost reduction.

But let's table that and give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they actually don't intend for there to be diminishing returns and that 21% would actually be 21%. That's still 7p of Legendary armor. Someone tanking in 7p sturdy blue armor would get only 14%. With Bracing, anyone with 5p of heavy of any quality would get the 20% reduction.

And then there's the opportunity cost of traits that we would've run instead of Sturdy.

And there's the problem that, if your solution is "just go sturdy", tanks will have to recraft and refarm their entire armor sets. Divines is still the best trait for PvE DPS/healing. Impen is still the best trait for PvP. No other role in this game has to go redo their gear just so that they can keep doing their job. No other role has to go through so much work just to "adapt" to such ill-conceived changes.

And this continued degradation of tanking in this game is not healthy and it is why it's so hard for PUGs to find tanks and why, for most casual players, 4-man content is becoming increasingly difficult to group up for.

At this point, your continued insistence that this is actually good for us tanks (do you even tank?), despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, is starting to become downright insulting.

ManDraKE

A few things to fix and tweak, but so far loving the patch

Erraln

THANK YOU for taking the time to explain developer intent behind the changes being made. Knowing the goal eases feedback creation substantially.

Xsorus

CP5 wrote: »

Xsorus wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Nice to get this write up, a few comments about them however.

For heavy armor you mention how you gave heavy armor more damage so it would be more widely useful over long fights. I would suggest making the Wrath passive have a longer duration or decay in single stacks since in real long fights there are windows where you need to disengage and recover. If that is 6s long, anyone in medium or light armor would be at a much greater advantage. Also the difference between light/medium and heavy are much greater than hinted to here. You need sustain over long fights, and light/medium make skills cheaper, make them hit much harder, and give more reliable methods to stay alive, the sacrifice to wear heavy armor for more durability pales in comparison.

And about the fighters guild skills, you mention that you want to "broaden the toolkit of stamina builds," what about stamina sorcerers? I run a bow stam-sorc so boundless storm will always win out over whatever the other morph provides, and outside of bound armaments the class doesn't offer much any more. The magicka utilities are very expensive, the passives are hard to take advantage of, and overall, and I think I speak for many people in saying this, the stamina sorcerer community feels left out. Are there any plans that are in the works for sooner than zos soon* to look forward to for this play-style, or should we just wait for the next dlc/major update?

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so. Or make each hit they take deduct from the cooldown, making the regen come faster for each attacker.

This would be insanely overpowered

The return would have to be balanced around the idea of being attacked by several people, but as is heavy armor fails to give the sustain needed to outlast enemies in fights.

Again..the only way for it not to be overpowered would be to return it previous levels..and then you'd just make it crap in small fights or 1v1 fights and completely overpowered in large fights.

CP5

Xsorus wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Xsorus wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Nice to get this write up, a few comments about them however.

For heavy armor you mention how you gave heavy armor more damage so it would be more widely useful over long fights. I would suggest making the Wrath passive have a longer duration or decay in single stacks since in real long fights there are windows where you need to disengage and recover. If that is 6s long, anyone in medium or light armor would be at a much greater advantage. Also the difference between light/medium and heavy are much greater than hinted to here. You need sustain over long fights, and light/medium make skills cheaper, make them hit much harder, and give more reliable methods to stay alive, the sacrifice to wear heavy armor for more durability pales in comparison.

And about the fighters guild skills, you mention that you want to "broaden the toolkit of stamina builds," what about stamina sorcerers? I run a bow stam-sorc so boundless storm will always win out over whatever the other morph provides, and outside of bound armaments the class doesn't offer much any more. The magicka utilities are very expensive, the passives are hard to take advantage of, and overall, and I think I speak for many people in saying this, the stamina sorcerer community feels left out. Are there any plans that are in the works for sooner than zos soon* to look forward to for this play-style, or should we just wait for the next dlc/major update?

EDIT: Suggestion for heavy armor. Since it is more expensive on pts to ward off multiple attackers, why not make Constitution's cooldown per target? 1 person hitting you, 1 resource tick every 4s. 2 people? 2 ticks every 4s. This way tanks could tank and would be rewarded for doing so. Or make each hit they take deduct from the cooldown, making the regen come faster for each attacker.

This would be insanely overpowered

The return would have to be balanced around the idea of being attacked by several people, but as is heavy armor fails to give the sustain needed to outlast enemies in fights.

Again..the only way for it not to be overpowered would be to return it previous levels..and then you'd just make it crap in small fights or 1v1 fights and completely overpowered in large fights.

The point is the specific numbers would need to be adjusted, but if heavy armor fails to scale against multiple opponents, then heavy armor will remain a burden when fighting multiple opponents.

JubJub

Probably the most balanced and well done patch I've seen yet you guys hit sorcs, buffed heavy armor, and made the fighters guild stamina friendly in one patch, great job.

zerosingularity

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/261958/restore-bracing-now-with-100-more-diminished-returns/p1

Please comment on the concerns and math raised here. And can you confirm sturdy is reducing stam block cost as much as it should? Because it really does not seem like it. The loss of Bracing has been a huge hit, especially to new tanks who are less experienced at micro-managing resources.

