First PTS Poll Ever! Block Expertise change.

Daveheart

Revert the change!

I didn't read this change until just now, but this is just a terrible idea.

Liofa

Revert the change!

It is funny that most probably ZOS won't change it back even with all these threads and polls or whatever . Same situation with AOE caps (this is just an example of many ) . 80% of the players want ZOS to change it back but high chance they won't . I don't know if I should laugh or cry ^^

KenaPKK

Revert the change!

Nifty2g wrote: »

hammayolettuce wrote: »

I like builds being forced to spread out CP, it allows for more build diversity that isn't here currently.

PvP doesn't get to dictate the game's direction by crippling the play style of the other half of the game.
An very not so thought out change that needs to be reverted.

This is like We Are ESO saying that heavy armor needs a passive for "Critical Resistance" yes it is a good idea but it doesn't work well rounded for PvP and PvE which is why I dislike the We Are ESO Live Podcasts, most of the ideas resolve around PvP and heavily damage PvE

So hold a PvE "We are ESO" podcast and suggest PvE changes, or suggest a PvE oriented passive to accompany the crit damage reduction passive suggested for PvP such as 0.75% reduced damage from boss monsters per piece of heavy armor equipped.

It's an incredible idea that would make heavy armor actually useful in PvP over light or medium. We can't afford to have ideas like that thrown out just because PvEers don't like it. Add to the conversation. Don't try to silence it.

Siluen

Revert the change!

I think reverting it would be best.

If it absolutely had to be moved, move it to the Atronach together with Shield Expert, it would not be such an extremely bad fit with the Riposte passive at 30 CP and Retaliation at 10. At least this has -some- synergy with blocking, and tanks are not as starved for points in the Mage trees.

As an idea:
Block Expertise > Atronach
Shattering Blows > Steed (or Shadow, but Elusiveness would have to remain with Steed)
-
Tactician > Shadow
Shield Expert > Atronach
-
Give Steed a new passive to replave Shield Expert.
Take away one of the crappy Shadow ones to make room for Tactician.

... did this make any sense? Because I think these would at least fit the theme of the trees they would be moved to. The Shadow gives absolutely nothing for blockers passive-wise, whereas the Atronach actually does.

KenaPKK

Revert the change!

Now that I've been thinking about this more, Block Expertise is both a damage mitigation CP and a sustain CP. It mitigates damage by making block cheaper...and it increases your sustain by making block cheaper. It could technically fit in green or red trees. I see ZOS's logic in moving it to the green tree and shifting Elusive to red.

My main problem is now with the lackluster higher passives in the green trees and how the 75 point passive which increases your shield's armor is still in the Steed.

Tdroid

Revert the change!

Maybe I am missing something, but I am pretty sure tanks didn't need more difficulty managing their resources. Won't affect me personally much, as I play damage dealers, but with the changing of bracing, sturdy and increased base costs, it seems that now a character has to be almost singularly devoted to blocking just to get the effect of the tanks on live, who can do more things.

Are tanks really that overpowered on live(and I simply didn't notice), or is this just fixing what isn't broken?

sebban

Revert the change!

Tdroid wrote: »

Maybe I am missing something, but I am pretty sure tanks didn't need more difficulty managing their resources. Won't affect me personally much, as I play damage dealers, but with the changing of bracing, sturdy and increased base costs, it seems that now a character has to be almost singularly devoted to blocking just to get the effect of the tanks on live, who can do more things.

Are tanks really that overpowered on live(and I simply didn't notice), or is this just fixing what isn't broken?

This isn't fixing something that wasn't broken. This is breaking something that was just barely working. And then setting it on fire.

Tdroid

Revert the change!

sebban wrote: »

Tdroid wrote: »

Maybe I am missing something, but I am pretty sure tanks didn't need more difficulty managing their resources. Won't affect me personally much, as I play damage dealers, but with the changing of bracing, sturdy and increased base costs, it seems that now a character has to be almost singularly devoted to blocking just to get the effect of the tanks on live, who can do more things.

Are tanks really that overpowered on live(and I simply didn't notice), or is this just fixing what isn't broken?

