PTS Patch Notes v3.0.0

timidobserver

How ZOS treated Templar this update.

PS4_ZeColmeia

hesobad wrote: »

Siphoning Strikes:
This ability now causes your Light and Heavy Attacks to restore Health instead of Magicka or Stamina.
Increased the duration of this ability and its morphs to 20 seconds from 15 seconds.
Developer Comments:
Spoilerhide
This is a significant reduction to the Magicka and Stamina restored by these abilities, but the addition of Health restore should give Nightblades more healing to improve their survivability.


LMFAO this is a joke right??? How is nerfing their resource sustain going to help them survive?? No resources = dead Nightblade... RIP nightblades, hope you all had fun in vMA. That's dead and gone now!

Granted I'm not on PTS, so no clue firsthand how bad, but I'm a 314 skill point mageblade since PS4 launch. I've been a hybrid since Pelinal released and this does nothing to hurt me. I know very easy ways to have infinite sustain now since I solo 90% of my time.

This is not a nerf, it's a no longer max damage w light weave > all meta. The meta will see a large drop in max damage, but the proliferation of viable builds based on that will go up. That's good imho.

It's not the end of the world doom, unless the player is unwilling to give up max damage.between the gank nerf, all stat/CP benefits to damage and regen so early I don't think 1 shots will be possible as a result of health mattering more than the marginal benefit of 64 points into stam or magicka.

Gomumon

PS4_ZeColmeia wrote: »

This is not a nerf, it's a no longer max damage w light weave > all meta. The meta will see a large drop in max damage, but the proliferation of viable builds based on that will go up. That's good imho.

I don't think you understand what a nerf means. But, no, the number of viable builds will go down. You're just going to see people (especially NBs and DKs) using a combination of 2x Kena or 2x Troll King + Sunderflame, Poisonous Serpent, Viper's Sting, Sargent's Mail, or Knight Slayer, spamming heavy attacks with DW or Lightning Staves with Damage Magicka (60% cost to magic & Stam) poisons. That or Uber sustain builds spamming Harness Magicka.

Ectheliontnacil

The siphoning strike changes will kill magicka nightblades. ZOS absolutely needs to remove this. The other classes are ****ed to but I don't care^^.

Avius

Guys all classes regen was nerfed, it's for better gameplay:
"Player abilities in ESO specifically do not have cooldowns for this very reason - resource management is key and is a core pillar of the system. Due to the number of balance changes we have made over time, this core pillar of resource management has become somewhat trivial; it’s become easier than ever to have nearly infinite sustainability while still being fully maximized for damage."

It's true that somehow I can't get run out of stamina/magicka and so I spam all skills. Sometimes I need to use potion or something like this, but it's poorly challenging. I've turned to rotation zombie because of that.

It's true that this will ruin builds because they are built on actual game mechanics, but new builds will come.

I'm happy with that changes.

HoolDog

Avius wrote: »

Guys all classes regen was nerfed, it's for better gameplay:
"Player abilities in ESO specifically do not have cooldowns for this very reason - resource management is key and is a core pillar of the system. Due to the number of balance changes we have made over time, this core pillar of resource management has become somewhat trivial; it’s become easier than ever to have nearly infinite sustainability while still being fully maximized for damage."

It's true that somehow I can't get run out of stamina/magicka and so I spam all skills. Sometimes I need to use potion or something like this, but it's poorly challenging. I've turned to rotation zombie because of that.

It's true that this will ruin builds because they are built on actual game mechanics, but new builds will come.

I'm happy with that changes.

I don't think anyone is kicking off with the fact they changed the resource management. It's the fact the nerfed everything in resource management.

Nerfed all armour types
Nerfed regen related skills
And
Nerfed resource CP

Everything to do with regens

If they just took away the cost reduction CP and lowered the regen one to 15% from 25%... then people would have to do a lot of adjusting and changes... but all of it together is a bit much.