STEVIL

@Wrobel
THANK YOU.

The update on the intentions of these tactical changes helps in my mind to put the bigger picture in mind. it is appreciated.

i for one, find most of this patch of changes to be quite good, intriguing and am excited to see where they pan out as playtest proceeds. I think they are good steps in the right directions and the devils lurking in the details will mostly i suspect be exorcized by release in June.

No need to repeat here observations i have already posted in other feedback threads (where they belong) and so, have a nice evening.

Call me an optimist but i truly believe that on day 4 of the playtest the sun god's chariot will again ride across the sky driving night back into its underworld.

CP5

STEVIL wrote: »

@Wrobel
THANK YOU.

The update on the intentions of these tactical changes helps in my mind to put the bigger picture in mind. it is appreciated.

i for one, find most of this patch of changes to be quite good, intriguing and am excited to see where they pan out as playtest proceeds. I think they are good steps in the right directions and the devils lurking in the details will mostly i suspect be exorcized by release in June.

No need to repeat here observations i have already posted in other feedback threads (where they belong) and so, have a nice evening.

Call me an optimist but i truly believe that on day 4 of the playtest the sun god's chariot will again ride across the sky driving night back into its underworld.

I've waited 14 months for an answer to a question I posted here, I wish I still had that kind of hope.

ClockworkArc

Hey @Wrobel and combat team,

I've been playing around on the PTS while I can. I have to say that this is hands down the most balanced the game has ever felt to me. Congratulations on taking the game a huge step forward, your team has down some great work.

There are, of course, some niggling thoughts, but that is what PTS is for.

Enraged_Tiki_Torch

Heavy Armor

This sounds good so far and a step in the right direction, only thing that sounds off is Wrath. Maybe builds can overcome this by focusing on Block Reduction enchants and maybe CP. But CP for reduced blocking is in the Medium Armor (Steed) Tree so seems alittle defunct. You don't see many medium armor guys running around with Shields looking to be tanky. Improving the Warrior tree so there is some consistency would make things come together more than they do now. However, improved recovery and improved health and heals are all good things.

Charges

Umm.. for Toppling Charge you screwed this up. Didn't check the others but I skoot on the ground like a dog with butt issues. Then launch up at the last second before hitting my target. Hasn't glitched though. Nuff said.

Damage Shields

Healing Ward has always been very good. Sorcs can Conjured Ward into HW and back again, so still makes shields very powerful. Harness Magicka takes hits from physical kinda hurts other classes alittle more. Stamina getting Bone Shield, don't know why? Fix Blazing Shield to scale off max magicka or health if your going to do it for Bone Shield.

Vampire

Sounds cool especially the increased timer. 30 minutes on each cast seems alittle rough though, maybe 10? Otherwise Stage 4 is where everyone will stay as before.

Fighters Guild

Be nice if Dawnbreaker of Smiting was still Magic Damage. Just sayin'

Erock25

@Wrobel can you please address stam sorcs? We've been begging and pleading for over a year now and with the DB update being THE STAMINA UPDATE, I'm shocked at the lack of attention stam sorc received. I know you have your heart set on Thundering Presence/Hurricane being the one and only tool for stam sorc in their class arsenal, but it just isn't the right choice. You ask any Stam Sorc what their top 4 favorite (and only viable) sorcs skills are and it's Crit Surge, Boundless Storm, Streak, and Bound Armaments. You chose one of the four most useful spells for a stam sorc and decided to give them the other morph. Please we need some sort of direct damage especially with the fighter's guild passive outshining our Sorc weapon power increase per slotted skill. Seriously Eric, I'd really appreciate if you sat down and looked at everything Sorc has to offer stam builds and compared it to what every other class has to offer stam builds. Really think about it and also pay attention to damage types (all of our ultimates are still magic/elemental) and disintegration procs and utility. Every class should have options in both stam and magicka, because frankly every class has options besides stam sorc.

Enraged_Tiki_Torch

Wrobel wrote: »

Some traits like Divines and Infused Armor are already popular so we left them as-is.

It would be much appreciated if Zenimax would adhere to this philosophy in other areas. I was under the impression TG was about focusing on Magicka based abilities and getting them where you would like, then DB would focus on Stamina by bringing those in line with Magicka. Instead this update seems to make a lot of very drastic changes to Magicka, mostly viewed as nerfs or take-a-ways.

Dawnbreaker of Smiting is a good example of taking away. This has been a standard Ultimate for Magicka based users, while Flawless Dawnbreaker was used by Stamina users. Why change this cause some classes relied on Smiting as a finisher? We definitely needed more Physical Ults in the game so why not change some of the less popular morphs of ults to be physical equivalents to their Magic counterparts.

Why change the already popular morph to something completely different while the less popular morph remains essentially the same? Really would like it if you decide to introduce something new like this that the less popular morph gets the change.