PTS Patch Notes v3.1.0

SwaminoNowlino · July 2017

NBrookus wrote: »

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

So people who care about having their character as powerful as possible spent the time, often hours or days farming these items. You can dismiss these people as stupid or wrong, but their opinion and playstyle is absolutely no less valuable than yours. ZOS could literally take away all weapons and items and a large number of people would still be perfectly fine with their roleplaying and questing. In this particular case however, these people who spent time battling the RNG gods (despite pleading for a token system or at least not having training drop on end game gear) have, in-arguably, a sizable investment in the game.

The devs just did something that massively decreased the amount of grind time needed to create strong gear combinations. This is to be applauded, not lambasted. There will no doubt mathematically be a "best" combo and those 1% that ran VMA 1000 times for that sharp inferno will feel the need to grind for the mathematical best again.

But somewhere between the metaphorical 1% and the casuals who play with whatever gear they loot are a whole lot of people that don't want to run X dungeon hundreds of times to finally get a set weapon... and it's a garbage trait.

I still want crafters to be able to change traits, but this is a big step in the right direction to nerf the RNG gods.

I'm not sure I understand your point. I ran VMA countless times trying to get two sharpened one-handed weapons. I got one and a nirnhoned, and decided that there was little value to me of running it 100 more times to get another sharpened. This is fine for me, and probably a large number of players. But there are certainly those folks who want the best, and make no mistake, there is always a best. All they really did was adjust the margins so it wasn't the best by a mile anymore. Which is fine for those who, like me, don't perceive that value to be high enough to warrant more runs. But for those who do care, this does nothing for them, and at least from my anecdotal experience, it royally peeves them off. My point is that they're as justified in being annoyed by this sudden change after a year of the status quo as anyone else is at being happy about it.

If the point was to reduce the grind, this again does very little. A token system is all that is needed and folks have been begging for that forever. I doubt that's why they made the change, but then again maybe. It doesn't really matter. I just get sick of certain folks dismissing legitimate complaints because "they're just a min/maxer," or "they just complain because it killed them in PvP."

Lets put it this way, in real world terms. Say you're an architect, and there's one type of steel that is far and away better than all the others, but it comes at a premium. So you order that steel for your skyscraper, and you pay the premium because it is that much better. Then, right after you pay for it, the manufacturer decides it over performs, and adjusts it. So you've now wasted a lot of investment. Except in real life, you can get your money back, but in gaming terms, those are hours of your life that you valued that item highly enough to invest in, but then gets changed without your input. Maybe not the best metaphor, but you get the point.

Sharpened always needed adjusted, everyone pretty unanimously agrees on that. But its the fact that it was fine (to the dev team) for a year, and then changed. Especially on something that's as soul-sucking as grinding in ESO. Like I said, it doesn't really impact me, but I see the point of those who it angers.

elven.were_wolf · July 2017

Awesome natch potes!

There's just one thing that bothers me that probably doesn't effect anyone else.
Can't the gold furnishing plans for the Master Writ Merchant stay?
I'm farming writs on my characters daily and my main is a master crafter with only a few motifs missing, yet I never managed all these months to rack up enough writ vouchers to purchase the gold plans I wanted such as the Poison-maker's Cabinet.
Please reconsider guys!
@ZOS_GinaBruno

Hammy01 · July 2017

mzdarsky wrote: »

SeventhLetter wrote: »

): nerf sharpened, nerf thief and nerf half the monster helms... what about all the people who did vMA farming for a sharp inferno or lightning for it to now be useless.. i feel as if you want everyone to just stop playing >;_;> because changes went so deep when morrowind dropped and now even more changes... it's already took several players to get there stuff together now again.. it's just getting more dull after a while with all these nerfs making the game meh nowadays.

debating if i'm done or not but all those times in vMA q-q i don't know...
i would prefer the stones [ Thief, Atro, and Lover to remain the same. Also sharpened and defending shouldn't get a nerf.. (( the other stones are meh.))

I disagree with you 100%. You basically stated the entire problem. People farming only to get sharpened or defending. Well now that it's nerfed there are other traits viable for different builds. Maybe only nerfed to 3k, but either way I was super sick of just farming for one trait and deconing everything else. It makes it more exciting now when you get a drop you could figure out a way to work it in your build. Also with some of these crazy tank builds I feel defending was causing more of a problem than sharpened. So I am glad.

I agree with you and I think ZOS did the right thing (maybe cut a little to deep but that can always be adjusted). People have complained constantly about having to farm for Sharpened weapons and how the other traits were useless, well now ZOS fixed that issue and in doing so made the game more enjoyable for a bigger portion of the player base. Besides Sharpened is not completely worthless... its just no longer heads and tails better than anything else. People have options now and that is a good thing for this game!

Gan Xing · July 2017

Still no changes to Ice Furnace set. Just because I farmed it and have it sitting in my bank, doesn't mean I have any intention of using it atm. It needs to be changed so that I can use it with more frost abilities than that of the frost staff. With the Warden, it only procs off of one ability (and that isn't a guarantee).

argouru · July 2017

IwakuraLain42 wrote: »

maboleth wrote: »

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?

You will no longer see the Wall of Element or Grothdar procs from fellow players (PvE only) for example. A very welcome change as it makes it easier to see telegraphs, especially as a tank.

Are they still visible to the player who casts them, though?

BigES · July 2017

Joy_Division wrote: »

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

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

Thank you for the insight. We are fortunate to have folks such as yourself who actually analyze this stuff rather than take the perceptive that since they already farmed an Overpowered BIS item, the status quo should be preserved.

