PTS Patch Notes v3.1.0

Turelus

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

General

• In an effort to reduce the visual effect noise in group combat situations, we’ve hidden most visual effects from persistent damaging area of effect abilities cast by your allies. Area of effect abilities that have a synergy, healing, or defensive component that can benefit you will still be visible, and area of effect abilities cast by enemies will also still be visible.
  • Affected player abilities include the following:
    • Ash Cloud and its morphs
    • Path of Darkness and the Twisting Path morph
    • Volatile Familiar Special Ability
    • Hurricane
    • Rune Focus and its morphs
    • Impaling Shards and its morphs
    • Volley and its morphs
    • Wall of Elements and its morphs
    • Elemental Storm and its morphs
    • Caltrops and its morphs
  • Affected Item Set abilities include the following:
    • Bahraha’s Curse
    • Essence Thief
    • Grothdarr
    • Hand of Mephala
    • Ilambris
    • Infernal Guardian
    • Leeching Plate
    • Nerien’eth
    • Sellistrix
    • Sheer Venom
    • Storm Knight’s Plate
    • Thunderbug’s Carapace
    • Tremorscale
    • Velidreth
    • Winterborn
    
    Developer Comments:
    Having less visual effects on your screen improves both visual clarity and performance, which makes it easier to respond to the more important visuals that come from enemy attacks.

Is there any way we can have this as a toggle option rather than an outright enforced change?

I understand where you're going with this but myself and others in guilds I am in have expressed how they're not fans of losing this.
I personally like to see what effects are going off from my allies and haven't had trouble seeing any of the required indicators.

As a former raid leader in PvP I can especially see this as an issue there because seeing when procs or other effects are going off does help you consider charges and attacks as well as being able to lure enemies back towards an allies AoE. Knowing I will be safer stood within my allies Grothdar for example if they're too busy to bring it to me.

Hopefully this is something which can be considered?

Bobby_V_Rockit

So what does a the sharpened trait drop to on a 1h weapn?

sneakymitchell

Slim-craw crit is nice should had been there in the first place. We haven't got a monster set for crit except iceheart but mostly for stam users. Heavy armor will have a nice crit increase with different set bonuses. Players in medium and light could figured out what's the best crit they wanted around and they can use the warrior or the apprentice mundus. Also serpent or attronach mundus. Like the developer note set improvement to overall "diversity". But sooner or later hybrid builds for pve DPS needs loving for players to "choose what they want" for their play style

sneakymitchell

Turelus wrote: »

Why are there so many happy posts... WTF ARE YOU DOING ZOS I NEED MY RAGE THREADS TO TROLL!?!?!

"Diversity"= happiness "No change or nerfs"= rage posts

Magıc

Loving the sharpened/defending changes. A lot of diversity should come into builds now (hopefully).

Enodoc

Oliviander wrote: »

Many changes might be good but this is a real Baaad decision,
if not a gamebreaker:

Renamed “Crafting Motif 1: Altmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 1: High Elf Style”.
Renamed “Crafting Motif 2: Dunmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 2: Dark Elf Style”.

Indeed... ZOS, stop Imperializing everything! It's no wonder the Thalmor get hacked off at the Empire, they're losing their cultural identity!

adriant1978

Enodoc wrote: »

Oliviander wrote: »

Many changes might be good but this is a real Baaad decision,
if not a gamebreaker:

Renamed “Crafting Motif 1: Altmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 1: High Elf Style”.
Renamed “Crafting Motif 2: Dunmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 2: Dark Elf Style”.

Indeed... ZOS, stop Imperializing everything! It's no wonder the Thalmor get hacked off at the Empire, they're losing their cultural identity!

I seem to remember that they were named this way at launch, then got changed to "Altmer" and "Dunmer", and are now being changed back.

tunepunk

Interesting changes!!! Can't wait to try it out. Lot's of new combos to try. Hopefully there will be a lot more build diversity with these changes. Good Job!

