Power Creep Sawtooth

Cronopoly

I had to ask opinions in this regard. Excel hypothetical charts to show the gist.

Most of us know what a sawtooth graph is. Increases over time of a stat. In this case it could be combat effectiveness, sustain etc...

My question is did ZOS lose control of managing Power & Sustain to the point where they feel they have no choice but to reel it all back in at once? (I'd do it over time myself and not throw the frog into boiling water as a wise woman once said...) Someone also said don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

I apologize as the graphs below are out of order:
1) Perfect world management of power/resource creep
2) What we think is about to occur a "hypothesized" xx% nerf (chart shows 50% Morrowind nerfs "EXAMPLE" only)
3) What might have ocurred unchecked to get us here. It's just a strait 5% power creep for 3 years (all this hypothetical of course)

Avran_Sylt

Well, with the introduction of Champion points, that increased the damage output (bonus stats)
With the introduction of Orsinium, and maelstrom weapons, that also increased the damage output (bonus light attack damage)
with each patch that brought greater team tools to the table (I.E. Alkosh, and not applying major fracture and breech, but working in conjunction with those) it also increased group dps. (also think of sunderflame)
Unless they cap the CP stat bonuses, each time they increase the CP level it'll bump up individual dps.

Since resources were by far becoming rather useless, just another way to increase your damage output, and not a way to allow you to pump out more attacks before refueling, my guess is they found that as a way to balance the power creep. Also, resources are meant to be the reason for no ability cooldowns. as the cooldown occurs when you run out of resources.

As it was, I think it became too easy to build for maximum damage output over an indefinite amount of time, that they finally decided to reign it back in the resource returns available from "free" sources. (I.E. shards, orbs,cost reduction cp, cost reduction armor passives, resource regen from cp).

NightbladeMechanics

Yes, this patch is a sudden and mass correction of power creep that has accumulated mainly since Dark Brotherhood, but technically since the implementation of CP. We just didn't feel the creep much until several patches later when most players started having significant amounts of CP. Gina said in one of the patch notes that they're returning the game to its resource management roots, and it's not like we haven't been complaining about power creep and imbalance issues for a year or more.

Baconlad

Problem is i could still go max damage sets, no drinks, and not run out of magick in pvp. Back when CP first dropped. After this patch thats not the case, they are bringing us lower than weve ever been with sustain. It bows my mind that we cant decide to stack damage as freaking DPS just to run out of resources in 30 seconds. Why would they think its a good idea to make dps toons have to use drinks or sustain sets? Ah...i give up, ive adjusted every patch, may as well continue adjusting this patch...my poor templar has been nerfed patch after patch. I used to look forward to new updates, im now worried about nerfs comming down the pipeline every patch