@BigES - All you had to do was something like this.

Ignoring the habitual "everyone's opinion outside of my own is worthless" typical direction. Let's have an honest discussion about this.

@Asayre is a god amongst men. Praise be to him that provides us with all of this knowledge. Seriously, thanks and props for still being around. Been seeing you less and less. (Though you only evaluated damage, which in terms of this discussion the advantage of sharpened probably no longer outweighs the other benefits of nirnhoned in terms of healing, maybe). <- assuming gender is wrong

@Joy_Division you're entitled to your opinion the same way that @BigES is entitled to his. You have some valid points, but that doesn't invalidate everything he said just because you take a dismissive haughty attitude.

Everyone pointed out how OP sharpened was when they made that change. People asked for it to be balanced on the initial PTS and ever since. ZOS did nothing about it, nor did they even comment on it. Therefore people assumed (yeah yeah enter assume joke here) that it was intended to be the most desirable trait. Every MMO I've ever participated in has had at least 1 or two absolute BIS items that are the most coveted available. WoW, Diablo, Destiny, all of them.

So people who care about having their character as powerful as possible spent the time, often hours or days farming these items. You can dismiss these people as stupid or wrong, but their opinion and playstyle is absolutely no less valuable than yours. ZOS could literally take away all weapons and items and a large number of people would still be perfectly fine with their roleplaying and questing. In this particular case however, these people who spent time battling the RNG gods (despite pleading for a token system or at least not having training drop on end game gear) have, in-arguably, a sizable investment in the game. This is often rewarding for ZOS, as these people who feel this level of commitment are also more likely to invest actual money in the game. So an argument could be made that their desires maybe should outweigh the player who shows up every month or so. But that's a different and subjective discussion.

What doesn't happen in those other MMO's is massive, sweeping changes irrespective of community input or discussion. Say what you want about Blizzard, but they are transparent as hell about that stuff. That's the overall complaint that I see on these forums and in my discussions with my guildmates. Some people want their character to be maxed. That's actually not that uncommon, despite the number of people making sweeping comments about them being the minority without any proof. These players get tired of having to completely redo a build, or refarm 2 year old content (that they spent hours/days in) to get an item that may be rendered completely useless 3 months from now at the whims of the combat team who operate in a complete black box. After a certain point, it becomes disheartening. I know three players who have spent hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars on this game, who unsubbed after reading the patch notes yesterday, because they're tired of farming instead of doing the content they enjoy (battlegrounds and cyrodiil).

Yes, MMOs change. Balance changes happen. BiS changes (usually very gradually, and the item itself usually doesn't, its level just does) over time. What doesn't happen in those games is the community pointing out that something is way overpowered, the dev team leaves it alone for over a year while ignoring all feedback, and then nerf it massively. (Before you come at me for being a min/maxer, my build hasn't changed since Thieves Guild and its still hella powerful).

TLDR: The issue expressed by @BigES and many others that is being dismissed out of hand with a haughty attitude can largely be boiled down to perpetual frustration with ZOS, which is they don't actually communicate with us. Key word is communicate, which is a two way transfer of information. If they'd keep an open dialogue about stuff like trait performance, people wouldn't be caught off guard having invested a million gold or so for sharpened war maiden swords, which came out on console almost a month ago exactly.

Again, this isn't an issue for me personally. But just because you have a different playstyle than someone else doesn't mean their complaint is invalid.

@SwaminoNowlino

A couple of things here.

If people assume - your word - that ZoS intended for something to be BiS without any evidence or source from ZoS that is their fault. Given the large discrepancies in power among gear sets, morph choices and the fact they ZoS keeps trying to buff stuff like Maw of the Guardian and Templar skill like Healing ritual to make them useful or desirable and they continually fail to do something makes anything ZoS intends highly suspect to begin with.

You are going to call me out for being having a "dismissive haughty attitude" while people such as BigES are far more dismissive - without offering any actual evidence, says the game is on the brink of failure, and threatens to quit if he doesn't get his way ... and you're writing an essay how I should be more understanding of his grievances? I have written many posts on these forums in which the issues I raise examine ALL sides of an issue and the proposals I come up with attempt to satisfy ALL parties. I think I have amply demonstrated that I am understanding of perspectives not my own thank you very much.

I do not dismiss people who farm for hours a day for BiS gear as stupid or wrong. I do question their motivation when they come onto these forums, threaten to maintain the status quo or quit with ZERO analysis. That is the worst form of feedback. It's baseless speculation that is selfishly motivated. Such posts deserve to be called out, especially since this patch ZoS at least made an effort to re-balance this stuff without a sweeping nerf. If sharpened is indeed trash, then demonstrate that with proof, evidence, gameplay footage, math, DPS parses, something. That standard is not asking to much and holding people to it is not dismissing them as stupid or wrong.

Every time I had an issue with ZoS changes, I have always demonstrated with evidence why I think their changes are short sighted or will negatively effect balance. Always, with math, screenshots, DPS parses, videos, quotes form developers.

I'll just continue to dismiss your personal attacks because its clear you want a directed and constructive conversation.

Its fine if you want to question my motives. But I think I've been pretty transparent. I invested a lot of time farming several gear sets for traits that optimized my build. I weighed the cost of my time compared to the benefit I would receive from getting that optimal item. This is pretty straightforward cost-benefit analysis.

Now the benefit side of the equation has suddenly changed. Precise, Infused, Sharpened... they marginally equivalent. If it were like this, and I just picked up Morrowind, sweet! But how many new players do you think actually give a damn about this optimization stuff? Maybe a few. But probably not many. How many long-term players care about their time investment now becoming an irrelevant decision? Probably a lot. Maybe I'm wrong. I know what camp I'm in. And I know what camp several other posters in this thread are in. But their opinions are selfishly motivated, right? And you're here to save us from our opinions.