EC_Rob

Well after testing it i can honestly: zos you've out done yourself. R.i.P pve. you tried to change pvp but instead you also rip pve in half.. not really a good thing. And how you have changed cp is just stupid. Seems Trading is all thats left now for me.
Maybe i'll go role play now!

Avius

EmstCntRob wrote: »

Well after testing it i can honestly: zos you've out done yourself. R.i.P pve. you tried to change pvp but instead you also rip pve in half.. not really a good thing. And how you have changed cp is just stupid. Seems Trading is all thats left now for me.
Maybe i'll go role play now!

By rip you mean hard?
I didn't play on PTS, so I do not deny you, but I wonder what RIP means to you.

e.gamemarkb14_ESO

I do not understand ZOS direction with how the Templar fits in this game. Can someone from ZOS please open a real dialogue with our Templar community and explain why you are choosing to remove Major Mending (our primary healing) and giving it solely to the new Warden class?

The choices you are making do not make any sense! Why are you making such huge, sweeping changes instead of making small, incremental, controlled situations so that when things fall apart, you will have a good understanding based on very basic High School chemistry class principles of what a controlled experiment is?!

ZOS, you have some incredible talent right here in the forums, the ones who actually play your game and understand the mechanics better than you do! Just look at how the meta can be changed and molded to make the BIS characters, raid groups, PvP super heroes, etc!

I would have honestly thought that after 3 years, your development team would have a real understanding of your own game, yet you continue to PROVE to our community that you don't know a damn thing about this game, let a lone how to properly make real changes which a teenager has more common sense then your grown up adults making such careless and very destructive changes!

It's clear ZOS, that your development team doesn't know what it's doing based on this new resource management self destruction path your going on. Now if your intent is to tell your community that you want players to suffer more with resource management, and you want to force us to significantly lower our DPS while keeping dungeons and raid content at their current levels, mission accomplished!

Frankly all you are doing with this "update" is giving the Templar community the big middle finger and laughing about it. No seriously, that is 100% what you folks are doing, because your strip our Templar of skill after skill, after skill, and now neuter our class by removing Major Mending. Just a little reality check here, Templar was designed to be a HEALING class, and the only reason you are removing it from my perspective, is to try and force me to buy the expansion and force me to level up a Warden who surprisingly gets MAJOR MENDING!

All your team is really accomplishing, is pushing down your core player base of 80-90% of players who do not have the ability to micro manage their resources like your top small percentage of players do.

Your changes may be somewhat helpful to the PvP community, however the majority of your players do not play PvP, and these changes completely wreck your PvE players, and heavily push down even your solo players with many of these toxic changes.

If you want to balance PvP, then do so by creating an independent system for PvP! (Take a few pages from GW 2). You could easily reach out to many of our highly talented meta wizards who understand your game mechanics inside and out! Take your time and make SMALL meaningful changes on the PTS, so that you can see how it plays out and then make a change to it, test again, then add in something else to slowly move it towards the type of game play your aiming for.

While I do see some good changes in the current test notes, your team is going about it in a very bad way.

Please ZOS, I implore you to open a real dialogue with us! Sift through the meta data, get our dedicated and highly knowledgeable players who thrive on meta data, math, calculations, and ask them for their help and feedback. Swallow your pride and realize your community, you know, the ones paying your salaries and keeping YOU in business, are here to HELP you!

Avius

e.gamemarkb14_ESO wrote: »

(...)
If you want to balance PvP, then do so by creating an independent system for PvP! (Take a few pages from GW 2).
(...)

That's a bad system, a bad idea.

Anyway I realized how little I know about ESO combat system etc. Watched some angry youtubers who doesn't prove any points, but watched some quality clips too .... and I'm changing my mind. This changes have good goal, but there are many better ways to do that.

