Dark Brotherhood Combat Changes

Pepper8Jack

This is a huge step forward for communication between devs and players, so for that I am incredibly appreciative and excited.

That said, I wouldn't mind some clarification for the reasoning behind a few more details:

-making annulment protect against physical damage
-the elimination of the bracing heavy armor passive instead of other passives
-the removal of potency runes in the overworld

In my opinion, making annulment block physical damage is probably the most troubling of these changes, but I am very curious and wary of the rest as well should all of them make it to live.

Thank you for allowing some insight into your reasoning

MasterSpatula

Fighting Undead and Daedra is hardly "niche." I enjoyed the flavor of the Fighters Guild line, and I considered it more useful than Mage's Guild, to be quite honest.

I am pretty concerned about removing the stuns from Power Bash and from Silver Bolts, however. As far as I'm concerned, these abilities are stuns that also do damage, not damage abilities that also stun. The game has plenty of damage dealing abilities. Taking away abilities that help reduce the amount of damage we're taking in and allow us to concentrate our own fire for a moment instead of dealing with damage from three sides--it seems like a really bad idea to me. There shouldn't be too many of these abilities, but I definitely don't think there should be less.

To say nothing of the fact that Silver Bolts is something you get early in the game, and it's a huge help for newbies running around in looted gear with few skills, few passives, and just learning the game to have a reliable CC ability that is useful in the Fighters Guild, Mage's Guild, Main Quest storylines as well as a lot of overworld content. In fact, I'd go beyond "helpful" and say that Silver Bolts CC is essential in the early game.

I have a hard time seeing these two changes as anything but terrible.

Personofsecrets

@Wrobel , what would you say if I told you that I do some of the most damage in my 12-man raid and that I don't need my resources to be nerfed in order to make that damage greater?

Resources are the issue, not damage. Stamina is the resource that is the issue throughout all parts of the game. No more stamina nerfs.

Personofsecrets

@Wrobel

Maybe you should have left bracing as is because it was popular.

Personofsecrets

@Wrobel , did you fix the chains too high or too low bug along with the problems with charge attacks? The problems were very similar.

Enraged_Tiki_Torch

Pepper8Jack wrote: »

This is a huge step forward for communication between devs and players, so for that I am incredibly appreciative and excited.

Thank you for allowing some insight into your reasoning

Agree and hope this continues.

PainfulFAFA

Erock25 wrote: »

@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.

QFT

NBrookus

@Wrobel

Thank you for the detailed explanation. Please do more of this in the future.

Let me say first that I like most of the changes. Some stuff needs tweaks and bug fixes, but that's what PTS is for.

I think in 2 areas ZOS failed to hit the marks for themselves.

One, sorcs: shield-stacking, overload spamming PvP sorc will continue as always and people will continue to complain about them. Every other sorc playstyle has been hammered with nerfs. The class now has poor heals, expensive mobility and poor DPS outside of the always buggy overload.

Then, you handed magblades a better version of Hardened Ward. Other magicka users got it too, but magblades really, really do not need another buff.

Second, heavy armor. The loss of the bracing passive will gut endgame PvE tanks and make the barrier to entry for new tanks very high. Tanks are already in short supply, let alone good tanks. Sturdy and Constitution does not make up the difference when tanking multiple bosses. Every tank would need to re-craft or re-farm gear just to have worse resource problems than now, and managing stamina is already a difficult hurdle for many tanks.

If we can't have bracing back, consider raising the hard cap on mitigation (in PvE only, if necessary.) Right now you HAVE to keep block up in much of the harder content. If tanks could mitigate more damage without blocking, it would create a lot more freedom to create personal tanking styles and methods, and new avenues for group play.

SirSilverMask

Here is another concept keeping in line with the changes to Heavy Armor. If bracing is actually gone for good and replaced by wrath, tanking the harder PvE content such as vMoL should not be harder then it is now while wearing heavy armor.
Change constitution so it can activate x times every 4 seconds where x is the number of enemies hitting the tank.
This change does not change the current setup at all when the tank is only aggroing a single boss, and actually rewards tanks for doing their job and pulling aggro from more enemies which may encourage more people to learn to tank properly.

FriedEggSandwich

@Wrobel

I gotta say I didn't see the shield changes coming, quite an imaginative way of nerfing the comfort of shield stacking without nerfing the usability of individual shields. This change is good for pvp, good job. For pve though it's more unnecessary and possibly an over-nerf. Could you not have implemented the change to shield duration into battle spirit?