RE: the game hemorrhaging players. Sure, I guess I'm speculating. Maybe the game is a thriving metropolis and is growing exponentially by the minute.

Sharlikran · July 2017

In regards to the Thief Mundus Stone. It seemed like my Spell Crit with the reduction in percentage to the Mundis Stone wouldn't be significant. I don't have an optimal build, nor do I prefer cookie cutter builds. Ostensibly I play for fun so while I do good/okay DPS I don't do [insert DPS standard here]. I have never had trouble doing any Normal or Vet content even in DLC dungeons like Runis of Mazzatun.

I have a Divines/The Thief build now and I noticed that when I replaced the Thief with any random Mundis stone, I ended up with 36.7% Spell Crit. Even with the reduction I'm not going to change my current setup. Why would I want to do that?

I am CP 334 currently. On the live server I have 51.4% Spell Crit at the moment, and after installing the PTS I logged into it with everything the same to find I now have 50.1% Spell Crit. A reduction of 1.3% which is disappointing but not worth all the comments I am reading that the game is basically unplayable because of the unnecessary reductions.

Even if not everyone uses Mage Light I do, and it adds 2191 Spell Crit. Which translates into about 1% = 219 Spell Crit. The patch notes they are saying that Weapon Critical or Spell Critical rating has been increased by 55%. If the weapon had 141 Spell Crit, then 55% of that is 77 so 141+77=218 which is really close to 219. I currently have a Willpower staff and jewelry but there are probably other things I could get that has Spell Crit.

So with all the changes considered it doesn't seem like the reduction is all that significant. Especially since with other gear or weapons I could have the same or possibly more Spell Crit.

To me the change to Prosperous is stupid. If you wanted better XP you used the Training trait, and frankly I never used it. If you wanted more gold for farming you had Prosperous gear. I never did but it seemed like if that's what you wanted to do, then why not. From the CP Passive I get 50% gold bonus from Fortune Seeker for Treasure Chests and Safeboxes. I never had Purple gear with prosperous on so I don't know if you can get 50% more from the trait, can you? If you could receive a 100% bonus, 200g becomes 400g.

EDIT: However, with all the talk about it some guild members say gold farming with Prosperous isn't lucrative because of repair costs. You might be able to make more with Impenetrable.

I played a bit at launch and started playing again a few months ago and I prefer Infused for Helm, Chest, Legs, and then whatever fits for my char. I would never use Training or Prosperous on the live server or the PTS but that doesn't mean they are not useful for those that do want them. Each piece of gear gives 11 regeneration to all attributes. If I use Infused for 3 items that's only 5 pieces of Armor left for 55 total regeneration to all attributes. I just don't see how that is going to be a big boost to things. 55% or 550 regeneration would be useful but 55?

LordSlif · July 2017

BigES wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

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

Thank you for the insight. We are fortunate to have folks such as yourself who actually analyze this stuff rather than take the perceptive that since they already farmed an Overpowered BIS item, the status quo should be preserved.

@BigES - All you had to do was something like this.

Ignoring the habitual "everyone's opinion outside of my own is worthless" typical direction. Let's have an honest discussion about this.

@Asayre is a god amongst men. Praise be to him that provides us with all of this knowledge. Seriously, thanks and props for still being around. Been seeing you less and less. (Though you only evaluated damage, which in terms of this discussion the advantage of sharpened probably no longer outweighs the other benefits of nirnhoned in terms of healing, maybe). <- assuming gender is wrong

@Joy_Division you're entitled to your opinion the same way that @BigES is entitled to his. You have some valid points, but that doesn't invalidate everything he said just because you take a dismissive haughty attitude.

Everyone pointed out how OP sharpened was when they made that change. People asked for it to be balanced on the initial PTS and ever since. ZOS did nothing about it, nor did they even comment on it. Therefore people assumed (yeah yeah enter assume joke here) that it was intended to be the most desirable trait. Every MMO I've ever participated in has had at least 1 or two absolute BIS items that are the most coveted available. WoW, Diablo, Destiny, all of them.

So people who care about having their character as powerful as possible spent the time, often hours or days farming these items. You can dismiss these people as stupid or wrong, but their opinion and playstyle is absolutely no less valuable than yours. ZOS could literally take away all weapons and items and a large number of people would still be perfectly fine with their roleplaying and questing. In this particular case however, these people who spent time battling the RNG gods (despite pleading for a token system or at least not having training drop on end game gear) have, in-arguably, a sizable investment in the game. This is often rewarding for ZOS, as these people who feel this level of commitment are also more likely to invest actual money in the game. So an argument could be made that their desires maybe should outweigh the player who shows up every month or so. But that's a different and subjective discussion.

What doesn't happen in those other MMO's is massive, sweeping changes irrespective of community input or discussion. Say what you want about Blizzard, but they are transparent as hell about that stuff. That's the overall complaint that I see on these forums and in my discussions with my guildmates. Some people want their character to be maxed. That's actually not that uncommon, despite the number of people making sweeping comments about them being the minority without any proof. These players get tired of having to completely redo a build, or refarm 2 year old content (that they spent hours/days in) to get an item that may be rendered completely useless 3 months from now at the whims of the combat team who operate in a complete black box. After a certain point, it becomes disheartening. I know three players who have spent hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars on this game, who unsubbed after reading the patch notes yesterday, because they're tired of farming instead of doing the content they enjoy (battlegrounds and cyrodiil).

