Heavy attacks: a 100 millisecond breakdown of the breakdown of combat

f047ys3v3n

So I hate the new combat system. No surprise there. If you have read anything I have written since beta you know that I think it feels clunky, sluggish, and the rhythm of it is very disjointed. I am not enjoying spending all my time in combat closely scrutinizing each DOT bar to fit a full heavy attack in everywhere it does not interfere with a DOT application and so I am just not enjoying combat, or consequently the game, at all anymore.

In the process of messing with all this though some things about how heavy attacks were happening seemed off though and I decided to take a peek under the hood and see just exactly what was happening with them each fraction of a second. Heavy attacks have actually been changed a few times in the past. Originally, they did not return resources at all. Furthermore, in 1.6 the timing of heavy and light attacks was greatly sped up to make the game feel more responsive. I believe this mostly was a case of reducing the cooldown. It was at that time that light attack weaves came to do more damage than heavy. In the 1.5 and pre days partially charged heavy attack weaves known as medium weaves were the highest dps. These latest changes were the most dramatic though and I have posted them and the developer notes below:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

· Increased the damage of Light Attacks by 15%.
· Decreased the damage of Heavy Attacks by 15%.
· Increased the resources restored by fully-charged Heavy Attacks by 30%.

Reduced the cast time of fully-charged Flame and Frost Heavy Attacks by 12.5%.
· To compensate for this increased attack speed, the damage for Flame and Frost Heavy Attacks has been reduced by an additional 12.5% for a total of 27.5%, and resources restored has been reduced by 12.5% for a total increase of 17.5%.
There are two goals with all the changes listed above. First, we want the damage difference between Light Attack weaving and Heavy Attack weaving to be more prominent. Light Attacks should be the clear winner when you are trying to maximize damage per second, while Heavy Attacks should deal less damage per second in exchange for restoring resources.

Second, we want to speed up some of the slowest Heavy Attacks while also increasing the amount of resources all Heavy Attacks restore. This should improve the combat feel of winding up some of the slower Heavy Attacks, while also allowing all builds to restore their resources faster and with less Heavy Attacks needed.

The changes didn't seem quite right to me as a fully charged heavy did not seem to be taking any less time and a few other things so I went home to my dummy and very precisely beat on it for a while. Lets look at the numbers.



There are a number of things to note that are really not right here and / or make little sense.

1) Partially charged heavy attacks return no resources yet did receive the heavy attack 15% damage nerf. This is not in line with the developer comments on that change which seem to indicate that you get either resources and a damage nerf with heavy or no resources and a damage buff with light. All partially charged heavy attacks got a damage nerf and no resource return.

2) Fully charged heavy attacks actually didn't get any damage nerf. Seriously, put a scale to the graph, no nerf. Even at 2.2 seconds the medium trend line clearly runs 15% under that last data point. Furthermore, because you now get credit (resources back and full damage value) for a fully charged heavy at just over 1.6 seconds, the duration change in concert with no nerf to a full heavy actually gave it a massive damage buff. It looks a little like when they created the category "fully charged heavy" in 1.6 in order to destroy all those nice medium weave sets like infallible and mephalas they actually made it count as a categorically different skill once it reached that point. That difference seems to have exempted full heavies from receiving the 15% nerf that medium attacks got and also resulted it no longer scaling with charge duration making it actually receive a very potent damage buff when it's charge duration was shortened.

3) The animation for heavy attacks has not changed. It is 2.2 seconds as it always was though now the attack actually reaches full potency just over 1.6 seconds (about 33% of the time it is full at 1.6seconds.) In other words, you can guess when it ends and skill cancel it or be 23% inefficient. Get to practicing or, write a heavy macro like some I know did in order to cast it like a skill. If you simply hold down the heavy key each attack will take 2.2 seconds of which 23% will be waste.

4) The actual duration timer on heavy attacks is effected by what skill is cast before. It appears that making a block cancel on the skill animation may give you a clean timer but I am not yet entirely sure on all of this. I am sure precise timing and canceling is now more important than it was in the past.

5) Landing anywhere in the medium attack range, from either end, is now very bad as you will now be getting both substantially less damage and no resources. In the past, I think, heavy attack damage started to increase linearly from the point an attack was considered heavy linearly until full duration. Now the line drops to medium from light and massively spikes to fully charged heavy.

