Dark Brotherhood Combat Changes

jknight201

The sorc shield changes will hurt PVE content. The argument "when you're taking damage, you'll be refreshing the shield" is not always true. Sorcs need to keep ward up in many boss fights where they are liable to take un-telegraphed damage in excess of their health. Same with constant environmental damage. There's no skill involved there, just pure luck that you will or won't get hit. If I get hit without ward up, I'm dead. Simple as that. So to keep ward up, I now need to spend 3x the magicka and constantly refresh it, which is going to make a weak sustained DPS class even worse.

Sorcs who play with summons need to keep their ward up as they have no control of their summons during a fight. Summons don't dodge, move out of AOE, hang in the back for healing, etc. The small health addition is nothing compared to the loss of a long-lasting shield.

It's sad to say "We also wanted to maintain the diverse range of shield strengths in the game to avoid homogenization" and then you go and give everyone the same shield as what was a class ability for sorcs before. What was the problem with some shields blocking magic, and some physical?

This whole change looks like a solution looking for a problem. If the problem is shield stacking in PVP... then don't allow stacking. If you're going to nerf a class (sorc) by "forcing them to focus on offense or defense" then at least do the same to the other classes, or you're just further unbalancing the classes and giving people yet another reason not to play a sorc.

Cinbri

I don't mind to know why pvp magplars with every patch becoming more viable for role of test dps dummy. We have zero working skills to negate damage.
and

Cinbri wrote: »

Regarding new charges:
since they were made as teleports but playing charge animation they now suffer from same bug as dk Leap. Guess what will happen if you will meet texture on your way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW3LEyZ6-lI

Rex-Umbra

Keep up the good work.

Inarre

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)

please tell me that templars gap closer has not been forgot about..........................................................

grumlins

Please tell me that the poison mist morph will actually finally become useful as an AOE for Magicka build vampires??!?!?

That's what I've been waiting for this whole time, I would finally love to use that ability.

Eirikir

Any update on if they plan to make Burning Breath not look like puke? I'm fine with the mechanical changes, but that graphic.

lathbury

why did the stam dk the best dps build receive more buffs than the under performing stam varieties of other classes?

Hadan_of_Rift

I think you went overboard (as usual) with the changes to damage shields. Why not reduce them from 20 seconds to 10 seconds? Moderation and all - I know break things and hope no one notices is the normal development process for ZOS.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO

Hadan_of_Rift wrote: »

I think you went overboard (as usual) with the changes to damage shields. Why not reduce them from 20 seconds to 10 seconds? Moderation and all - I know break things and hope no one notices is the normal development process for ZOS.

We all know that zenimax are amateurs when it comes to balancing etc. It's a shame that such a great game as ESO had to end up with devs like these.

bowmanz607

Shields are fine. They don't last more than 6 seconds in battle anyway.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO

bowmanz607 wrote: »

Shields are fine. They don't last more than 6 seconds in battle anyway.

Sorcs are pretty much dead anyway next patch, all other classes does things better than a sorc does, so why play one?

bowmanz607

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

Shields are fine. They don't last more than 6 seconds in battle anyway.

Sorcs are pretty much dead anyway next patch, all other classes does things better than a sorc does, so why play one?

I disagree with that statement.

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

...
I would like to address this statement however: "Ultimately, we want to see you commit to being either offensive or defensive when using damage shields, instead of both simultaneously."

You see these damage shields scale off of your max damaging stat, and therefore by design you don't need to commit to being either defensive or offensive because with the way these damage shields scale; you can definitely have both. Therefore now that everyone has a damage shield, I think it's more important than ever to make them crit-able.

The first part is the real problem.
While this one fully agrees that shields (of any type) should be critable (and some increase in strength might be in order when that is finally the case), just to make more play styles viable (you know all those critical builds otherwise being pretty much pointless when going up against a shield stacker) the real problem is that damage AND shields scale with maximum magicka / stamina.

Which makes it worse is that magicka has several additional options (other than racial passives and undaunted available to all) in upscaling magicka. For balance and fairness the overhauled FG skill line should do the same increase for max stamina as the MG skill line has already for magicka, par on par, no more, no less.

However, if you really wanted to have a balanced system, remove damage scaling with max magicka / stamina!
Your damage should be determined solely by spell / weapon damage (including any buffs) and what modifiers you have to do a critical hit and any boni you got for extra damage for critical, as well as how good you are at bypassing the defense.

The choice between more regen or more max value should be purely a matter of play style.
More burst, but long breaks or more sustain, but limited capacity.

Digiman

Looking forward to seeing Sorcs become useless in PvP. Out of the entire classes they now have to either focus on offense and get 2 shotted or defense where they have to outlast, oh a 2-hander giving a 2500 stamina cost for 8 second removal and immunity to roots and snares...

But not to why if you don't have the health then @Wrobel will force you to use a pet that will take up a slot on all weapon bars and be dumb as crap...

also looking forward to the 3000+ damage stackers with annulment full bone shield for stamina on top of leather high physical resistance.