Yes, MMOs change. Balance changes happen. BiS changes (usually very gradually, and the item itself usually doesn't, its level just does) over time. What doesn't happen in those games is the community pointing out that something is way overpowered, the dev team leaves it alone for over a year while ignoring all feedback, and then nerf it massively. (Before you come at me for being a min/maxer, my build hasn't changed since Thieves Guild and its still hella powerful).

TLDR: The issue expressed by @BigES and many others that is being dismissed out of hand with a haughty attitude can largely be boiled down to perpetual frustration with ZOS, which is they don't actually communicate with us. Key word is communicate, which is a two way transfer of information. If they'd keep an open dialogue about stuff like trait performance, people wouldn't be caught off guard having invested a million gold or so for sharpened war maiden swords, which came out on console almost a month ago exactly.

Again, this isn't an issue for me personally. But just because you have a different playstyle than someone else doesn't mean their complaint is invalid.

@SwaminoNowlino

A couple of things here.

If people assume - your word - that ZoS intended for something to be BiS without any evidence or source from ZoS that is their fault. Given the large discrepancies in power among gear sets, morph choices and the fact they ZoS keeps trying to buff stuff like Maw of the Guardian and Templar skill like Healing ritual to make them useful or desirable and they continually fail to do something makes anything ZoS intends highly suspect to begin with.

You are going to call me out for being having a "dismissive haughty attitude" while people such as BigES are far more dismissive - without offering any actual evidence, says the game is on the brink of failure, and threatens to quit if he doesn't get his way ... and you're writing an essay how I should be more understanding of his grievances? I have written many posts on these forums in which the issues I raise examine ALL sides of an issue and the proposals I come up with attempt to satisfy ALL parties. I think I have amply demonstrated that I am understanding of perspectives not my own thank you very much.

I do not dismiss people who farm for hours a day for BiS gear as stupid or wrong. I do question their motivation when they come onto these forums, threaten to maintain the status quo or quit with ZERO analysis. That is the worst form of feedback. It's baseless speculation that is selfishly motivated. Such posts deserve to be called out, especially since this patch ZoS at least made an effort to re-balance this stuff without a sweeping nerf. If sharpened is indeed trash, then demonstrate that with proof, evidence, gameplay footage, math, DPS parses, something. That standard is not asking to much and holding people to it is not dismissing them as stupid or wrong.

Every time I had an issue with ZoS changes, I have always demonstrated with evidence why I think their changes are short sighted or will negatively effect balance. Always, with math, screenshots, DPS parses, videos, quotes form developers.

I'll just continue to dismiss your personal attacks because its clear you want a directed and constructive conversation.

Its fine if you want to question my motives. But I think I've been pretty transparent. I invested a lot of time farming several gear sets for traits that optimized my build. I weighed the cost of my time compared to the benefit I would receive from getting that optimal item. This is pretty straightforward cost-benefit analysis.

Now the benefit side of the equation has suddenly changed. Precise, Infused, Sharpened... they marginally equivalent. If it were like this, and I just picked up Morrowind, sweet! But how many new players do you think actually give a damn about this optimization stuff? Maybe a few. But probably not many. How many long-term players care about their time investment now becoming an irrelevant decision? Probably a lot. Maybe I'm wrong. I know what camp I'm in. And I know what camp several other posters in this thread are in. But their opinions are selfishly motivated, right? And you're here to save us from our opinions.

RE: the game hemorrhaging players. Sure, I guess I'm speculating. Maybe the game is a thriving metropolis and is growing exponentially by the minute.

So much better now. Good changes

Hymzir · July 2017

Hammy01 wrote: »

Hymzir wrote: »

Hmm... Interesting changes... Not sure what to make of this, except that this will change everything once again. At least you didn't target nerf Templars this time. So I guess that's something to be positive about. But overall, it's a mixed bag. There are lot of good changes there, few really bad ones and a lot that are difficult to predict as to which way they will go.

I, myself, am on the verge of calling it quits on this game, and in many ways this update was the one to decide whether I go or stay. In all honesty, am not sure what to make of this all. In any case, I wont be participating much in this round of PTS, since am gonna travel soon abroad and be away for a moth or so. When I come back, this thing will be on live and I guess I'll see then what's what and whether I stop all together, become an occasional player, or continue playing more or less actively.

But even so, there were few eye brow rising things in the notes that I do want to comment on, so here goes...

Mundus Stones
Developer Comments: Mundus Stone values and bonuses have been re-tuned with a focus on improving overall diversity. Almost all Mundus Stones were buffed, with the exception of The Thief which was slightly nerfed due to it overshadowing all other choices. The Lady was upgraded to grant both Spell and Physical Resistance, and The Lover was completely redesigned to grant Spell and Physical Penetration to counteract The Lady and provide greater flexibility in stat choices.

We’ve also standardized Mundus Stone values against other systems that grant similar bonuses, such as enchantments or Item Sets, so you can customize the stats you care about in each system without needing to worry about weighing the exact values against each other. Mundus Stones are now equivalent to 1.85x of an Item Set bonus.

Weapon Traits
Developer Comments: Similar to how Mundus Stones were changed, Weapon Trait values have also been rebalanced with a focus on improving overall diversity. Almost all Weapon Traits were buffed, with the exception of Sharpened and Defending which were nerfed due to them over-performing. They should still remain one of the strongest options for increasing your damage or survivability, but now the power difference between them and other traits is no longer so massive.