I guess you will be reading responses in this thread; if you intend to post again could you possibly outline the thinking behind the changes to annulment and bone shield? I still don't understand the rational behind these changes given the existance of healing ward and the availability of mitigation to stamina and other magicka classes?

Regards.

Enraged_Tiki_Torch

SirSilverMask wrote: »

Change constitution so it can activate x times every 4 seconds where x is the number of enemies hitting the tank.
This change does not change the current setup at all when the tank is only aggroing a single boss, and actually rewards tanks for doing their job and pulling aggro from more enemies which may encourage more people to learn to tank properly.

Ah, NO! People will break the crap out of that with Black Rose. It's 1k base with 5 pieces, an additional 50% from Rose, and just say 6 enemies. That is an additional 4500 magicka and stamina recovery. At that point you can pick any number of ways to be a demigod.

GRYM.LOCKE

Wrobel wrote: »

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.

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.


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.

At least have the courage to say why your really doing this nonsense = PVP Crys PVE sufers

If you are going to make such a DRASTIC change then you need to reconsider the time duration 6 seconds is WAY to short even for Burst damage make it 12 seconds if you have to but 6 seconds just means

1: Pray your connection is perfect and skill animations don't screw you over
2: Hope you don't get any situation that requires more than 6 seconds of extreme repetition

For those of us who are PVE based this is essentially like going from 2 arms to 1 arm and no offence your game is NOT forgiving for those in EU with skill animation issues and game input etc

So much for "ESOTU" being different

1: Bugs exist even after reports are submitted 1 year later to many to list
2: Werewolf changes.... nothing for 19 months.... now still nothing for Berserker / model update / etc
3: Vampire update...... 2 skills+ ult...... where are the other 3 pitiful ????

if you are going to do anything in this update reconsider fixing your basic game before you go screwing other things up

Seems no matter the game DEVS always resort to being the same in all games...

to say I am disappointed would be an understatement

SirSilverMask

Enraged_Tiki_Torch wrote: »

SirSilverMask wrote: »

Change constitution so it can activate x times every 4 seconds where x is the number of enemies hitting the tank.
This change does not change the current setup at all when the tank is only aggroing a single boss, and actually rewards tanks for doing their job and pulling aggro from more enemies which may encourage more people to learn to tank properly.

Ah, NO! People will break the crap out of that with Black Rose. It's 1k base with 5 pieces, an additional 50% from Rose, and just say 6 enemies. That is an additional 4500 magicka and stamina recovery. At that point you can pick any number of ways to be a demigod.

With 6 adds hitting one person once per second, they would get 9K magicka and stamina back in 4 seconds and lose 14K stamina if they block everything and have blocking cost reduced as much as possilbe. In pvp with weaves they would lose closer to 28K stamina if they block everything, and if they are not blocking they are cc'd and killed. In pvp, it would better ensure that people avoid hitting the tank, and make the tank work to try to be the one hit, and in pve it would mitigate the current nerf due to the loss of bracing. Additionally, the tank would still be hitting like a wet noodle.

Soris

Wrobel wrote: »

When giving your feedback, it’s most helpful to us when you support your ideas with specific details, math, and logic.

Heavy Armor 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.

Fights in pvp usually ends less than a minute.

Elhanan

I love the new direction ZOS is going.

AdAstra

Thank you for your post @Wrobel ! I am extremely hyped for the changes. Great job and i'll be looking forward to seeing what's next up. Keep up the great work over there = )

Dan_Fazzyub17_ESO

Whoops.

Dan_Fazzyub17_ESO

Wrobel wrote: »

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.

Heavy Armor in this patch is NOT for tanking. Heavy Armor in this patch is DPS gear with better base resistances than the other armors. That is NOT tanking. Heavy Armor is NOT for dealing damage. You need to stop listening to the bads on these forums who want to look cool in Heavy Armor and blow up everything while taking no damage. That is not how Heavy Armor in this game should work. You wear Heavy Armor to dive into groups of players and TANK their damage. If you want to be a DPS roll you play in either light or medium armor, that's it. If you want to be survivable you play in heavy armor.

The main problem I have with this change is you took away Heavy Armor's main sustain, blocking, by removing our block costs and making core mechanics cost more. Adding Sturdy was nice, but when I am forced to use the trait to only benefit ONE PERCENT from current reduced block costs on live, that's really stupid.