Anybody who played on PTS, and have some experience with ESO can explain me how this will impact the PvE ? I mean real explanations, not "this will reck the game" comments.

e.gamemarkb14_ESO

Avius wrote: »

e.gamemarkb14_ESO wrote: »

(...)
If you want to balance PvP, then do so by creating an independent system for PvP! (Take a few pages from GW 2).
(...)

That's a bad system, a bad idea.

Anyway I realized how little I know about ESO combat system etc. Watched some angry youtubers who doesn't prove any points, but watched some quality clips too .... and I'm changing my mind. This changes have good goal, but there are many better ways to do that.

Anybody who played on PTS, and have some experience with ESO can explain me how this will impact the PvE ? I mean real explanations, not "this will reck the game" comments.

Actually GW 2 did a superior job when it comes to PvP balancing, as their focus was on the skill of the players, not dependent on huge buffs and gear that did a lot of the DPS for them, aka: monster sets, or armor sets that add huge insta procs, etc. There is no skill involved with armor procs, and you artificially add burst DPS to the game which gives players a false sense that they are actually doing better, when in reality, they are not.

For example, in PvE, you go into a HM dungeon. Many boss mechanics still wipe you easily enough if your not paying attention, however the ease of DPS'ing down bosses is majorly improved due to all these armor sets / monster sets that add in a lot of sustainable DPS for you.

You have a monster set that can double proc based off fire / lightning and is very easy to manipulate as an example. I personally can reliably get both procs to take place every 5-6 seconds based on my choice of rotations, which nets me a big DPS increase just because of the 2/2 monster set bonus.

You have other 5/5 armor sets that can proc every 6-8 seconds a big burst of damage from 6k - 12k+ like clockwork.

Now take GW 2 for example, they offer whats called a Structured PvP game in which all players are equalized, you choose your class, gear and skill load outs, then play the match. It is 100% now up to the player's abilities and how they utilize the character skill choices to determine the outcome. This gives players who have worked hard to master their skills and rotations to out play their foes, and it really shows.

Another mechanic that ZOS should have implemented for PvP is an "overwhelmed" status, such as, once their are x number of players attacking the same enemy player, the enemy player's defenses are reduced by x percent or baseline amount. This results in dealing with players who have found ways to meta their builds to extreme levels as seen so often in streams / YouTube vids.

When you can have 8-10+ players focusing 1 player and that player is shrugging it off because their reactive gear and focused pts all into Stam / Health regen allows them to do it, that creates the imbalances and needs to be adjusted. While I think it's great the player found this meta setup to gain this level of unkillable, the fault lies with ZOS for not going through a properly structured testing environment and making small incremental changes, which could have negated many of these major imbalances in the first place.

That said, changing resource costs and re-balancing may help alleviate this to a certain amount.

Now players who have worked hard at PvP should be rewarded, but again, this should be a completely separate system similar to what GW 2 has done to ensure a better balance for the PvP experience, while allowing some of these added things to continue in PvE with a rebalance of how those core mechanics work.

sadownik

@Avius for open world and questing not much, besides making them longer - combat wise. Dungeons, Arena and trials is where it will hit strongest.

Avius

@e.gamemarkb14_ESO don't get me wrong. I have great time playing PvP in GW2, but it's gives feeling that PvP is so different game that makes no sense to play this.

I was PvP player (or i wanted to call myself that), but when it comes to MMO it must be consistent. Few abilities may differ in PvP, but when whole system is reworked, or so many changes are made, the game feels inconsistent. I don't want to minigame PvP, if i play MMO i want to play MMO and sense progress on both aspects of a game.
I know it's hard, but ESO seemed to make this real.

Good example of such PvP was World of Warcraft (BC, or WotLK), when only some spells were slightly changed or disabled. But rotations and class mechanics stays unchanged. I was feeling I'm playing same character, same game, whenever I played PvP or PvE, or questing.

I know many will disagree with me, but that's my opinion and it's a factor that determines if I will play this game.