Prosperous was completely re-designed to grant a new combat function and will be an interesting choice for builds seeking to maximize resource recovery gains. Pairing the Divines trait with a recovery Mundus Stone will grant more recovery for that particular stat, but Prosperous will grant more recovery overall.

So these are the really big changes this patch then... In general, I suppose, this is a good move. But it does make one wonder about how it will all play out. Thief was way better than the rest, and many were utterly useless so on that ground, it's a necessary thing to change. However, this plan will make Divine trait even better than it already is, and even more of a must have type thing.

With the changes to Sharpened and Precise traits, I am left wondering would the smart move be to keep using lots of divine pieces and pick the Lover mundus for penetration and then run around with Precise weapon to make up for the loss in crit rating.

I'm not gonna crunch the numbers, do not have time for it, nor the inclination really. Besides I'm sure that there are others much better at it, and much more keen on running them, and they will do the math by the time this thing hits live and I'm back from my trip. But juggling the numbers quickly in my head, one does start to wonder will this really change anything since you are also boosting gear bonuses for crits, and doing so by a fairly hefty degree... So perhaps it's possible to get roughly similar numbers by juggling CP around a bit, still having divine the top choice for gear, and just moving the meta to Lover and Precise instead of Thief and Sharpened. I mean with 7 legendary divine pieces you'd get what... 4196 penetration. And if you have crit bonuses in your current gear... Well those got turned up by 55% each. My current gear has three crit bonues, so I just got over 1.5 new gear set bonuses worth to my crit rating. And with each gear crit bonus being worth about 3 percent or so, that means I got 4.5% more of crit chance from those bonuses. Couple that with a Precise weapon and you are pretty close to the number you had with Thief mundus and Sharpened weapon.

If that ends up being the case, then I predict a lot of people who forked out outrageous amounts of gold for sharpened weapons, or spent countless hours grinding them while deconning or vendor trashing precise version of those weapons, are not gonna be all that happy.

But that's the thing - with every patch you change everything. ZOS simply does not do tweaking. Let's take sharpened as an example - back when you guys last did weapon trait re-balancing, we told you that sharpened was miles better than anything else. But you defended your design saying that sharpened was better at dealing damage, but was equal to Nirnhoned and Precise since those also boosted healing and so on... The community did what you obviously did not - we crunched the numbers and told you that you were wrong. Sharpened was better in almost every scenario and situation. And not by a bit, but by a wide wide wide margin. You didn't listen then and here we are now, over a year later you are finally doing something about the issue. And instead of tweaking the numbers, you are slashing sharpened to half of what it was! That is not tweaking an over performing trait, that is a drastic nerf to the ground.

Not saying that sharpened doesn't deserve it, but it just amuses me, that you were so sure that it wasn't that much over performing when compared to the other traits back then. And that it fostered build variety and player choice. But the math was telling a totally different story. It was Sharpened or go home. We told you to buff the other traits but you didn't listen back then. And now, after time has proven that you were indeed wrong as we told you repeatedly, and you are buffing nirn and precise and burning sharpened to the ground. Math matters in game design you know... And math is hard, so please listen to the experts when they crunch the numbers and tell you what's what this time around, okay? And if they say the nerf is too much, and that no one will use sharpened from now one, listen to them and reduce the nerf.

As for this idea...

[/list]
[*]The Prosperous Armor Trait has been re-designed to give it a combat function. It now grants 11 Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery as a gold-quality item, instead of gold gain.
[/list]

You are basically turning a bad trait to an utterly worthless one... Good grief. No one likes Prosperous because of what it does. People hate it because it is bad, not because the concept itself is garbage. If it increased drop chances for rare loot, you can bet your butt on it that people would be using it a lot more. If it increased gold yield from mobs by 12% per piece at legendary, people would be gold plating their prosperous junk. But it doesn't - math proves that it is, in most situations, a bad thing to wear, and that sturdy is better since it saves on repair costs. Only when farming high gold dropping mobs is prosperous a good investment. And with that, it actually has a legitimate purpose. It's just something people do not want from their dropped DPS or tanking or Healing sets. Prosperous is best for crafted gear just Like Training. It's something you do occasionally and intentionally. It's not the kinda trait you take with you to PVP or Trials.

Tweaking the numbers in such a way that it would drop more gold would actually be a really good idea, and would make mob farming for gold a much better way to earn money, and a meaningful alternative to running around in speed gear and farming nodes for mats to sell.

With this change, this trait becomes utterly useless. With 7 gold pieces you'd get 77 stamina, health and magicka recovery. Big whooping deal. Nobody cares about health recovery anyways, except dedicated health recovery builds. And they are not going to be using Prosperous gear. As for the rest of us... Well, nobody is going to pick 77 stamina and Magicka recovery over the meaningful reduction to crit damage you get with Impenetrable, or the large gains to base stats through Infused and thus bigger shield and stuff, nor over the huge boosts you can get with the better than ever Divine pieces.

In short - this change makes prosperous even worse than it was, and that is a remarkable feat of game design on itself. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to make Prosperous worse than it was. My hat's off to you. Well done.

At the very least you have to keep the old gold bonus along with the new marginal rec gain. That way it will still have it's old niche use, and won' be a total waste for those who happen to get a monster piece in Prosperous. Not something you are going to hold onto once a better one presents itself, or comes up for sale on the golden vendor. But in the meanwhile it will at least do something for your build.

The thing is, that there will always be best is slot. And that is Divine for most - with Imp being a reasonable alternative in PVP. Infused is a good all a rounder second place, and even best for some builds. The rest have their niche and special build uses. Prosperous is never going to be equal to those. And if it will, then it will just bump one of the other into the garbage category. As long as there are several traits focusing on the same aspect of game play, there will be best and garbage traits. Only by influencing different things all together, will you be able to have several equally useful traits in the game.