Strider_Roshin

Digiman wrote: »

Looking forward to seeing Sorcs become useless in PvP. Out of the entire classes they now have to either focus on offense and get 2 shotted or defense where they have to outlast, oh a 2-hander giving a 2500 stamina cost for 8 second removal and immunity to roots and snares...

But not to why if you don't have the health then @Wrobel will force you to use a pet that will take up a slot on all weapon bars and be dumb as crap...

also looking forward to the 3000+ damage stackers with annulment full bone shield for stamina on top of leather high physical resistance.

Not to mention now that everyone will be running around with a damage shield, it's safe to say that you can just remove crit surge entirely.

nimander99

"In full heavy armor" does @Wrobel mean 5 pieces or all gear as heavy?

GriM_728

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

susmitds

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

By the way, the majority of players like the current duration of shields. It is just the sorcerers who don't.

CP5

susmitds wrote: »

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

By the way, the majority of players like the current duration of shields. It is just the sorcerers who don't.

So the sorc's who don't shield stack and try to do different things with only ward, a ok they get their build heavily hit. Plus it doesn't seem like everyone thinks this change addressed the real problem with some saying shield stacking is stronger. Sure, lets ignore the group of sorc's who were trying to be out of the meta and use only ward.

GriM_728

susmitds wrote: »

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

By the way, the majority of players like the current duration of shields. It is just the sorcerers who don't.

If I could block you I would. You mean the 10-20% of players aka THE MINORITY?

bowmanz607

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

i love when people claim to have access to the information regarding what the MAJORITY of players want. news flash, you have no basis to make a claim about what the majority of players are saying. For every forum post that hates the change i can find just as many that love it. for every person you have talked to in game im sure i could find the same amount that would refute it. The majority does not equal these forums nor the community of players you associate with. It is merely a subset of the player base. a mere fraction. Dont make broad claims that about the majority of players and what they want.

bowmanz607

CP5 wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

By the way, the majority of players like the current duration of shields. It is just the sorcerers who don't.

So the sorc's who don't shield stack and try to do different things with only ward, a ok they get their build heavily hit. Plus it doesn't seem like everyone thinks this change addressed the real problem with some saying shield stacking is stronger. Sure, lets ignore the group of sorc's who were trying to be out of the meta and use only ward.

It is my impression based on past conversation over the months with you that you are at least a competent sorc player if not pretty darn good. given your experience you have to admit that your are more often than not reapplying your shields within 6 seconds when playing against other competent players. Based on that, the change really has no effect on combat between competent players. especially if your only running ward.

CP5

bowmanz607 wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

By the way, the majority of players like the current duration of shields. It is just the sorcerers who don't.

So the sorc's who don't shield stack and try to do different things with only ward, a ok they get their build heavily hit. Plus it doesn't seem like everyone thinks this change addressed the real problem with some saying shield stacking is stronger. Sure, lets ignore the group of sorc's who were trying to be out of the meta and use only ward.

It is my impression based on past conversation over the months with you that you are at least a competent sorc player if not pretty darn good. given your experience you have to admit that your are more often than not reapplying your shields within 6 seconds when playing against other competent players. Based on that, the change really has no effect on combat between competent players. especially if your only running ward.

Pet sorcs have no ui to let them know when to reapply shields to their pets, with how much zos has buffed them they clearly want us to use them. With a 6s shield we at least know when the shield is down, but the main pet that needs protecting, the matriarch, is suicidal to say the least. Sorc's who built their character around avoiding damage and used their shields as a buffer are being hit from this, the sorc's people mainly rage about who keep reapplying shields when almost dead (same as healing ward spamming) are if anything going to benefit from this. Shields do need change, but something like this won't turn out well, and i'm not a fan of waiting months in an irritating meta just for the hope of it changing for the better.

bowmanz607

CP5 wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

By the way, the majority of players like the current duration of shields. It is just the sorcerers who don't.

So the sorc's who don't shield stack and try to do different things with only ward, a ok they get their build heavily hit. Plus it doesn't seem like everyone thinks this change addressed the real problem with some saying shield stacking is stronger. Sure, lets ignore the group of sorc's who were trying to be out of the meta and use only ward.

It is my impression based on past conversation over the months with you that you are at least a competent sorc player if not pretty darn good. given your experience you have to admit that your are more often than not reapplying your shields within 6 seconds when playing against other competent players. Based on that, the change really has no effect on combat between competent players. especially if your only running ward.

Pet sorcs have no ui to let them know when to reapply shields to their pets, with how much zos has buffed them they clearly want us to use them. With a 6s shield we at least know when the shield is down, but the main pet that needs protecting, the matriarch, is suicidal to say the least. Sorc's who built their character around avoiding damage and used their shields as a buffer are being hit from this, the sorc's people mainly rage about who keep reapplying shields when almost dead (same as healing ward spamming) are if anything going to benefit from this. Shields do need change, but something like this won't turn out well, and i'm not a fan of waiting months in an irritating meta just for the hope of it changing for the better.

the shield for pets is 8 seconds. plus if the pet is in front of you attacking you can see when the shields are down. That said, this sounds more like zos should add ui for this and not a shield issue per se.