But returning to the topic, I wonder if that only makes the PvE harder or longer, that can be fixed with just changing bosses dmg/hp.

sadownik

@Avius Im sorry but i dont fully understand. Are you saying you use the same gear and skill set up, "rotations" even in... pvp?

Avius

@sadownik Gear was different, rotations differ slightly (more nukes in PvP, more healing reduction etc.) but this changes doesn't affect the class itself, it's just making some skills more important to PvP some to PvE.

When I was playing WoW, and making PvP I have had felt a constant progression of my character (the essential thing in RPG). When I was playing GW2, and making PvP I felt like I was minigaming, and my character was ripped of my progression and placed in whole new mechanics system.

I can play DOTA, or any survival PvP based games to embrace full strength of PvP, but when I do PvP in MMO I expect to feel progression.

EDIT: When I say MMO i mean MMORPG. I think that's important in this topic :P

e.gamemarkb14_ESO

@Avius Yeah, I am very much the same in terms of wanting a good open world PvP environment which I had a lot of fun in ESO in the early days. Your examples of the old days in WoW is good, I enjoyed those times.

Regarding skills / abilities changes, in all honesty you shouldn't have to swap gear / skills from PvE to PvP. All your skills and abilities should be universal in terms of their usability and desire to use those skills in all situations. When a game starts focusing more on gear (such is where ESO is now) to enhance your character, especially all the procs and added burst damage on so many sets, that takes away from the skill base line.

At this point it's a wait and see, and a hope that just maybe ZOS will actually pay attention, swallow their pride, and realize that they may not have the best solutions to make good change and are capable of taking some of the really good feedback that many have given with very specific details in order to help rebalance the game in a more correct way.

This game really needs to steer away and even dare I say, would benefit if it returned to some of the original methods soft caps, because in essence, this is exactly what ZOS is trying to do again, but in a more destructive manner when all class abilities are being harmonized based on character level and no longer based on stat pools. It's the same thing we had before, just in a very different way which will hurt the players more then help, if the current methods are indicators of how we expect the new live to become.

sadownik

@Avius fair. I personały like Gw2 for exactly the same you dont like it. It does require different combat style and for me its great - seeing the class im playing often in different light.

Avius

It's PTS.
I hope it will change before release.

e.gamemarkb14_ESO

Magician:

Renamed this passive to Siphoner.

This passive ability now reduces the enemy’s Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery for 3 seconds when you damage them with a Light or Heavy Attack, instead of reducing the cost of your Magicka abilities.

---

So how does this benefit PvE players? This is 100% geared towards PvP based on this change.

Is this the direction ZOS is moving towards, which is to change the entire balance of PvE based on PvP concerns?

I did not see any updated CP passives that would help caster classes with their Magicka resource management, unless someone would like to point out how this major deficit for magicka users is countered with a different CP passive.

I_killed_Vivec

I must admit I was worried when they went "no CP" in PvP to test "balancing", but I was never so cynical to think that they would destroy classes to encourage people to buy the expansion just to play warden.

I know some people with more MMO experience than me were saying that warden will be OP to start with - absolutely as a way to cash in on the interest - but that these things tend to even out after a while. But I did not think that they would nerf so hard as well.

They are essentially destroying your current experience to get you to buy a new one.

ashenb14_ESO

e.gamemarkb14_ESO wrote: »

I did not see any updated CP passives that would help caster classes with their Magicka resource management, unless someone would like to point out how this major deficit for magicka users is countered with a different CP passive.

they dont want to give you more regen/lower mana use, they want to make you use more so you have to use light and heavy attacks constantly to regen your mana, and so you need resto ass offhand so you can get major mending and mana regen since they removed any reason to play a templar healer imho.... im actually considering deleting my temp since its clear they intend warden to take the temps role/place and temp to just be another class not all that different from the rest...gotta try and make it so the classes are as alike as possible ...im told thats how you make the game fun...nerf everybody so the games more of a slog...because grindy slogs are fun.....thats why korean grinders are right up at the top of the "great mmos you gotta play" lists

they want us to have a harder time managing resources so you can stand around waiting for nerfed regens or just use heavy attack spam more then your other skills to keep your pool from running out....anything to avoid actually having to balance things or having to balance pvp and pve on their own rather then ducking over pve players to make pvp more fun...