This isn't fixing something that wasn't broken. This is breaking something that was just barely working. And then setting it on fire.

Or poisoning it, now that that is a thing for the DKs. But, yeah, this might be a real problem for tanks. And it is not like the servers were overflowing with them to begin with...

Cinbri

Keep the change!

Kinda weird change. Why not to move Shuffle instead of Ironskined to Warrior tree. Obviously it was done to force people choose between blocking and impenetrable builds.

The Uninvited

Revert the change!

@Kippesnikke @GeertKarel @TrekarmatiK69 Can we have your votes please?

Hymzir

Keep the change!

This change was one that made me rise an eyebrow when reading the latest patch notes. One of those moments where my mind went "Why?" At first it seemed utterly pointless, but then I started to think about it, and after a good nights sleep on it I came to the conclusion that yeah... why not. Makes sense, from a certain point of view. Might work, and might help the game evolve into a better direction. I know that most people are against this change, and I understand why, but even so, I still think it's the right move. It does shuffle things up a lot, and will require additional changes to the CP system for this thing to work.

Thus I voted to keep the change as is, since the other choices do not reflect my opinion. Which is keep the changes, but do some additional changes to go along with it. The change is a lot more problematic for PVE tanks than PVP tanks, since there really aren't good choices in the Steed constellation for PVE players. Resistant is of no use in PVE but is fairly crucial for PVP. So PVP players can get to to 75 CP without much issue. Spell shield is worth a few points, but as a tank, you already have fairly high defenses so no point in dumping lot of points into that one.

Medium Armor Focus is also pointless for tanks, who tend to use Heavy Armor, so that one is of no use as well. I understand why Medium is in Steed, since thematically Light makes more sense to be in Lady and Heavy in Lord, but in all honesty, these three should be combined to just one passive and call it Armor Focus. It doesn't make sense that you can increase you Spell Resistance with just 1 star, and do it for all possible builds, while Physical Resistance has 3 stars that are also build specific, yet they all give the exact same amount of protection.

Finally, the Elusive (renamed to Shadow Ward) is pretty much useless for everyone. I mean does anyone actually put any points into it? At 100cp you get 24% percent decrease in the duration of snares and stun and such... That makes a 4 second stun to be a 3 second stun. It still only takes about 2 seconds to get killed when stunned so who cares. And a two second stun becomes 1.5 second stun and that half a second is easily lost to lag anyway and thus the passive accomplishes nothing. If you compare Elusive to the other Stars in Shadow it is clearly the least useful. And placing less than 100 CP into it makes for so small changes that no one would even notice them.

100 CP in Tumbling gives you 19% cost reduction for break free and roll dodge which is huge in comparison. Even Befoul is more useful than Elusive. 100 CP in Befoul gives you 33% increase in healing reduction effect which is fairly massive. Still less useful than dumping those points in Tumbling, but if you do go for a healing reduction build, that 33% is significant. Elusive on the other hand... yeah useless.

I doubt anyone places 100 CP in Shade either since 16% cost reduction to sneak is not all that useful, especially since you get cost reductions from Legerdemain and from wearing medium armor. But I'd still place my points in Shade before Elusive since Sneaking is something one does a lot and often, so at least one benefits from it frequently. And 30 points in Shade gives 7.8% cost reduction which does actually affect game play in a noticeable manner. 30 points in Elusive give 10.5 percent reduction for stuns and snares which is like what? 0.2 or 0.3 seconds on most stuns. Do you even notice that?

Moving Elusive to Steed will not make it any more useful and will just anger a lot of PVE players and force them to either take spell shield or spend points in Resistant which is useless if they do not also PVP. .

Now having said all that, I still support the move of moving Block Expertise from Steed to Shadow, it's just that I do not support the moving of Elusive from Shadow to Steed. I do not support the existence of Elusive in the first place, and think it should be replaced by something one might actually use.