Morvane

So now I can live real life instead of farming Sharpened weapons

Asayre

Joy_Division wrote: »

I havent been able to write this since the 1.5 Patch, but I must admit I am impressed with the majority of what I see here.

Anyone bemoaning the nerfs to sharpened and defending is only interested in maintaining their best in slot status and not adding legitimate diversity to the game. I still think since this is all quantified, people like @Asayre will eventually figure out what is best, but at least there does appear to be options and the gap is not quite as large.

Selene's did not need I nerf, I play magicka and never used this and do not have a problem with my opponent's using it. Skoria didn't need a nerf either. I wish the "nerf X" crowd would just be quiet and understand that just because something does not suit their preferred playstyle, doesnt mean it needs a nerf.

I must infer from this patch (and the last year's worth of patches) that ZoS is generally satisfied with classes and skilllines since there have been so few changes in these areas. This is the one respect where I do not agree (although I do think the relative balance between the classes is acceptable).

Most of the other notes I feel represent a solid foundation that can be tweaked enough during the PTS process to improve the game.

Did you want something like this...

Lover(6.1%) > Thief(4.7%) > Shadow(4.4%) > Apprentice(4.41%) > Mage(3.5%)

Damage increase compared to no mundus shown in parenthesis

Thief, Shadow, Apprentice and Mage seem decently balance. The error in my estimates probably makes the variance even smaller but it seems Lover is slightly preferred.

Initial estimates for weapon traits are

Sharpened(6.1%) > Infused(4.8%) > Precise(4.7%) > Nirnhoned(3.5%)

Damage increase compared to no trait shown in parenthesis

Again decently balanced except for Sharpened.

By the way, standardisation of Mundus and Trait values made it such that Sharpened = Lover and Precise = Thief so saved a few calculations there. The 3.5% for Nirnhoned and Mage is a coincidence.

I postulate that Sharpened and Lover are slightly overperforming to make the gap between low coordination and high coordination groups smaller. You would presumably get more debuffs in organised groups thus increasing the likelihood that you reach the penetration cap and no benefiting fully from Sharpened/Lover.

Calculation details

PrinceShroob

Enodoc wrote: »

Oliviander wrote: »

Many changes might be good but this is a real Baaad decision,
if not a gamebreaker:

Renamed “Crafting Motif 1: Altmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 1: High Elf Style”.
Renamed “Crafting Motif 2: Dunmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 2: Dark Elf Style”.

Indeed... ZOS, stop Imperializing everything! It's no wonder the Thalmor get hacked off at the Empire, they're losing their cultural identity!

Elven races have been identified as "High Elf," "Dark Elf," and "Wood Elf" in menu descriptions and editor IDs since Arena.

Enodoc

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Oliviander wrote: »

Many changes might be good but this is a real Baaad decision,
if not a gamebreaker:

Renamed “Crafting Motif 1: Altmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 1: High Elf Style”.
Renamed “Crafting Motif 2: Dunmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 2: Dark Elf Style”.

Indeed... ZOS, stop Imperializing everything! It's no wonder the Thalmor get hacked off at the Empire, they're losing their cultural identity!

Elven races have been identified as "High Elf," "Dark Elf," and "Wood Elf" in menu descriptions and editor IDs since Arena.

That's true, but not relevant. This is a lore thing, not a mechanic, and that's what I was commenting on. And lorewise, this change makes some sense anyway since Alfida Lupus is Imperial. But up until now, she did appear to have a degree of cultural diversity in her writings, which has now been taken away.

PrinceShroob

Enodoc wrote: »

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Oliviander wrote: »

Many changes might be good but this is a real Baaad decision,
if not a gamebreaker:

Renamed “Crafting Motif 1: Altmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 1: High Elf Style”.
Renamed “Crafting Motif 2: Dunmer Style” to “Crafting Motif 2: Dark Elf Style”.

