PTS Feedback Thread for Class Balance

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the changes to skill line unlocking. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• In general, what are your thoughts on the class balance in this update?
• How long did it take you to run out of resources? What did you do in this case?
• Did you change your character/build in any way because of these changes? How so?

usmcjdking

usmcjdking wrote: »

Heavy isn't the issue.

Hell BOL being as strong as it is isn't even the issue.

BOL being a 28 meter find-the-lowest-hp-dude-who-made-mistakes-and-heal-him-to-full-whilst-faced-the-completely-opposite-direction is the issue. AKA smart heal. Nerfing BOL to have a conal search pattern instead of a massive giant circular radius would be the proper fix for BOL spamming magplars. This is why BOL has invalidated other magicka heals in PVP - because the skill literally takes ZERO tactical or situational awareness to utilize. Just button mash and heal the right people.

THANK YOU

bubbygink

[Eclipse:]This ability and its morphs now last for 3.5 seconds, down from 6 seconds, but can no longer be removed with Break Free. After the effect ends, enemies will gain CC-immunity.

This is a significant reduction to the Magicka and Stamina restored by these abilities [siphoning strikes].

I feel like somehow ZoS has manged to nerf Magblade significantly even though everyone pokes fun at how bad we already are. There are now two classes that have very strong hard counters to us - DKs with wings and Templars with Eclipse and the one thing we had going for us (great sustain with siphoning attacks) is significantly nerfed. Is there any reason what so ever to play Magblade over Mag Sorc (who got no nerfs despite being on top in basically everything - PvP, PvE DPS, etc.) in any content in the game, PVE or PVP?

Shadzilla

usmcjdking wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

Heavy isn't the issue.

Hell BOL being as strong as it is isn't even the issue.

BOL being a 28 meter find-the-lowest-hp-dude-who-made-mistakes-and-heal-him-to-full-whilst-faced-the-completely-opposite-direction is the issue. AKA smart heal. Nerfing BOL to have a conal search pattern instead of a massive giant circular radius would be the proper fix for BOL spamming magplars. This is why BOL has invalidated other magicka heals in PVP - because the skill literally takes ZERO tactical or situational awareness to utilize. Just button mash and heal the right people.

THANK YOU

Now if only they would listen to anything we say about PVE dps... AWWWWW DUDE THEM CALTROPS THOUGH!!! STAMINA SHOULD EASILY BE ABLE TO COMPETE IN PVE NOW!

KingJ

You guys just made class balanced even worst.

Kilandros

You guys basically nerfed DK sustain which was already terrible, on top of global nerfs to resource sustain to all classes. This *** blows my mind it really does.

lunalitetempler

I like spear changes ehehehe

olsborg

Im fairly worried that all healing was nerfed pretty hard, for all classes and specially for stamina, but Bastion for damage shields wasnt touched.

rhapsodious

So, I know the devs commented last time about wanting to normalize the damage levels across the game (bring minimum up and maximum down), which I can see and I can get behind, to prevent the "one spec or GTFO" type of content seen at high-level play.

With that in mind, why did you barely change nightblades? It still looks like I'm gonna be a poverty sorc. At least I have Siphoning Attacks.

KingJ

olsborg wrote: »

Im fairly worried that all healing was nerfed pretty hard, for all classes and specially for stamina, but Bastion for damage shields wasnt touched.

You can't nerf wrobel favorite class but ruin the game for everyone else.

potirondb16_ESO

Lol Nightblade got the biggest boost since they still have Siphoning Attack

ZoM_Head

bubbygink wrote: »

[Eclipse:]This ability and its morphs now last for 3.5 seconds, down from 6 seconds, but can no longer be removed with Break Free. After the effect ends, enemies will gain CC-immunity.

This is a significant reduction to the Magicka and Stamina restored by these abilities [siphoning strikes].

I feel like somehow ZoS has manged to nerf Magblade significantly even though everyone pokes fun at how bad we already are. There are now two classes that have very strong hard counters to us - DKs with wings and Templars with Eclipse and the one thing we had going for us (great sustain with siphoning attacks) is significantly nerfed. Is there any reason what so ever to play Magblade over Mag Sorc (who got no nerfs despite being on top in basically everything - PvP, PvE DPS, etc.) in any content in the game, PVE or PVP?

Excuse me? Do you have any idea how bugged and near useless reflective scales is? DKs can cast it and still get instantly hit with a projectile, its so unpredictable that it is not really worth a skill slot.

GawdSB

Class balance? What class balance?

Stamden

It's going to take a long time to sift through everything, but overall I am seeing some very nice changes actually.

ZoM_Head

Kilandros wrote: »

You guys basically nerfed DK sustain which was already terrible, on top of global nerfs to resource sustain to all classes. This *** blows my mind it really does.

The mDK has been getting killed every update since 1.6/Imperial City.