a friend of mine just unsubbed and told me once this patch goes live, after testing it on PTS, he wont be playing anymore, his main pve guild ran pts group content and the changes..you need multi healers in all groups now, and doing even basic pledges like wayrest sewer took 2-3x as long...everybody was using pots constantly....

but we are told this will make the game alot more fun for everybody.....and if we dont like it, they wont miss us...plenty of people already pre-purchased morrowind, and those of us who may quit will just be helping zos avoid having to invest more in server capacity.....

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

I must admit I was worried when they went "no CP" in PvP to test "balancing", but I was never so cynical to think that they would destroy classes to encourage people to buy the expansion just to play warden.

I know some people with more MMO experience than me were saying that warden will be OP to start with - absolutely as a way to cash in on the interest - but that these things tend to even out after a while. But I did not think that they would nerf so hard as well.

They are essentially destroying your current experience to get you to buy a new one.

they want to destroy the fun with older classes, that way you will buy the new hotness for 60bucks...then when sales slump on that, they can just nerf the warden to unfun levels to so that everybody gets to experience what a good looking Korean grinder would look like.

its a good thing...sure it will make pve grinding ALOT slower and more frustrating....because it will take you far longer to kill each mob...and wait for mana/stam/hp to regen...since everybody needs their regens cut specially vamps health regen..way to high.... *eyeroll*

im sure that there are people who cried for months on forums and in bug reports will be extatic that pvp will be better....sure it screws pve players but...who cares...they only make up the majority of the player base....

gw2 has a superior way of dealing with pvp....spvp is soo much more balanced then pvp in this game.....but...they want to try and balance pvp and pve on the same system..so...pve players will continue to suffer as zos try to make pvp players happy...

im sure all of this will lead to a game thats far far far more fun then what we have now...nothings better then spending a whole night grinding for specific gear drops and ending up with a hand full of worthless drops...because...balance...
if it dosnt take 30-45min to kill a dungeon boss for a slight chance of the gear drop you are after....what fun is grinding a dungeon?

Avius wrote: »

It's PTS.
I hope it will change before release.

probably make it worse, because, warden isnt powerful enough to REALLY drive people to buy the new content...if they make it so every other class cant sustain skilled combat for any extended period, then they will get more sales....

if they nerf my already low regen on my sorc...i have 2 choices...use lots of heavy attacks, pots and standing around...using heavy attack to regen mana...i already am on the edge of to little regen....guess i gotta give of damage and crit value to boost my regen and pool sizes....how nice of them....giving me such a wonderful gift....oh and reducing the reduction levels you can get also....very helpful .....

i wouldnt expect any changes the majority of the playerbase will approve of till the sales of morrowind slump....and they endup nerfing waden to near uselessness like they will have done to all other classes.

updating gw2...guess its time to give it another go...i come back just before housing...and, mostly liked the changes, dont like them nurfing the living *** out of classes to sell new content/classes....the game could be more chalenging, making it so i gotta spend 3-4x as long to kill the same mobs, and having to use constant light and heavy weapon attacks because...."resource management pressure is more fun" idiocy...

but the devs know better what makes a fun game then the people playing it....

ashenb14_ESO

*consolodated*

Flameheart

The first reports and rumours from the PTS told me, that there will be some dps loss. At least in PvE and as a DD (no idea for tanks and healers, it might be even worse for them) you are able to bypass the most dps loss due to ressource drain by using heavy attack builds in combination with DoTs. Mostly you don't even need any new/other gear.