For arguments sake, considering you did nothing to Medium Armor's main form of damage mitigation, roll dodge. You actually made that better by not doing anything to their Athletics Passive so Medium Armor builds immediately benefit from the new Well-Fitted trait. You ALSO gave Stamina builds their owned Hardened Ward in the new Bone Shield. Oh, they still have Shuffle. Combine all of these new things Medium Armor got and their sustain has gone WAAAYYYY up from last patch.

Heavy Armor's Sustain has gone down when compared to Medium Armor because the main form of damage mitigation from Heavy Armor, blocking, is gone and the main form of damage mitigation, roll dodge, for medium armor has gotten much better in addition to the new skill that was previously unavailable to the play style.

It doesn't matter if I'm getting a little bit extra spell damage from Heavy Armor or a little bit extra resources from it if I can't mitigate damage through block. With no more stamina regen while blocking, getting back 980 Stam (Constitution bonus w/ 5 Pieces of Heavy Armor.) every four seconds is not enough to sustain block at the rate you need it to in PvP.

Light Armor and Medium Armor, especially Medium Armor, offer me better damage and much better sustain.

Dan_Fazzyub17_ESO

Whoops.

exiledtyrant

@Wrobel Are weapon ultimates still on the table for the upcoming PTS DB updates?

bowmanz607

Love it @Wrobel

Best patch I have seen since 1.5

CP5

Just a thing to note about heavy armor. Without some form of 'bonus damage' heavy armor users are forced to either use only skills that are based on percentages or are the major/minor buffs. Otherwise their own skills (dots, heals, exc.) could stay underwhelming, and since most of these skills scale off of damage you need that to make heavy armor's already expensive skills worth using.

Dan_Fazzyub17_ESO

Wrobel wrote: »

All 3 armor types must be desirable.

This right here is pretty funny considering you've just made Medium Armor the best and most appealing armor in the game. Even further reduced roll dodge costs with Well-Fitted, great damage with the Agility Passive (no other armor type in the game gets that or ANYTHING near a 12% increase to their main damage stat), great sustain with increased regen and reduced cost of abilities from the armor passives, and NOW a damage shield which functions the same way as Hardened Ward. Stamina builds were already able to mitigate a lot of damage or flat out avoid it with roll dodge and Shuffle, now you've just made it so they can roll dodge more and have a shield to eat damage if they need it on top of another way to avoid it in Shuffle.

Tyrannitar

Reposting for visibility from sorc feedback thread:

Firstly, if you're a dev and you're reading this: thank you for the work you put in. It's not gone unnoticed. This game is amazing and I've loved it since the day it dropped. Hell, before that even! There's only one aspect of this patch that really bothers me, and judging by the wall of text that follows, I hope you can see how important this is to me.

For a game that focuses so heavily on build viability and diversity, it's kind of saddening that stamina sorcs got nerfed again.
I've run a khajiit stamina-sorc for literally years now, and I'll break it down to the devs why this PTS patch sorely nerfs one of the lowest end-game dps classes.

The thundering presence morph is great. It really is. BUT: it doesn't proc crit surge, it's an aoe that scales off of weapon damage and stamina now, which is nice, but when your main heal is derivitive of spike damage only (this needs to change as I can't even run rapid strikes on dw because of it), and saps us of major expidition, you can see why it's kind of a nerf... in a pvp setting at the very least.

Nerf in the sense that that "buff" was a trade-off for this class. We didn't get anything to compensate for a morph most of us won't use. After the wrecking blow nerf, we now also have to choose between the ONLY hard stamina cc we have available, or not coming in last place for any dps race... which we're still liable to do. I'm in the guild that completed vet maw, and pretty much every specialization besides stam sorc is able to push 28-32k dps. Sustained. I simply can't maintain/ compete with that even as is.

I don't even have empower available on any of my skills. Major Brutality galore! It's a shame though, because those don't stack. WB is still currently the only skill available that grants empower, which is still currently the only reason I can compete in any endgame content...

A possible solution I see to this issue is something that I feel is too commonly shrugged off.

Stam-poison-weapon-damage-scaling-crystal-frags-morph that grants empower when it's proc'd. Make it close-range only, and mimic the old wrecking blow...