Bashev

olsborg wrote: »

Im fairly worried that all healing was nerfed pretty hard, for all classes and specially for stamina, but Bastion for damage shields wasnt touched.

I see some nice changes but you are right. We still have shield stacking and if the pirate skeleton set still works on shields then the shield stacking will be the best defense.

Alaztor91

Have you considered changing the nightblade Master Assassin passive to something else?

You nerfed sneak attacks crit damage and stuff like stygian set in what appears to be an attempt to increase the TTK on ganking/stealth builds and provide more counterplay (which IMO is a good thing), but you still try to pigeonhole nightblade into that role via passives.

In pve, sneak attacking a high health target like a world boss will barely make a difference, and if the target has a low ammount of max health he probably would have died anyways even if you didn't had the Master Assassin passive.

Nightblade(and templar) already had their passives nerfed with the last major patch when you nerfed crit damage, and now it seems that nightblade is getting nerfed again(sneak crit nerf,etc), while I agree that gank/stealth/oneshot builds are annoying in pvp, if you want to increase the time to kill and thus make ganking less efficient, you should IMO change the nightblade passive that favors that aspect.

Also I suggest buffing or changing the Shadow Barrier passive too, so magblades can benefit more from it, since they usually don't use a shadow skill every 4 secs(which is the amount that the buff lasts if you have no heavy armor pieces), maybe increase it to 8 seconds and decrease Path of Darkness and it's morphs duration to 8 secs while increasing their damage so they stay the same.

Bashev

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Also I suggest buffing or changing the Shadow Barrier passive too, so magblades can benefit more from it, since they usually don't use a shadow skill every 4 secs(which is the amount that the buff last if you have no heavy armor pieces), maybe increase it to 8 seconds and decrease Path of Darkness and it's morphs duration to 8 secs while increasing the damage so they stay the same.

That passive is for mele characters and every mele player uses Veiled Strike (one of the morphs) for dps.

North_esp

I dont mean to sound overly dramatic, but I'm really opposed to many of these changes. I'll focus on magblade in particular, since that is what i main for pve. Last patch you guys hinted at a change to the merciless resolve mechanics. Nothing here, which is disappointing. Also a heavy nerf to sustain via the siphoning change. I understand that the underlying theme of this patch so far seems to be "nerf recovery/sustain" but why do we need to tone down an ability that may be able to bring magblade dps out from the lower end of the spectrum? We already lack alot of the more useful passives that magdk, magsorc have (such as spell damage increase for magsorc, fire damage/burning damage abilities etc for magdk) and Impale is NOWHERE near as strong as jesus beam. What do magblades have? A max mag passive, crit passives (which were made less useful in the homestead update) and great sustain. The sustain part may have been enough to make Magblade dps more viable when all the other classes would be forced to put more recovery/cost redux glyphs on jewelry, but after the siphoning nerf I'm not convinced it will do so.

The siphoning nerf also pretty much kills the saptank build. If we have to choose between restoring stamina or magicka, then it simply isn't viable. The strength of saptank was that they could restore BOTH. Now we would have to choose between taking the mag morph and going with a frost staff since we can no longer sustain stam for a 1h&s build (losing a set bonus, and all the great 1handed passives for tanking) or going for the stam morph and not having the ability to use our magicka class abilities which are needed to recover health/ buff the group. The gap between Stamdk tanks and everything else just got even bigger.

I could go on, but I would probably just be ranting. PLEASE take a closer look at magblade. If magsorcs aren't being nerfed in any way other than the light armor/ cp changes then there is still very little reason to bring a magblade dps into endgame vet trials. Saptank is pretty much dead. This siphoning change needs to be revisited, please.

potirondb16_ESO

LOOOOOLLL MAGBLADE ARE GOING TO BE OP AS **** lol,

They have the best sustain in the game and it will come a long way this patch !

VarisVaris

once again you guys nerf sustain for pvp reasons and completely forget about pve

KingJ

Just play sorc if you want to pvp run in end game pve.

Firerock2

Looks like I get to take a really long break from the game again

Xsorus

My thoughts are this

You killed Stam DK, they lost resource management and their Healing Bonus (Magicka DK can still use it atleast)

Stamina Templar basically lose even more resource management and now also lose their Healing Bonus as well...So they're dead

Stamina Nightblade should be fine, in fact they'll be even better now because the other two classes lost their heal bonus's which directly increases the power of Stamina NB on ganking them.

Stamina Sorc will outclass Stam DK/Templar cause they still have Exchange.

Magicka Sorc is still going to be over the top, even more so now since you touched every class but sorc.

Magicka DK's lose sustain as well, From heavy armor nerfs, and their resource management...and since Magicka Dk's pretty much rely on a sustain to be effective they're hosed...That's the whole point of that class, to outlast the opponent and its done now.

Magicka Templars, They lose Major Mending, I don't know for sure how much its going to hurt them...I think the fact that other classes got nerfed so hard means they're still going to be pretty powerful simply because everyone else is vastly weaker.