Do keep in mind that the change does come with a buff to Sword and Board passives. You get 6% more cost reduction now from Fortress Passive so if you go all in for it, you can get a fairly massive reduction in blocking cost. But you do need to sacrifice something for it now. It also fits the design philosophy ZOS has adopted as far as blocking and tanking goes - i.e. if you are gonna be a blocker then you need to specialize in it, and you need to sacrifice other facets of your build in order to achieve it. Whether this is a good idea or not, is another topic all together, but the change does fit that philosophy. The removal of Bracing was the first step, and requiring dedicated blockers to get sturdy gear was the second one. This is the third one.

Since Fortress gives you 6% more block cost reduction now, you only need 67 points in the new Ironclad passive to have the same effective cost reduction as having 100 CP in Block expertise. That still leaves 100 CP to be used for other stuff. With these you can max out a star or get about 60% benefits from 2 stars by placing 50 CP in each. Or you can invest 33 more to Ironclad and make Blocking be your main shtick. The point here is that Block cost reduction has been moved to the same category as other major stamina management abilities, and you need to choose which one to specialist in. You no longer can easily have huge block cost reduction and huge roll dodge break free cost reduction at the same time. Of be a magicka tank that has all Thief CP invested in Arcanist and Magician with 100CP Block expertise and relying on Templar Shard spam to refill stamina pools while spamming self heals and what nots while tanking.

So while it is a nerf to blocking in general, it's not as big a nerf as it might appear at first glace, and it does hit some builds more heavily than others. The change to Thief points from Warrior points does, in my mind at least, help to create more meaningful choices and encourages more dynamic play and is not a bad idea. IT also helps to reign in some of the more problematic perpetual block builds you run into in PVP.

The real problem is that It does leave purely PVE tanks in a bad spot, since now the Steed tree has only 1 star that is of any use to PVE tanks and even that is not all that hot, and worth investing only a 10 or 20 points with the current CP cap. So my suggestion is to come up with something more useful than Shadow Ward (the old Elusive star) and roll all armor stars into one star and replace Medium Armor focus with that. It makes sense since Spell shield is also in Steed. Then add some new star mitigation ability in Lady and Lord.

Well... that's my 2 cents on the issue anyway - the system has grown so complex at this point that it is hard to say anything for sure. Only time will tell whether this is a really bad idea or whether it helps to move the game to a better direction.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

Revert the change!

The change is a slap in the face of hybrid tanks. The last viable type of hybrid character concept left in the game gets a kick in the nuts.

Teridaxus

Revert the change!

Sigh not a single word from zos yet and i bet during the next eso live they tell us the players ( dps ) love those changes.

Meh...this is a lost cause, we didn't managed to revert a single tank nerf yet except consitution but it took around a whole year, this won't be any different.

Watch out healers, when zos finished us tanks off, you are the next.

Rex-Umbra

Need to see the changes can some one make a clip I don't know where everything is just by reading.

Rune_Relic

Revert the change!

If you want to go
1. Blue - all offensive
2. Red - all defensive
3. Green - stamina/magicka/health regen and cost

I dont have a problem.
But going piecemeal makes no sense to me.
It has to be fair across the board or not at all.

lonewolf26

Revert the change!

I say revert the changes. Moving block cost to the green CP tree creates more problems than it solves. The major problems most have had going into testing have revolved around resource regen and cost. This change does more to harm this balance. The resolution to a resource bottleneck is NOT to reduce the resource pool, nor is it to create more resource contention by increasing costs. @Wrobel, please tell us why this change was made. Many of us see it as a frivolous change. It's not fixing anything we saw as broken.

Sugaroverdose

From PvP perspective it's not that bad change since in pvp you do need to reduce CC duration and do need critical resistance so you still will get shield bonus by spending points on useful CP passives, but i don't really see any useful CP passives in steed for PvE, maybe something should be moved there

Xsorus wrote: »

Swap Medium Armor Passive in Steed to Lord with the Heavy Armor Passive.

That's really all that's needed.

like these

Roymachine

Revert the change!

hammayolettuce wrote: »

I like builds being forced to spread out CP, it allows for more build diversity that isn't here currently.

I am in agreement with you to a point. For pure tank specs I am ok with this change, but my DPS spec will suffer tremendously if I don't respec my champion points every time I want to switch.