What I think should happen:

1) All medium attacks should return resources in proportion to how long they are. The equation might be something like resource return = (duration / 1.61) * max resource return. In this case the minimum return, experienced on a .23 second heavy, would be 15% of the max, experienced on a 1.61 second heavy because it takes 15% as long. This scenario allows people to dynamically manage there resources based on how long they let a heavy attack charge. I believe the idea behind the whole heavy attack resource thing was to decrease the average casts per second as an anti lag measure (see, players can figure out your dark motivations that you lie about.) Making mediums have scaled resource return still decreases average casts per second without the horibad effects on player experience that sitting for more than 1.6 seconds with your finger on the left button does. Furthermore, a player could still create temporarily higher burst damage by weaving a light sequence.

2) You should probably actually apply the 15% heavy nerf to the actual heavies that are returning resources as well as rescale the damage number so that it is back on the heavy line. Right now you gave it a massive, roughly 30% buff, when you intended to nerf it.

3) You really should set the heavy attack animation to ~1.7 seconds so that less experience players aren't getting screwed by the fact that the skill still appears to need to charge when it stopped charging more than half a second ago.

I hope this data helps some of the players who are having difficulties figuring out what is actually happening. I also hope some changes come. I find the combat experience terrible as it is. I know many others agree as many quit and many more, like myself, unsubbed and are just doing casual stuff hoping changes for the better come so that doing any challenging fights becomes interesting again. Lastly, if any of you have data on how previous skill casts effect heavy timing I am interested to know that without having to do the testing myself.

sly007

Thanks for the data. No reason for medium weaves, ever.

TheStealthDude

Great analysis! I agree with your suggestions.

Andele

For which weapon is this tho? Since different weapons (seem to) have different damage increase timing.

f047ys3v3n

Andele wrote: »

For which weapon is this tho? Since different weapons (seem to) have different damage increase timing.

This was all tested on a flame staff.

It would be interesting to know how other weapons heavy attacks behave. I would believe anything now that I have seen what is really happening with a flame staff. The results were not at all what I expected as they neither line up well with what ZOS said they did nor are they at all intuitive.

kojou

If nothing else the animation and scaling should be corrected, because those are bugs.

I don't think it was intended to have the damage dip like that on a medium attack either, but I would not be surprised if it never gets fixed...

I posted a similar suggestion about scaling resource return to the length of the heavy attack. I wish ZoS would do that as well.

Kaliki

Very interesting findings. Thanks for sharing.

This reminds me of when I tested Dark Flare a long time ago (so not sure if the following is still the case).
Cast time of the skill was reduced but the animation time not, which resulted in a ratio of something like 1.1:1.8 secs (actual vs. animation time, maybe a bit less since we have to add the 0.2 secs of fixed delay after casting that was mentioned in the patch notes... so 1.3 instead of 1.8 ).

Similar effects exist for other casted skills like Crystal Fragments.

Ideally, all attacks should animate just as long as the tooltip says/as long as it takes them to reach full effect. Otherwise the combat system is misleading for newer or less informed players. Not to mention all the incentives and benefits for macro users.
Really wish the combat team would have a look at animations...

Turelus

I miss medium weaves, it was about the only kind of weaving I could do and not remember I am garbage at the game.

technohic

I noticed on the bow that there is a little bit of time between where it is fully drawn and when it now auto releases. I just assumed it was accounted for and if I did my old release I wouldn't get resources but maybe it's the old animation. Also thought I might just be out of practice because my light attack weave was off and I missed some abilities following a LA.

It just feels clunky

Fellwitch

I run sword and board and have noticed I am getting 0 magicka returned when I heavy attack, but plenty of stamina... never thought about it before this patch as I had assumed heavy attack returns both resources... so physical weapons only return stamina and staves only return magicka?

This is on a new warden character without heavy armor passives to return more resources on heavy attack.

technohic

@Fellwitch Yeah. Physical attack weapons return stam. Only staves returns magicka.

Fellwitch

Ahh... my max character was a magblade and I was used to siphoning strikes... my bad. Guess that build is done too lol

Joy_Division

Insightful.

I really dislike that "medium" weaves are a losing play.

Avran_Sylt

Just separate resource regen from being solely tied to heavy attacks. Such that you could medium weave, full anim a light attack, heavy attack, or use a skill from another resource pool to regain the current resource pool. Then you could make it weapon independent bringing more build diversity.

theamazingx

If this is accurate, it really has to be fixed. Can't imagine how testing missed this. Maybe while they're at it they can make drinking potions not force a heavy's early release anymore.


With the indended changes, though, I kind of get why medium attacks are the way they are. Heavies on an inferno staff are designed to essentially be an induction with the consolation prize of a little damage if you get interrupted.