Magicka Nightblades, They'll lose some Sustain, but I don't think they'll be vastly worse off either simply for what I stated with Templars, Most of the Stamina Based classes got gutted that would give them issues...

sly007

So many people are quick to judge with an ounce of testing. Remember when every body cried and moaned about how terrible the destro ultimate would be. Then 1 day into live the same people cried for a nerf. Every pts, the same thing happens.

Let's calm ourselves and actually go test things out. Of course sustain across the board will be bad if we use the exact same setup. Test for an alternative, find the solution, not complain about a problem we have yet to meet.

Xsorus

sly007 wrote: »

So many people are quick to judge with an ounce of testing. Remember when every body cried and moaned about how terrible the destro ultimate would be. Then 1 day into live the same people cried for a nerf. Every pts, the same thing happens.

Let's calm ourselves and actually go test things out. Of course sustain across the board will be bad if we use the exact same setup. Test for an alternative, find the solution, not complain about a problem we have yet to meet.

I was the only person on the forums to point out how overpowered Destro ult was going to be.

And i'm telling you..with these changes, everything I stated above is true.

Firerock2

sly007 wrote: »

So many people are quick to judge with an ounce of testing. Remember when every body cried and moaned about how terrible the destro ultimate would be. Then 1 day into live the same people cried for a nerf. Every pts, the same thing happens.

Let's calm ourselves and actually go test things out. Of course sustain across the board will be bad if we use the exact same setup. Test for an alternative, find the solution, not complain about a problem we have yet to meet.

Every class got nerfed pretty much except for Magicka sorc and magicka nightblade. These are massive changes that are far bigger than just a new ult. I don't need to test it to say that I won't be playing this game unless the PTS changes drastically

KingJ

Xsorus wrote: »

sly007 wrote: »

So many people are quick to judge with an ounce of testing. Remember when every body cried and moaned about how terrible the destro ultimate would be. Then 1 day into live the same people cried for a nerf. Every pts, the same thing happens.

Let's calm ourselves and actually go test things out. Of course sustain across the board will be bad if we use the exact same setup. Test for an alternative, find the solution, not complain about a problem we have yet to meet.

I was the only person on the forums to point out how overpowered Destro ult was going to be.

And i'm telling you..with these changes, everything I stated above is true.

Fr I don't even want to log on now these notes just crushed my spirit.They just ruined the game.Watch none of this will be reverted small resources changed would have fixed this not completely gut resources management. It makes it so your casual can't complete even more and make your hard core leave.

templesus

Stamplar sustain got 0 buff when its the shittiest in the game, meanwhile sustain as a whole, medium armor, stam ability costs and more got nerfed. Just remove us from the game already zenimax. The only thing we have now is broken ass potl which you didn't even nerf. Lemme guess, is potl your excuse for not buffing our sustain at all? Or is that your excuse for taking major mending away from us after giving it to us like 4 patches ago? Pathetic

Rajajshka

Just from the patch notes alone, I can tell that Magicka Dragonknights are going to have horrible sustain. The nerf to battle roar, the removal of magicka reduction cp, the lack of regen passives in the class, the regen cp being lowered, and the very high skill cost, more so than any class, is going to make sustaining Mag Dk in general very, very difficult.
I think their skill costs should be lowered to be on par with other classes.
(I don't really have much to say about stam dk as i'm not familiar with it)
I haven't tested it yet on the pts and won't be able to later this week.

getemshauna

Hello, I'm Magicka Nightblade player for Dragon's Crest, end-game progressive PvE guild. I completed every possible Hard-mode content in the game as Magblade, including Rakkhat 5th platform burn, and vMA. I'll try to explain Magblade issues in current meta from my point of view.
In terms of DPS, we lack good damaging abilities and sets that could scale with us. Excluding Crippling Grasp and Impale, our abilities are not that useful comparing to the other classes. Merciless Resolve mechanic drops our dps, cause needs to be casted twice, also grants us buff completly unecessary in group PvE due to combat prayer. Twisting path duration 11,5sec doesnt fit with any other ability, also it doesnt scale with thaumaturge.
If Necropotence works great on Sorcs, its much worse for us because damage of our pets isnt good enough to stack magicka. Burning spellweave fits great with dks, due to massive fire damage. Magicka Nightblade's abilities base on magic damage, and there's no actually set that could improve that source of dmg. Same with undauted monster sets.
Siphoning attacks is ability, what are we known for. It could bring us to the meta again, so please make a wise decision about nerfing that. I didnt get invitation to PTS yet, so I cant take a look how it works in practice right now.
At overall - please look closer to the Magblade, because we are missing around 5-7k single target dps comparing to the mdk or msorc. Few small changes can bring us back in game, as fully viable dd.
Sorry for english issues, its not my native.

Greetings, getemshauna