Joy_Division

Revert the change!

I still don't understand if ZoS all of a sudden wants to address the infinite resource builds and have to make tanks choose between block and resource management ...

... why did it not do this for DPS builds and make them choose between damage and resource management?

If I played a tank I'd be upset and little indignant of DPS and healers telling me to "Adapt, you'll be fine and it's good for the game."

Farorin

I don't care. It'll probably be fine either way.

Just thought you ought to know.

willymchilybily

Revert the change!

has any one tried it yet?

Edit:
you can probably get more mitigation now. reducing the damage received with hardy, and elemental, on top of resistances from armor and blocking. etc. and just ignore the shield passive. put the points else where either directly into reduced cost or into more armor from heavy armor.

im kind of thinking.... apart from having no regen and no reduced stam cost and basically having to rely on shards and only ever taunting 1 enemy every 14.9 seconds.... it might be okay....

just realised im an idiot after i read what @code65536 said

2: Gear-swap tanks. Both of my tanks are gear-swap tanks. They switch between DPS and tanking with a change of gear, food, and mundus stone. It allows for a greater freedom of play and more versatility. For example, my DK goes from 18K health, 41K magicka, and 10K stamina to 28K health, 26K magicka, and 20K stamina with just a simple swap of gear and food. The clear distinction right now, where red is defense, green is sustain, and blue is damage, makes it possible for me to do this without spending 3K gold every time I change roles. And there are a lot of tanks who fit into this category, esp. since remaining in tank mode doesn't make sense when doing solo content like vMA or questing.

realised im a gear swap tank. and i need my green CP to play my character as both roles. i dont want to swap my CP around every time someone wants my help to tank a pledge.

kinggingernator

Revert the change!

Lets see if zose pays any attention to this at all. Doubt it, just gonna keep going like with aoe cap removal when 90% of the player base voted against it.

Roymachine

Revert the change!

mzapkeneb18_ESO wrote: »

Sigh not a single word from zos yet and i bet during the next eso live they tell us the players ( dps ) love those changes.

Meh...this is a lost cause, we didn't managed to revert a single tank nerf yet except consitution but it took around a whole year, this won't be any different.

Watch out healers, when zos finished us tanks off, you are the next.

To be fair, they did buff Sturdy and Fortress to compensate.

Jhunn

Revert the change!

Poll percentage says it all.

@Wrobel

Legoless

Revert the change!

Another terrible, build-destroying change for PvE tanks.

Cinbri

Keep the change!

After testing it on pts i must say i like change, it increasing diversity of cp builds.

Rickter

Revert the change!

I just want to know if zos thinks tanks dont need resource mgmt. in fact considering that tanks are the only role that needs to build for all three major stats, we need MORE resource mgmt than any other role. Block cost reduction is a must. No stamina means no tank. Skill cost reduction is a must, tanking isnt just holding block like some would have you believe - so two NECESSITIES jammed into the same tree so we are forced to choose one or the other?

Whos damn idea was this???!! Silly is silly. Stop trolling tanks. Seriously just stop.

Personofsecrets

Revert the change!

Keep up the feedback all.

Electroheadz

Well, it would make more sense for tank to sacrifice some of his damage for more survivability.

Swap Tactician passive from Atronach tree with Shield Expert and then swap Shattering Blows (the passive that fits best with medium armor - shield breaker) with Block Expertise. And done.

Lucius_Aelius

Revert the change!

Electroheadz wrote: »

Well, it would make more sense for tank to sacrifice some of his damage for more survivability.

Swap Tactician passive from Atronach tree with Shield Expert and then swap Shattering Blows (the passive that fits best with medium armor - shield breaker) with Block Expertise. And done.

Again, that's only for pure Tanks, which barely any Tanks are because the game is unplayable solo as a pure Tank. The vast majority of Tanks use some kind of Hybrid setup that allows them to do some kind of decent damage, and Champion Points are an essential part of that. You can't take anything away from Tanks without making them worse, and we need a Buff not another Nerf. The Champion Points were fine as they were, they didn't need to be changed and should remain exactly as they are on Live.