LZH

Considering the light/heavy changes were supposed to push heavy-attack builds behind light-attack builds and the change was only half implemented (lights buffed, heavies unchanged), this absolutely needs to be fixed in the next week or two. It is completely ridiculous that a MagSorc who heavy attacks for the majority of the fight can pull competitive DPS with every other class.


Also, I feel like this should be posted in General so it can get more views. This is a huge oversight.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Nice analysis. My only pushback, unless I am missing something, is that you are claiming that heavy attacks didnt get a nerf essentially by extrapolating data from your medium weaves and claiming the heavy attack damage is above the line. Well, unless we had this graph from last patch, that logic doesnt hold. For all we know it was further above the line last patch. My lighting staff HA damage has certainly dropped this patch.

Where I think you are definitely on to something is that medium weaving has all but been destroyed. Medium weave is basically "Animation Canceling light." It's always been a much easier weave to perform and a good place to start learning (it's how I learned originally). Now its not even close to competitive with a light weave.

LegacyDM

@ZOS_RichLambert

???

Wow. Good analysis. Another example of ZOS stating one thing and reality being another. After player since launch I'm not sure if ZOS intentionally does this stuff or is just incompetent.

f047ys3v3n

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Nice analysis. My only pushback, unless I am missing something, is that you are claiming that heavy attacks didnt get a nerf essentially by extrapolating data from your medium weaves and claiming the heavy attack damage is above the line. Well, unless we had this graph from last patch, that logic doesnt hold. For all we know it was further above the line last patch. My lighting staff HA damage has certainly dropped this patch.

Where I think you are definitely on to something is that medium weaving has all but been destroyed. Medium weave is basically "Animation Canceling light." It's always been a much easier weave to perform and a good place to start learning (it's how I learned originally). Now its not even close to competitive with a light weave.

You are correct, that is the assumption that I am making. It could be that previously there was also a huge boost to a "full heavy" over the microsecond shorter long medium attack. It would have been an interesting test to have done. I suppose a console user with some fancy macro storing controller could still do it (do they have add ons that give you a skill by skill combat breakdown). Before, I was never really all that interested in finding these things out as doing a fully charged heavy on anything other than a trash pull with a shock staff was not a road to success. The shock staff, of course, also behaves entirely differently and perhaps did get the nerf.

As for medium weave being animation canceling light, I do agree it is a bit easier. It's a hell of a lot easier than the rhythmic gymnastics of light cancels mixed in with fully charged heavies that are now required and I am having great difficulty with. Mediums were also more adjustable as the timing of a weave can be stretched a bit if you are waiting for an ulti at 99% or for a DOT to be just ready to refresh or, importantly, if your ping is bad and you just had to compensate by slowing the weave a bit. On the other side of this difficulty argument though, single skill macro animation canceling is not uncommon and I know some players who are now macroing the optimized heavy channel time and binding that to a key as well. It is one solution for the prevalence of rather screwy animation times relative to actual cast times that have always been and issue but have become more prevalent. At that point, the weave, becomes more of a just pressing the buttons to refresh the dots and cast skills thing similar to most other MMO's with each button press including both a skill and a light attack all nicely optimally canceled. What I am saying is that making the game harder by making it more difficult to properly time and cast skills by having deceiving animations and difficult finger gymnastics is maybe not the best way of promoting a challenge.

UrbanMonk

And here I was wondering that sometimes when i animation cancel the HA with a Skill on my Stamina Night-blade/ Dragon Knight/ Sorcerer , why some times I see no stamina return at all and run dry. On stamina characters, the combat as it is already very slow weaving every skill with HA, now no Resource returns on Partial Heavies is cherry on top. LA damage buff anyway is no use for stamina builds except where it can only be done on the bow bar, on main dual wield or 2 Hander, it's always HA weaving.

f047ys3v3n

ToxicPAWS wrote: »

now no Resource returns on Partial Heavies is cherry on top. LA damage buff anyway is no use for stamina builds except where it can only be done on the bow bar, on main dual wield or 2 Hander, it's always HA weaving.

To clarify, partial heavies never returned any resources. Their additional damage over light attacks also did not, previous to this patch, make up for the longer time it took to use them. Light weaving was unquestionably higher damage even before it it was made, relatively speaking, another 30% stronger than medium weaves. My comment was that this change was spoken about in the patch notes as being because heavy attacks return resources. This makes little sense because only fully charged ones do and those not only did not get the nerf medium attacks did but were, in effect, massively buffed by having the charge time reduced while the damage remained the same. Myself, and many others, think it would make combat less clunky if medium weaves were an option for resource management by returning some fraction of the resources returned by a full heavy as the full heavy is very slow and makes the rhythm of combat feel very disjointed.