Prosperous should be aimed at non combat actions. Maybe increase node yield when harvesting, or increase rate of blue items when pick pocketing stuff. Or it could continue doing what it does, but do it at a level where it is actually useful!

I predict, that 9 moths from now, in what ever patch we will be testing on PTS then, Prosperous is going to be redesigned once more to do something utterly different since no one is using it's current incarnation. You guys need to stop redesigning stuff that is under performing and learn to actually tweak stuff. If something is under performing, boost it by 20% and see if that will make a change. If something is over performing, reduce it by 20% and see if that will fix things.

So in short - Please learn the meaning of TWEAKING! It's not the same as redesigning from scratch and hoping the new idea will work.

Item Sets

As for the item set changes, and more importantly the proc set changes... Seems fine mostly. There are some odd ones in there for sure, and do wonder how some of them will play out. But I'm not a heavy proc set users, so don't really care, and a cursory read of the suggested changes does point toward there being less proc-tard insta ganker builds running about when this thing goes live. And that's a good thing.

But all of that is a mixed bag, and not something that sways me one way or another as far as keeping playing this game goes. Well except maybe that Prosperous bit. Since I did just invest in a full set of Prosperous gear for looting gold and all. Cost me almost 3.5k gold... Damn that sucks. (Not really, no - just hoped that there was an alternative to pick pocketing and stealing, or node harvesting as far as gold making goes. Still got my Speedy Gonzales suit for zooming about like the Flash while harvesting nodes, and I suppose I can keep being a petty criminal and stealing everything that isn't nailed down. But the option for grinding for gold was nice to have)

However, the things that really irk me about this patch are these things:

Three New Motifs
The Hlaalu, Redoran, and Telvanni Motifs are now available in Vvardenfell! These three styles and their associated style items can be found by stealing from citizens of Vvardenfell - picking their pockets, stealing from their safe boxes, and looting Thieves Troves left behind by fellow members of the Thieves Guild.

We are now well over 50 with these styles. And that's like 40 or so that come in separate chapters and require huge amounts of grind to collect. Boring repetitive unrewarding waste of my life. I said to hell with this nonsense couple of dozen motif's back and stopped caring about them, so let's just add these to the list of *** I wont give a flying *** about. The only reason I started to collect them again was due to master writs being dependent on knowing this crap. But the drop rates for master writs are themselves abysmally low, utterly RNG based and very unfair. One dude crafts a ton and gets a two voucher writ while another does one writ on a lark and gets a 300 voucher writ as a reward. Yay what fun. So I stopped caring about motifs once more. And stopped doing writs since it is soul crushingly disappointing.

And not like motifs have any real use, since there still is no transmog (the news that it is under plans is good, but way too late. Way too late.) and most crafted gear is junk. And due to horrid, vomit inducing Monster Set Designs you are forced to wear costumes anyway, so even if you have a crafted set it's not gonna show on your character.

But the real kicker with these is that there is no non illegal way for gathering them. I'm so sick and tired that I need to go stealing and murdering people left and right just to find furniture plans or to make any kind of decent amount of gold for my time spent playing. And now these things will require more theft and murder. Oh joy.

And about them master writs and doing crafting writs for them, and thus gathering motifs to up your chances for them to drop... Well...

Updates for Rolis Hlaalu, the Master Writ Merchant
Rolis Hlaalu's inventory has been updated! His gold furnishing plans have been replaced with new stock, so there is now a new gold quality furnishing plan for each profession available. The previously available recipes are being retired for the time being, though they may show up again at some point in the future in his selection or elsewhere.

I am still missing most of the stuff on sale by that dude at this moment, since my luck with Master Writs has been so bad that I quit doing them. Was thinking of restarting and trying to get at least a few of them, but now I learn that I wont have the time since they will be pulled off the shop and become privileged things known by the lucky ones. And the rest of us will just have to suck it up.

So... That makes me think, how about just saying *** it all, and go do something else with my time. Since I refuse to waste my time praying to the RNGesus to be kind to me at least once in my life. - A fun fact... None of the weapons used by any of my characters (obviously all are sharpened - duh... Except the few defending ones I use to tank up) are something I actually found while playing. All of them I've had to buy from guild stores. Since I've had zero luck with a decent weapon dropping. I did get a sharpened Bone pirate Bow - too bad I have no character that has a use for it... Oh... Wait, I didn't have to buy Nimriian's Shortblade of Soulshine, since that comes as a named drop from a delve boss. But I did have to buy the other Sharpened Soulshine sword from a guild store, despite having spent close to 100 hours trying to farm one.

But hte point here is that - Not all of us have been lucky enough to get the previous bunch, and removing them from the MAster Writ Merchant means that we will most likely never have tehm. And the one's with good fortune with vouchers, who are sitting on large stacks of unused ones can make a killing selling these once they are pulled from the store.

That means I will never have them, and If I will not have this patch, I will not bother getting the next patch either and thus ultimately will decide not to bother with trying to collect furnishing recipes and thus will lose my main reason for playing.

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.

See, there was this one thing in the notes that seemed to be going to the other direction. The right direction. The direction this game should be going as a whole. I'm talking about this bit here:

The Tel Var Jewelry Lockbox Merchants now sell rings and necklaces directly with no intervening box.
These items are always Champion 160, with Legendary (Gold) quality.

Their cost remains the same: 100,000 Tel Var stones apiece.

As a result of these changes, these vendors (Tumande, Kharzolga, and Hears-the-Stone) are now known as Tel Var Jewelry Merchants.

