Thoughts on 2.4.5

Rylana

Brief and simple one liners, pros/cons, etc Only as related to the Alliance War, very little PvE mentioned.

Pros:

Rylana resubbed - You clearly did something right
Two new characters rolled - The best thing you ever did to date, more character slots
Objective capture in IC - I actually like being down there again
Battle leveling everywhere - this needed to happen, when v10 was max it didnt seem all that daunting, but once v16 + 4 DLCs became a thing, the catch-up became real.
Poison - The right combo vs the right build = cheese negated
Build Diversity - Its getting better, cookie cutter aint so cookie anymore. This is a good thing
All-in builds are bad - Debatable and follows along with the above, rock paper scissors is more severe than ever, glass all magicka specs = loldead, mitigation is a thing now. Thank god.
Lag seems less - though this may be a result of more people playing out of Cyro, down in IC and DLC content, but the lag is noticeably better
Class rebalances - I have quite literally zero complaints outside of 2 which I will list below.
Champion Revamp (especially Block Cost) - This is unpopular but and extremely good change. it forces people to use more mitigation and decide on costs of skills or cost of defense, no more best of both.
Heavy Armor - It was already strong, now its beast. HA is a thing, anyone who says otherwise is completely clueless. Mwa hahahaha. Stam or Magicka, there is almost zero reason to not be running 5HA in PvP.


Cons:

No faction swap - had to roll new Templar and DK. While this is nice, Id have rather just spent 15 bucks to move Minerva and Rylana to EP.
Buggy gap closers - fix pl0x
Add another 30 or 7 day campaign - Haderus and Trueflame are too crowded. Or better yet, just make Azuras CP enabled again.
Fix the grouping tool so people actually use it - >1hr queue times as a healer is like wut? Clearly something is wrong
Continue addressing lag - spread populations out, do not put us all into one box ever again
Incap Strike does too much damage - we told you this in PTS
Dragonknight is still missing a good PvP self heal. Change GDB from a percent to a flat value like 10k and be done with it.
Flags in districts need more guards, and more point than just telvar, make them a requirement for Emperor along with the six Ring keeps.
The RNG garbage with Cyrodiil vendors is the lowspot of the new patch. 20k AP for a chance at something vague out of a multitude of sets, with the right trait or body part = hell no. We asked for purchaseable v16 gear, not lottery tickets



Overall thoughts

Dark brotherhood, from an Alliance War perspective is a huge step in the right direction, but much more needs done. I have resubbed as of this last Friday, keep me subbed now. While a good many of those that have left us will never return, I see some glimpses of a recovery in progress. Retention and reclamation now ZOS.