As for your running out of resources now, you received the following resource nerfs:
5% across the board cost increase for stam resources
30% vigor cost increase
Reduction of medium armor cost reduction and regen passives (around 33% each I think)
Massive nerf to redguard resource return (assuming your redguard)
Removal of 15% cost reduction champion point passive
Reduction of 25% regen champion point passive to 15%.
Destruction of the very powerful siphoning strikes skill for you sNB.
Nerfing of your ulti drop passive resource return on you sDK.

I think that is enough nerfs to make anybody run out of resources though some of the top players streams do call this into question.

Masel

I agree. And while they are at it: Pleeeeease make Lotus Blossom also heal on medium weaves... It doesn't heal you at all while medium weaving. Not a light attack heal... A curved function for the heal would be best, going from the light attack to the heavy attack heal.

UrbanMonk

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

ToxicPAWS wrote: »

now no Resource returns on Partial Heavies is cherry on top. LA damage buff anyway is no use for stamina builds except where it can only be done on the bow bar, on main dual wield or 2 Hander, it's always HA weaving.

To clarify, partial heavies never returned any resources.

- Fair point, but what i was pointing to is that now on Stamina Builds heavily rely on HA to get their resources back, people are getting 35-45k single target DPS on 3 mil Dummies, but in real time situation with all the block/ roll dodge/ movement and other boss mechanics, it's not easy to sustain at present. So MA shoud give some resource back as ZOS wants us to do HA and have a faster combat feeling at the same time, which Ironical.

f047ys3v3n

First post morrowind patch notes dropped today. No combat changes at all. I was hoping that, given they were clearly scrambling to try to rebuild a functional combat system after the disastrous reception of the hold your left button combat system, changes would continue for a few incremental patches and leave us with something at least somewhat fun. This patch suggests that they are content to hemorrhage players for the 3-4 months until the next major update. Pity but not too surprising. This is not the first time they implemented ill conceived changes that resulted in the quitting of huge portions of the players that can complete trials level content.

Reverb

I dare say, you've put more thought and effort into this than the combat team has.

Xander3Zero

I think I have definitely noticed a decrease in full charged HA damage, but I think the point that I find most disturbing about this post is the part about being able to OVER-charge a HA. Often when I am AoE'ing a large group and low on stam, I will hold LMB, wait for the HA to fire, and animation-cancel with steel tornado, and repeat.

But according to your analysis I could actually be suffering by holding LMB instead of being able to perfectly time 1.7s HAs. That's a god awful design especially considering there is no real clear indicator that the attack is fully charged.

An alternative that I would accept if they continued to allow over-charging of HAs, would be to add very clear and obvious indicators that the attack is fully charged and ready to release which would look something like this:

1) Start holding LMB to charge heavy attack
2) After (X) time, your weapon brightly flashes, glows, etc, which indicates your fully charged and can release a successful heavy attack
3) you could continue to hold the attack, but it will auto release at (Y) time, with no benefit over the attack released in step 2 above.

On that same note, I noticed pre-morrowind that Bows did indeed indicate and glow when they were fully charged (because they didnt auto-release), but unless I am mistaken that indicator seems to be gone now with the auto-release? Am i correct on that? Or am i completely wrong and all heavy attacks do indicate when fully charged?

Ruze

Fellwitch wrote: »

I run sword and board and have noticed I am getting 0 magicka returned when I heavy attack, but plenty of stamina... never thought about it before this patch as I had assumed heavy attack returns both resources... so physical weapons only return stamina and staves only return magicka?

This is on a new warden character without heavy armor passives to return more resources on heavy attack.

On my tank, I am using a resto staff as my secondary weapon to heavy attack with (also using one resto spell for extra group support), and with the resto staff passive to heavy attack resource gain I get back a ton of magicka with one heavy attack. I can also switch back and forth to heavy attack with either weapon to get the resource I need back. Probably not optimal for whatever reason, but it feels nice to be able to get all my magicka back with two resto staff heavies if I go too hard and spam a bunch of magicka abilities.