If I understood correctly this change, this is the type of change that is desperately needed more in this game. Removal of a layer of RNG. This is the type of stuff you need to add more into the game. With every expansion you introduce, you should take old stuff that used to be RNG based and just put it up on sale for gold, or AP or Telvar. Just have some dude somewhere selling stuff you used to have to grind for.

At the rate you are going, new players will give up after a week or so, when they realize that they are so far behind in grinding for crap that why even bother starting up.

Let's say a new player wants to become a master crafter. Cool... First get your skills to 50, then learn the traits for gear and find recipes for furniture and provision. Which will take forever. And then go grind for all the bloody different motifs which will take another eternity. All the while doing craft writs in hope of getting master writs, which you may very well not get at all, and then learn that some of the staff is no longer available at all. There's just way too much of crap on the to do list to even bother starting it.

So just start placing old stuff on sale from NPCs and the problem goes away. People who grinded for it will whine a bit and then go farm the new stuff. People who tried to grind for it and were not blessed by RNGesus will sigh a relief. Fork over the gold and then go try their luck with the new stuff. And new players will see clear, precise goal posts for getting all that cool stuff. And no one has to suffer due to bad luck with RNG.

Well - that is what I had to say about these changes. I do have few smaller remarks, but they are not really that important. So I'll just throw them here at the end. Feel free to skip tehm if you've had enough of my rambling at this point.

General
Certain Servants in Hew’s Bane were carrying items associated with Addicts. They’ve kicked the habit, and no longer carry these items.

So.... Where are people supposed to be farming their skooma bubblers in the future then? I suppose those who managed to farm them are happy and the rest are just so screwed.

Crafting Writs
Unified the behavior of crafting Writ delivery sites in Vivec City. These sites are now consistently used for rank one Writs instead of a mix of rank one and maximum rank Writs.

Fixed an issue that caused the crafting certification quests to appear earlier than intended. They now appear at level 6 in all cases.

Please let us start being able to turn our writs in back in any zone, or at least the zone where we picked them up in the first place. Going to Craglorn for all max level writs is stupid and inconvenient. Most of these drop of points are left unused since people level past them pretty quickly. And Belkarth is over crowded anyway. I want to drop my stuff of at Sentinel - the place were my primary abode is. I don't want to drag my ass all the way to Belkarth just to drop off some crap.

Weapon
Two Handed
Reverse Slash: Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs would grant slightly less than a 300% damage bonus against a target at 1% Health.

Really... I don't really think anyone noticed there being an issue there... But hey, one less bug and all that so... Yay, I suppose?

[*]Destruction Staff
Added new icons for each of the elemental variants of Destructive Touch, Wall of Elements, and Impulse.

Fixed an issue where Lightning Staff heavy attacks were not commanding your pets to attack that target.

Wall of Elements: Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs were not displaying correct tooltip information in their tooltip headers.

And nothing done about destro ulti... Long live the destro zergs of Cyrodiil!

@Hymzir
You said a lot but it was well worth the read!

Thanks. Always nice to know that writing it all wasn't a waste of my time. Now if only someone from ZOS would bother to read it... One can dream I suppose. One can always dream.

BigBadVolk · July 2017

awesome ones almost still need some classy buffs for nbs (both stam and mag)

rimmidimdim · July 2017

Great patch notes. I have two complaints however even though it might be best patch so far.
No tremorscale Nerf/revamp?
Thief Munda's Nerf? I understand buffing the other Munda's but a thief Nerf really hurts hybrid builds. I don't like that. I never heard of an OP hybrid.
Cheers.

ARIES SERPICO · July 2017

rimmidimdim wrote: »

Great patch notes. I have two complaints however even though it might be best patch so far.
No tremorscale Nerf/revamp?
Thief Munda's Nerf? I understand buffing the other Munda's but a thief Nerf really hurts hybrid builds. I don't like that. I never heard of an OP hybrid.
Cheers.

Remember they buffed Precise by 2% and the set bonus critical by 55% so that can make up for it and then some.

Steeltoeram · July 2017

We’ve added a setting - Combat Cues - in the Gameplay menu that will allow you to control the color and brightness of Friendly and Hostile combat cues. Enjoy!....

thank you so much! I have difficulty seeing the red aoe due to being color blind

Neoauspex · July 2017

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom I didn't see any mention of the cross-faction queuing issue, even though it has been acknowledged. Is this going to be addressed in a future patch?

Curson · July 2017

Can Decisive finally be a good trait now?

rimmidimdim · July 2017

ARIES SERPICO wrote: »

rimmidimdim wrote: »

Great patch notes. I have two complaints however even though it might be best patch so far.
No tremorscale Nerf/revamp?
Thief Munda's Nerf? I understand buffing the other Munda's but a thief Nerf really hurts hybrid builds. I don't like that. I never heard of an OP hybrid.
Cheers.

Remember they buffed Precise by 2% and the set bonus critical by 55% so that can make up for it and then some.

Fair enough, thanks. I just like to see hybrids get a wittle love.

alcosh · July 2017

Hey, ZOS team!
Could you please add possibility to taunt enemies for characters in werewolf form? Our werewolf guild doing some trials as full wolfpack, but other trials are impossible for us without tanking. Werewolf taunt could be realized through bash attack for example.
Werewolf aoe+dot healing ability also can be nice (for magicka based werewolf builds).

Joy_Division · July 2017

BigES wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

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

Thank you for the insight. We are fortunate to have folks such as yourself who actually analyze this stuff rather than take the perceptive that since they already farmed an Overpowered BIS item, the status quo should be preserved.