Indeed... ZOS, stop Imperializing everything! It's no wonder the Thalmor get hacked off at the Empire, they're losing their cultural identity!

Elven races have been identified as "High Elf," "Dark Elf," and "Wood Elf" in menu descriptions and editor IDs since Arena.

That's true, but not relevant. This is a lore thing, not a mechanic, and that's what I was commenting on. And lorewise, this change makes some sense anyway since Alfida Lupus is Imperial. But up until now, she did appear to have a degree of cultural diversity in her writings, which has now been taken away.

But the change wasn't made for lore purposes. It was made for consistency with the names of other motifs, such as ancient elf. Lupus' books are titled "Crafting Motifs 1: The High Elves" and so on. And she tends to refer to the elves as Altmer, etc. interchangeably with High Elves, etc.

The item name is separate from its content.

Mystrius_Archaion

BigES wrote: »

Its totally reasonable for another player to say "I don't care about min/maxing and working to farm this BiS item". But also, its simultaneously fine for me to say "Yes, Im highly (overly) competitive and I want the best possible item, and I'm willing to analyze and spend entirely too much time getting that ideal set up". Its what I enjoy doing, and so do most other competitive players. But you farm that item with some level of expectation that its rank order relative to other traits will remain the same. As a BiS item.

1) Now you get to do more of that analyzing and spending time getting setup that you supposedly enjoy but are complaining about.

2) Nothing EVER stays the same in any MMO....EVER.
Expect change and expect new BiS as new dungeons release new sets and the level cap gets raised and the people who farm that BiS find out that it is BiS because it breaks the intended design of the game so that they have to nerf it to not be BiS.

This is what you always ask for when you want "new rewarding content" and "a reason to do things".

3) Of course they want equal proportions of everything since everything stems from one number: "damage per second". Even health and defense is just a measure of the amount of damage per second you can take.
They just added fake complexity so they need to keep it "complex" by making sure people can't easily decide which is best. They NEED to do this because this is what they cornered themselves into doing with the initial design choice we are all accustomed to.



I'm here for the world and "playing dress-up" with my characters and actually enjoying being entertained, not for working and competing in a competition that doesn't matter and will be inevitably invalidated when the game dies due to either loss of popularity or being so broken that it no longer works on most PCs out there.
I don't know why developers bother trying to appeal to the least common of player types, when the majority are alienated, and it is obviously going to cause them lower revenue and less predictable employment. Learn from the past and other's mistakes already.

rk110132

amazing changes @ZOS_GinaBruno love this game u just made everything really well balanced less grinding for gear thats exactly how a game should be thanks for the awesome changes this patch

rk110132

Stamicka wrote: »

I think these changes are great. Trait rebalancing was much needed as farming PVE content for literally 1 viable trait was ridiculous and time consuming. Also the proc changes are great... I love that there is counterplay against these now. Each patch was requiring less and less skill to do well (especially Morrowind) but it seems like you are taking a step in the right direction. However, there are a few things that still need to be changed. Mainly the fact that these drastic changes happen so suddenly.

1. Each one of your updates has been game changing, creating a new Meta and making old gear/builds useless. Especially for pvpers. I am mostly a pvp player and farming gear in the right traits and making them gold to be as competitive as possible is very expensive and time consuming. After this process is done I can have a decent pvp or dueling experience... for a month or so. After that the game has changed so much that my build isn't really viable anymore. This is very discouraging and annoying, not to mention class changes on top of this which make me have to drastically change my Playstyle. Obviously some of these changes are needed but it's very inconvenient to deal with and I'm sure many people would agree. I think you should incorporate more ways to cope with drastic changes. One way is to make these changes more gradual... not just every few months.. however this way not be realistic since a lot of work would be required to update the game frequently. Another option is to change the drop rates on items you know will be desirable (turn having to run maelstrom 300+ times to a much more tolerable number) or introduce a token or trait exchange system. That way when traits are changed it won't take an eternity to get BIS gear. On top of one of these changes I would suggest keeping changes to class defining skills and passives to a minimum, unlike you did in Morrowind.