GriMTriAd

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

As for medium weave being animation canceling light, I do agree it is a bit easier. It's a hell of a lot easier than the rhythmic gymnastics of light cancels mixed in with fully charged heavies that are now required and I am having great difficulty with. Mediums were also more adjustable as the timing of a weave can be stretched a bit if you are waiting for an ulti at 99% or for a DOT to be just ready to refresh or, importantly, if your ping is bad and you just had to compensate by slowing the weave a bit. On the other side of this difficulty argument though, single skill macro animation canceling is not uncommon and I know some players who are now macroing the optimized heavy channel time and binding that to a key as well. It is one solution for the prevalence of rather screwy animation times relative to actual cast times that have always been and issue but have become more prevalent. At that point, the weave, becomes more of a just pressing the buttons to refresh the dots and cast skills thing similar to most other MMO's with each button press including both a skill and a light attack all nicely optimally canceled. What I am saying is that making the game harder by making it more difficult to properly time and cast skills by having deceiving animations and difficult finger gymnastics is maybe not the best way of promoting a challenge.

This, in a nutshell, is why I think Morrowind combat is significantly less fun than pre-morrowind combat.

Hopefully this is fixed before it goes out to the consoles. Posting a condensed version of this in the bug forums may be helpful as well, though I would leave out the heavy attacks not nerfed assumption. The devs can determine that when they are looking at their own data.

_WAter_

Elsterchen

@f047ys3v3n
Just on a sidenote: It seems that reporting a problem isn't enough anymore, if you like this fixed you should not only include a video of it, but a detailed desciption on how to reproduce it. ... And yes, I think your description of the problem is pretty accurate, but given the ignorance of the topic by ZOS-mods, I assume they didn't understand it, or at least weren't able to carry out a light, a medium and a heavy attack on a sparring doll, or compare the resulting numbers, or test a 1.8ms heavy attack and compare the ressource return and damage to a full-heavy attack. Either way, may they need the information in more... suitable... bites. (And don't look at me like that, how am I supposed to know what "suitable" looks like, as said, I think your arguments are pretty straight forward.

I have no idea, when ZOS decided to change their feedback-/Bug report-policy to these requirements, as no-one seemed to have been thinking about informing the player base about it, too, but @ZOS_GinaBruno's reply to this post (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/352683/unable-to-resurrect-player-ive-managed-to-reproduce-the-bug#latest) indicates the new policy beeing in place.

You are welcome.

Elsterchen

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

This mechanic (heavy attack) is used by every player, yet its now 1 month without a single note from you or a DEV on wether this is intended (no scaling of heavy attacks), not intended (it should scale but you cannot figure out how to make it work), unintentional but bugged (you do not understand the problem), intentional "bc of" (unintentional behavior, but you are not interested in fixing).

I feel this issue and wether or not you intend to change something should be communicated with the playerbase.

Responds are welcome.

f047ys3v3n

Elsterchen wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

This mechanic (heavy attack) is used by every player, yet its now 1 month without a single note from you or a DEV on wether this is intended (no scaling of heavy attacks), not intended (it should scale but you cannot figure out how to make it work), unintentional but bugged (you do not understand the problem), intentional "bc of" (unintentional behavior, but you are not interested in fixing).

I feel this issue and wether or not you intend to change something should be communicated with the playerbase.

Responds are welcome.

You would think that they would have something to say about it given that it appears that:

1) Their reduction of heavy attack damage to compensate for resource return effects only partially charged heavies that return no resources.

2) Their reduction of duration for a fully charged heavy attack did not include a reduction in damage effectively buffing fully charged heavy attack damage per second instead of nerfing it as stated.

3) Neither this latest, nor past, reductions in full heavy attack charge time were accompanied by any animation scaling such that a heavy attack now launches itself automatically at 2.2 seconds but gains no additional damage from just over 1.6 seconds onward.

It is, in short, a counter-intuitive mess and as you mentioned, effects everyone due to their complete insistence on fully charged heavies as the only functional resource management strategy. I continue to be deeply unsatisfied with the results that this plot of attack duration has on combat. Changes need to be made. I suggest the plot below in which partially charged heavies return partial resources, damage for a full attack is brought back on the linearly scaling line with other heavy attacks, and, importantly, the animation is rescaled to the proper duration.



In this suggested scenario, both resource return and damage scale linearly with charge time such that resource management could be handled dynamically by varying the length of charge depending on damage needs and resource status. Furthermore, a full heavy that had to be interrupted to block or dodge a mechanic would no longer be a total loss. This scenario also eliminates the brutal punishments for a light that goes a little too long or a full heavy that comes up short. Lastly, it preserves the clear desire of ZOS to lower casts / second and require some player block downtime that were presumably the reason for the changes with an eye to PVP server load and PVP combat goals.

Here is too hoping they address this mess soon. Their PVE raiding community has certainly seen a massive decline due to the unpopularity of the required left mouse button holding.