Keep the CC, allow empower to only proc when the insta-cast is available. (Allow the insta-cast to proc off of stamina based skills). Or alternatively some kind of scaling where both morphs were based off of your higher stat... Like an overload scaling... Speaking of which, overload should do poison or physical damage for a stam sorc. Having to split CP in awkward ways to sustain end game dps #s is an eternal struggle for me in the current state.

It'd give us a good dps spike and CC in pvp, and it wouldn't cripple us in PVE. It wouldn't be spammable in pvp, either. Without a stamina CC, stam sorcs will be forced to choose between CC ing or having our main dps boon/ heal active. Even then, one bolt escape every 10 seconds won't change the tide of any fight. It'll force me to run magicka regen drinks.... which take a cut into my dps yet again...

The thundering presence morph, bound armaments, and crit surge stam morphs are all great, don't get me wrong, but we're the only class without a single target dps stam morph.

Read that again. The *only* class without a single target dps stam morph.

Not that it's necessarily viable to do so for their dps, but literally any other class could wb->stam jav/ jabs, or wb-> suprise attack, or wb-> stam whip/ unstable flames. Sorcs only have one option as is: wb-> wb
Or a heavy attack-> wb weave.

Point being, stam-sorcs just took a HUGE dps loss, and migrated some of our remaining dps into an area that won't proc our heals... We're going to be the jokes of DB, (esp. in IC and pvp settings ) and for such a fun playstyle... and being that it's my only main, I'm not even sure I'll be able to compete endgame content anymore. It's very disappointing and I'm not certain I'd continue to play if the natch potes don't get a little bit reworked for stam sorcs at the very least...


Hell, make the stam frags a copy cat of the old wb as far as scaling and functionality go! 1 second cast, knockback, empower, close range

I'm not sure how you guys will go about this, but I NEED to be able to run trials on my main...

Every class got stamina spec buffs.... Why don't stam sorcs ever get any love? We're build diversity personified! Whatever happened to the sword-wielding casters of elderscrolls past? Plz rework wb... Give me a stam curse/ frags combo or *something* for pvp.

I love this game and really don't want to get left behind in buffs/ take unintended nerfs. Thank you for your time and I hope I didn't sound disrespectful. I really appreciate the work you guys do.

RoxyPhoenix

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

@Wrobel

I gotta say I didn't see the shield changes coming, quite an imaginative way of nerfing the comfort of shield stacking without nerfing the usability of individual shields. This change is good for pvp, good job. For pve though it's more unnecessary and possibly an over-nerf. Could you not have implemented the change to shield duration into battle spirit?

I guess you will be reading responses in this thread; if you intend to post again could you possibly outline the thinking behind the changes to annulment and bone shield? I still don't understand the rational behind these changes given the existance of healing ward and the availability of mitigation to stamina and other magicka classes?

Regards.

@Wrobel please respond.

sebban

@Wrobel
I just want to make sure you read @code65536 's post in this thread. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2923349/#Comment_2923349

This change is another unjustified nerf to PvE tanks in a long row of nerfs to PvE tanks. First you remove stamina regen while blocking. Then you give us a passive that gives stamina back even while blocking, which you now buff. But you nerf block cost at the same time. Then you add a trait that reduce block cost. You can't seem to make up your mind!

And don't come talking about sturdy, that's a really *** move, making tanks redo ALL their armor just to get back a small part of what was taken away!

There is a thread where you (ZOS) ask for feedback from tanks. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/248921/official-tanking-feedback-thread#latest
Did you actually read it? If you did, then why do you disregard everything said in there?

Beardimus

Seeing the changes explained like this makes a huge difference and cuts out alot of speculation (moaning) you see on this forum. Great approach!

Taonnor

@Wrobel i like all changes across the board. Thank you!

But there is one issue, that is still hurting me. I dont know if you are the right address. I think it is a combat issue.


In long fights, especially in Cyrodiil, there is a dump mechanic. It is rezzing via soulstones. Often wins larger groups because of endless rezzing their peoples. Best case in my eyes will be there a rezz sickness on soulstone rezzes. For example -10% move speed and -10% healing taken for 2m. These debuff stack with every soulstone rezz.

Ra'Shtar

Since you are re-balancing guild skill lines why don't you take a more closer look at fire rune and equilibrium because they are really two of the least used skills in the game and quite frankly hideous abilities.

sebban

@Wrobel Since you don't seem to understand Tanking and find it boring, maybe we can have someone else balance tanking instead of you? I used to like tanking. After all the "balancing" you've done, it's no longer fun.