2. Raise the skill floor a little bit more please. Morrowind did the total opposite of this and I honestly think some changes need to be reverted. The proc changes are a step in the right direction but there's still work to be done. Currently on live you can hit 35k+ DPS by holding right trigger (im on Xbox) for 75% of the time with a heavy attack build. This is not skillful gameplay at all... not to mention in pvp you can outsustain medium or light armor users in a heavy armor build centered around heavy attacks. This is of course a side effect from the over the top sustain nerfs. I think that the morrowind CP changes were good, but I think you should have added to the reduce cost percentage passives of light and medium armor instead of lowering them. I also think that some of the class sustaining passives that were nerfed should be reverted, or the magnitude at which they were nerfed should be reduced. Instead make sustain still a challenge, but center it around light attack weaving which is considerably harder than heavy attack builds.

With these changes I think the game would be near perfect

I think the changes are good and the heavy attack builds will help players who were not good enough before so overall its amazing change like not having to grind bis gear so much the mundus stones changes are pretty good they did a good job balancing the game

IwakuraLain42

Hymzir wrote: »

And speaking of de-motivating grinds...

New Furnishings
A number of new recipes and furnishings have been added to the game, obtainable by participating in various activity throughout the world. These include, but are not limited to, harvesting certain types of nodes or in certain areas, participating in Justice and defeating enemies in the new Horns of the Reach dungeons, Coldharbour, and Ayleid Ruins.

I'm a housing guy. I like setting up home in all the games I play that allow it. I am mostly happy with homestead and am dreaming of what kind of home system will be in Elder Scrolls 6. With the one if Fallout 4 and the system in ESO - the future looks promising as far as virtual home building goes.

But it is a despicable grind in ESO. One that I am having really dark thoughts about. Really dark. Like physically hurting the people who designed it dark. The kind that makes me feel very uncomfortable for having such thoughts. And making me think that I really should be using my time in playing something more rewarding and less depressing. The amount of grind that is required by the system is inhumane.

And with Morrowind things took a turn to even darker territories. I too, like many others, were blown away by the new furnishing models brought on by Morrowind and they were a key factor for me in deciding to get the bloody expansion. But the drop rates for the stuff is abysmal. It is so hard to get them that I have kissed goodbye to my plans on having a Morrowind style furnished home.

And then there are the Dwemer things that require atrocious amounts of dwemer frames. Each which requires ten fairly rare themselves. A simple dwemer bucket requires 60 frigging rare drops from dwemer type mobs to make. That is nuts. So you can guess what happened to my idea on having a dwemer type house set up... Yeah, that's gone too. Will not bother with that crap.

And now you are introducing more of the same? I really hope not. Sounds like Ayleid ruins will offer Ayleid furnishing stuff which is cool - especially since one of my hopes was to be able to set up an Ayleid style home at some point. But if the grind is equal to getting Morrowidn style furnishing plans, and if they require similar amounts of rare drops that Dwemer stuff does... Well *** it is my answer. Will not do it, will not care, will not play. End of discussion.

Picking out this piece because it so much expresses how I feel about the housing changes since Morrowind. I loved the introduction in Homestead and the way it was setup that you actually had a fair chance to collect the blueprints over time. With the release of Morrowind I was looking forward to buy one of the new houses and craft new furniture in the new styles. But the drop chances for the new styles is so abysmal low that I hardly gotten a handful of the new motifs since release. This is so demotivating that I actually stopped farming them. And I don't think the new styles will have a better chance. ZOS really dropped the ball here.

Universe

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Homes

• Furniture can now be picked up normally without having to use the retrieve option for the Strident Springs Demise home.

Strident Springs Demesne ?

The Uninvited

This just might be the best balance patch so far. Finally adjustments for PVP without PVE suffering too much!