Nevertheless the rotation now feels clunky and tedious and like the opposite of that what ZOS stated:"Combat in ESO is, and has always been, about fast-paced action...". In addition heavy attacking makes you much more vulnerable to game mechanics, because it's like a channel.
The new bubble and shard mechanics are a complete mess.

Meanwhile I made my own opinion why ZOS intends those changes. It's definitely not because of ressource management has been "trivial" in PvE. Chainpotting, elemental drain, worm and using any synergy especially bubbles is the meta in PvE, so don't tell me we don't care for ressource management.

...but maybe they just do it to improve game performance and stability by reducing calculation pressure. I would not admit that too if I were a MMO operator.

Heruthema

Quick question. What is the "upper echelons of the individual leaderboards" in numbers?

SilverWF

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Sacred Ground: This passive ability now grants Minor Mending instead of Major Mending when you are standing in your Cleansing Ritual, Rune Focus, or Rite of Passage areas of effect.

Warden Passives wrote:

Accelerated Growth – When healing you or an ally under 50% Health with a Green Balance ability gain Major Mending, increasing your healing done by 25% for 6 seconds.

Lol, just LOOOOL!

SilverWF

e.gamemarkb14_ESO wrote: »

Actually GW 2 did a superior job when it comes to PvP balancing, as their focus was on the skill of the players, not dependent on huge buffs and gear that did a lot of the DPS for them, aka: monster sets, or armor sets that add huge insta procs, etc. There is no skill involved with armor procs, and you artificially add burst DPS to the game which gives players a false sense that they are actually doing better, when in reality, they are not.

This works only in the sPVP - like an upcoming BGs here
In the Server vs Server (analogue of Cyrodiil) the skills and gear are the same as in PVE in the GW2

Avius

@ashenb14_ESO
There's nothing "superior" in sPvP. It's much easier to balance skills when you're making it seperate. In GW(1) was same system. I hate it. I understand people who would like that, but don't say it's "superior". It's just giving away something that maybe some players don't care about for better balance.

CadaCosa

One thing that is not in this patch, or any other patch. Please add the ability to have more than 25 quests at one time. Adding additional quest inventory will benefit players.

Avius

CadaCosa wrote: »

One thing that is not in this patch, or any other patch. Please add the ability to have more than 25 quests at one time. Adding additional quest inventory will benefit players.

quest inventory? ... you mean inventory where .. you can store quests ?

lpfan678

I logged in to the PTS for the first time ever over the weekend to test out some of these changes. As a disclaimer, I've been playing since Beta, CP 600, only do PvE, no Trials; Group dungeons only. My super basic and quick test for wether this is all doom-and-gloom is soloing normal City of Ash. I can generally sleep walk through it as I've done it about 1000x and it's just muscle memory at this point (dang Burning Spellweave). After taking my DPS Magicka Templar through it several times (without changing anything), I can say that my character isn't necessarily ruined. There's definitely a huge difference in sustain but I was still able to solo a normal group dungeon relatively easily.

Now, I understand that ZOS wants to make fights more tactical/strategic/whatever but I can say with confidence that this isn't going to do it. I, and I can only assume many others, just fell into casting my full rotation a few times, heavy attacking/potion, then my full rotation a few more times. It's not really strategic, I wasn't compelled to be more careful with my casting. My character just feels less capable, but more importantly, less fun.

I know that these changes are an effort to make the game better in the long run, but suddenly having all of my characters that I've literally spend hundreds of hours playing be less capable is kind of demoralizing. I feel a lot less compelled to play ESO now knowing that the game is going to be less fun come June.

There is not a player of this game that won't say sustain issues are really irritating. It'll always be viewed as a problem. And to have the developers of the game patch in sustain issues feels really wrong? Like trying to fix a problem by introducing another problem is... strange. I don't know, from what I can tell the game is not mechanically ruined. But revamping a system to be decidedly less fun does not seem like a good route to take.

edit: spelling/grammar