I agree, sorcs built around avoiding damage were effected. These players were able to put up shields and have time to go offensive. now, putting up multiple shields has its detriment in losing dps and putting on less increases dps. this is how it should be. Sorcs that didint do this previously will be relativity uneffected

Tyrannitar

The surge nerf is killing stam sorcs. It was supposed to help, but the cooldown is a full second now and the heals proc for literally 1/4th of what they do on live right now.

I could land a light attack on someone wearing full impen and get more hps than I can now on the pts.

GriM_728

bowmanz607 wrote: »

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

i love when people claim to have access to the information regarding what the MAJORITY of players want. news flash, you have no basis to make a claim about what the majority of players are saying. For every forum post that hates the change i can find just as many that love it. for every person you have talked to in game im sure i could find the same amount that would refute it. The majority does not equal these forums nor the community of players you associate with. It is merely a subset of the player base. a mere fraction. Dont make broad claims that about the majority of players and what they want.

Cool

Minalan

bowmanz607 wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

GriM_728 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @Wrobel Well I'd like to start out and say thank you for listening to the community. Thank you for the great buffs to crit surge, dark exchange, conjured ward, harness magicka, bone shield, 2H weapons, heavy armor, poison and the champion points. By far THE BEST update TO DATE! Thank you so much, I'm ecstatic over and for the DB update, could not be happier!

You've effectively rendered my pve magicka sorc tank and pvp sorc dps to be crap. I'm mainly a solo player, maybe play with 1-2 other friends and we take joy in jumping players. Ya ya I'm hated for it, whatever. You didn't listen to the MAJORITY of players who are asking you to revert ALL the shield changes and just leave them alone. Or the curse changes, or crit surge. You're only "kinda" listening to the stam Sorc guys, you're not not listening to the magicka sorcs, you're not listening to the stam dk guys who want their vomit fixed, you're not listening to the templars who want their shield and jabs fixed.

By the way that first paragraph is complete sarcasm.

By the way, the majority of players like the current duration of shields. It is just the sorcerers who don't.

So the sorc's who don't shield stack and try to do different things with only ward, a ok they get their build heavily hit. Plus it doesn't seem like everyone thinks this change addressed the real problem with some saying shield stacking is stronger. Sure, lets ignore the group of sorc's who were trying to be out of the meta and use only ward.

It is my impression based on past conversation over the months with you that you are at least a competent sorc player if not pretty darn good. given your experience you have to admit that your are more often than not reapplying your shields within 6 seconds when playing against other competent players. Based on that, the change really has no effect on combat between competent players. especially if your only running ward.

Playing against competent players means that they'll just CC and nuke you when your shields are almost down. Anyone who can count to four seconds will do that, and win every time.

Six seconds is not long enough, and casting shields every three seconds just to survive a fear/ambush/Incap spam is ridiculous.

We're not stupid, we know what you Stam guys are getting in this patch. We know about the ravage Magicka poisons, and the infinite root poisons. I'm okay with that, but you don't have to break my gameplay out of spite. That's just being a straight ***.

Tyrannitar

Surge got nerfed into a worse state than the 1 second cooldown in 1.5.

Seriously, we got nerfed into like 2 years ago

At least then it scaled off of damage done... Now we're SoL for VMoL, SO, VMSA, etc.

paget4444

Damage shield change is a complete over-correction. Shield like those are needed for entire parties as one of the few ways to make end-game vet dungeons and trials even possible. To be blunt however, the only "real" reason damage shields have been a topic since last patch is due to sorcerer shield stacking in PvP, no one complains about it in PvE because those shield are the only reason sorcerers don't get slaughtered in every dungeon or trial they enter.

Despite the fact that I have never had any real trouble killing enemy sorcs with stacked shield in PvP, and others have never had any real trouble killing my shielded sorc, fine, nerf damage shields in PvP; make it easier for any random player with low level, gear, build, time spent optimizing their character to kill end-game sorcerers. But, in PvE those damage shields are needed, not just so that sorcs will even have the ability to attack and be useful to parties, but for classes like DK to give everyone a small break in damage and allow them to burst down the last few thousand HP of bosses. One reason stated for this change is to make it more "challenging" and force players to use these shields at the right time......players dont time shield usage to block massive boss attacks....they get out of the way. 3 steps to the left will ALWAYS be used over a damage shield if possible.

This over-correction change to damage shields is going to cause several "types" of character builds now obsolete and useless, will cause every party-members job to be harder (especially for heals and tank), and gets rid of the only real defensive strategy sorcs have that doesn't involve spamming 6 spells before you even attack anything. Please be smart enough to reverse this junk before PTS changes go live.

Junkogen

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.

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.

Are there any plans to tackle the persisting racial passives imbalance in the future? You're a smart guy. You know what I'm talking about. Your team ha done a lot to balance other game systems but have given up on racial passives. The "health" races are still at a significant disadvantage compared to others. When will this be addressed? Have you considered eliminating the problem entirely by removing max stamina and magicka from damage calculations?

Argonian racial passives are largely deadweight, only functional in niche situations and much less useful compared to other races.