Bobby_V_Rockit

So long as Spriggan's Thorns remains near BiS I dont care what else happens lol

Pele

Changes looks good. +1

BigES wrote: »

Your game is on the brink of failure.

Source please.

Koensol

Azramel wrote: »

Koensol wrote: »

@Azramel Sheer venom is anything but underpowered. You just don't know how to use it. Combine it with double dot poison and poison injection on a charged bow (extra poison application) and it applies a ton of pressure to people in pvp. I can just fire a heavy attack+poison injection, about 2-3 light attacks. Then everything procs, target is already at 60% health. Switch bars, ambush, fear and hammer away. It is so much pressure most people cannot handle it.

No, your over-estimating the set. You can easily do all that without sheer venom. Next time you use it, look at how much damage it reads. I got the tooltip up to 12k over 6 seconds and it ticks for around 500-600 damage per second on a single target and can be blocked reducing it down to 200-300 per second. The stamina and 2 weapon damage bonuses are nice but hardly justify the 5 piece set bonus. Btw, I watched the video. Nice burst but the dot from sheer venom was negligible. All that pressure will still be there with just poison inject and double poisons. You'll get higher dps with that build if your swap sheer venom for spriggan.

@Azramel I tried it too with spriggan. The point is not just the damage from sheer venom. It is the fact that you combine it with other dots and that the uptime is basically 100%. This build gives me both the chance to burst down opponents AND it gives me sustained dps against tanky builds. It's a lot of preasure in 6 seconds. Its a versatile and mobile build and the most powerfull thing about it is that when people realize "hey im taking a lot of dmg" im already in your face with fear and the dots are still ticking. In duels it is OP as hell. People have to constantly block, or heal. So they spend resources on defence more than they'd like.

Spriggan would give more burst, which is nice. But it would make it a more niche setup. Now I can do morw dmg from ranged and have more of a guaranteed kill when I go in.

SlowMetabolism

Has anyone tested the change to nirnhoned and sharpened. Does nirnhoned out perform sharpened or is it atleast on par with it now? Really happy to see trait changes regardless. 100+ maelstrom runs and have never gotten a sharpened 2h or sharpened fire staff. Over 20 defending and nirnhoned 2h's and 1 nirnhoned fire staff.

Tyrion87

For now I will refrain from commenting on changes related to mundus and traits rebalance since it just needs some testing and math calculations. BUT I do really hope that people, who won over the awful rng in this game and got their sharp weapons / divines gear after hundreds of hours of farming, will NOT get screwed with these changes.

What I love are the changes to animations casted by allies. My fps thank you for that.

What I deteste are the nerfs to all DLC dungeons. Why Zeni, why? So when you actually said on the last ESO live that new dungeons will be on pair with SotH ones in terms of difficulty, you meant them after these nerfs? If so, I'm not so hyped about the new dungeons anymore.

And also a nerf to the first boss in vCoA2? Come on...

Rev Rielle

Turelus wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

General

• In an effort to reduce the visual effect noise in group combat situations, we’ve hidden most visual effects from persistent damaging area of effect abilities cast by your allies. Area of effect abilities that have a synergy, healing, or defensive component that can benefit you will still be visible, and area of effect abilities cast by enemies will also still be visible.
  • Affected player abilities include the following:
    • Ash Cloud and its morphs
    • Path of Darkness and the Twisting Path morph
    • Volatile Familiar Special Ability
    • Hurricane
    • Rune Focus and its morphs
    • Impaling Shards and its morphs
    • Volley and its morphs
    • Wall of Elements and its morphs
    • Elemental Storm and its morphs
    • Caltrops and its morphs
  • Affected Item Set abilities include the following:
    • Bahraha’s Curse
    • Essence Thief
    • Grothdarr
    • Hand of Mephala
    • Ilambris
    • Infernal Guardian
    • Leeching Plate
    • Nerien’eth
    • Sellistrix
    • Sheer Venom
    • Storm Knight’s Plate
    • Thunderbug’s Carapace
    • Tremorscale
    • Velidreth
    • Winterborn
    
    Developer Comments:
    Having less visual effects on your screen improves both visual clarity and performance, which makes it easier to respond to the more important visuals that come from enemy attacks.

Is there any way we can have this as a toggle option rather than an outright enforced change?

I understand where you're going with this but myself and others in guilds I am in have expressed how they're not fans of losing this.
I personally like to see what effects are going off from my allies and haven't had trouble seeing any of the required indicators.

As a former raid leader in PvP I can especially see this as an issue there because seeing when procs or other effects are going off does help you consider charges and attacks as well as being able to lure enemies back towards an allies AoE. Knowing I will be safer stood within my allies Grothdar for example if they're too busy to bring it to me.

Hopefully this is something which can be considered?

I agree, a toggle would be nice.
I know there are times - with certain friends - where they drop so many light shows around that I'm basically blinded - but others where it isn't a problem at all. Having the option to alter the cognitive load on screen via a toggle would be handy.

TheeDopestDope

Astrid_V wrote: »

Sharpened trait nerfed by nearly a half, still no token system, what about all these people who farmed like crazy their sharpened weapons ZOS? Why are you spit on your players once again? I'm done.

How is it their fault you out all your time into farming a few and not going about doing other things. Could have farmed master writs, much more lucrative. Its not secret knowledge that balance changes were coming, obviously the most widely used and most beneficial weapon trait that is better than all other for dps, is gonna get nerfed.

These balance changes should reduce farm times, items will average out in prices eventually. More traits become viable in different builds. So you no longer will have to kill WBs over and over and over for that ONE drop thatll fetch you 100k or so and balances it so that you might do half the amount of WBs, get several weapons with preffered traits and sell them between10k to 20k, if not more. Easily netting 200k plus.

Sure it sucks the time and money we all put into farming dungeons and trials for that sharpened VO dagger set is, not wasted but more like reduced in value of time. They will still be good weapons, theyre not trash, and we all know they have served you well in current gameplay.

So please if you feel like a more fair and balanced game that will ultimately benefit every player is 'getting spit on' then please just go find another game to waste your time on. While youre at maybe grow up a bit too, yah?

By far the most exciting and anticipated balance and improvement of quality to the game I have seen yet. Not to mention the additions in DLC are the best part of this whole update.

Get use to change kid, its an MMO that is constantly adding to its content. This *** happens, itll always happen, dont like it? Then consider not playing MMOs.

Jamascus

Get rid of proc sets, the nerfs for them didn't go far enough.

Hammy01

@ZOS_GinaBruno , any word yet on fixing the Lantern of Anguish? At some point someone changed this from a cool red glow to a ball of fire. In my opinion both look cool and have different uses so it would be nice if when dimmed if gives off the old animation and when turned on it gives the new animation.

Also why is there no fix mentioned about the Breton Carpet bordered and the Breton runner bordered recipes? This is something ZOS had achknowledged back in March of this year and still no fix. As it stands now if you purchase the Breton Carpet bordered recipe it will only craft the Breton Runner bordered and vise versa!

Thanks in advance!

Bobby_V_Rockit

Trying to figure out:

Thief mundus reduced from 11% to 9%, but 2-3-4 piece crit chance bonuses increased by 55%... if I am at 77.5% crit chance now with 6 peices legendary divines, and a total of 2752 worth of set bonuses...

How much crit chance will we end up with?! Going to be a speculative month lol.

maboleth

In an effort to reduce the visual effect noise in group combat situations, we’ve hidden most visual effects from persistent damaging area of effect abilities cast by your allies. Area of effect abilities that have a synergy, healing, or defensive component that can benefit you will still be visible, and area of effect abilities cast by enemies will also still be visible.

Can someone please explain this to me? What are we going to see?