@BigES - All you had to do was something like this.

Ignoring the habitual "everyone's opinion outside of my own is worthless" typical direction. Let's have an honest discussion about this.

@Asayre is a god amongst men. Praise be to him that provides us with all of this knowledge. Seriously, thanks and props for still being around. Been seeing you less and less. (Though you only evaluated damage, which in terms of this discussion the advantage of sharpened probably no longer outweighs the other benefits of nirnhoned in terms of healing, maybe). <- assuming gender is wrong

@Joy_Division you're entitled to your opinion the same way that @BigES is entitled to his. You have some valid points, but that doesn't invalidate everything he said just because you take a dismissive haughty attitude.

Everyone pointed out how OP sharpened was when they made that change. People asked for it to be balanced on the initial PTS and ever since. ZOS did nothing about it, nor did they even comment on it. Therefore people assumed (yeah yeah enter assume joke here) that it was intended to be the most desirable trait. Every MMO I've ever participated in has had at least 1 or two absolute BIS items that are the most coveted available. WoW, Diablo, Destiny, all of them.

So people who care about having their character as powerful as possible spent the time, often hours or days farming these items. You can dismiss these people as stupid or wrong, but their opinion and playstyle is absolutely no less valuable than yours. ZOS could literally take away all weapons and items and a large number of people would still be perfectly fine with their roleplaying and questing. In this particular case however, these people who spent time battling the RNG gods (despite pleading for a token system or at least not having training drop on end game gear) have, in-arguably, a sizable investment in the game. This is often rewarding for ZOS, as these people who feel this level of commitment are also more likely to invest actual money in the game. So an argument could be made that their desires maybe should outweigh the player who shows up every month or so. But that's a different and subjective discussion.

What doesn't happen in those other MMO's is massive, sweeping changes irrespective of community input or discussion. Say what you want about Blizzard, but they are transparent as hell about that stuff. That's the overall complaint that I see on these forums and in my discussions with my guildmates. Some people want their character to be maxed. That's actually not that uncommon, despite the number of people making sweeping comments about them being the minority without any proof. These players get tired of having to completely redo a build, or refarm 2 year old content (that they spent hours/days in) to get an item that may be rendered completely useless 3 months from now at the whims of the combat team who operate in a complete black box. After a certain point, it becomes disheartening. I know three players who have spent hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars on this game, who unsubbed after reading the patch notes yesterday, because they're tired of farming instead of doing the content they enjoy (battlegrounds and cyrodiil).

Yes, MMOs change. Balance changes happen. BiS changes (usually very gradually, and the item itself usually doesn't, its level just does) over time. What doesn't happen in those games is the community pointing out that something is way overpowered, the dev team leaves it alone for over a year while ignoring all feedback, and then nerf it massively. (Before you come at me for being a min/maxer, my build hasn't changed since Thieves Guild and its still hella powerful).

TLDR: The issue expressed by @BigES and many others that is being dismissed out of hand with a haughty attitude can largely be boiled down to perpetual frustration with ZOS, which is they don't actually communicate with us. Key word is communicate, which is a two way transfer of information. If they'd keep an open dialogue about stuff like trait performance, people wouldn't be caught off guard having invested a million gold or so for sharpened war maiden swords, which came out on console almost a month ago exactly.

Again, this isn't an issue for me personally. But just because you have a different playstyle than someone else doesn't mean their complaint is invalid.

@SwaminoNowlino

A couple of things here.

If people assume - your word - that ZoS intended for something to be BiS without any evidence or source from ZoS that is their fault. Given the large discrepancies in power among gear sets, morph choices and the fact they ZoS keeps trying to buff stuff like Maw of the Guardian and Templar skill like Healing ritual to make them useful or desirable and they continually fail to do something makes anything ZoS intends highly suspect to begin with.

You are going to call me out for being having a "dismissive haughty attitude" while people such as BigES are far more dismissive - without offering any actual evidence, says the game is on the brink of failure, and threatens to quit if he doesn't get his way ... and you're writing an essay how I should be more understanding of his grievances? I have written many posts on these forums in which the issues I raise examine ALL sides of an issue and the proposals I come up with attempt to satisfy ALL parties. I think I have amply demonstrated that I am understanding of perspectives not my own thank you very much.

I do not dismiss people who farm for hours a day for BiS gear as stupid or wrong. I do question their motivation when they come onto these forums, threaten to maintain the status quo or quit with ZERO analysis. That is the worst form of feedback. It's baseless speculation that is selfishly motivated. Such posts deserve to be called out, especially since this patch ZoS at least made an effort to re-balance this stuff without a sweeping nerf. If sharpened is indeed trash, then demonstrate that with proof, evidence, gameplay footage, math, DPS parses, something. That standard is not asking to much and holding people to it is not dismissing them as stupid or wrong.

Every time I had an issue with ZoS changes, I have always demonstrated with evidence why I think their changes are short sighted or will negatively effect balance. Always, with math, screenshots, DPS parses, videos, quotes form developers.

I'll just continue to dismiss your personal attacks because its clear you want a directed and constructive conversation.

Its fine if you want to question my motives. But I think I've been pretty transparent. I invested a lot of time farming several gear sets for traits that optimized my build. I weighed the cost of my time compared to the benefit I would receive from getting that optimal item. This is pretty straightforward cost-benefit analysis.

Now the benefit side of the equation has suddenly changed. Precise, Infused, Sharpened... they marginally equivalent. If it were like this, and I just picked up Morrowind, sweet! But how many new players do you think actually give a damn about this optimization stuff? Maybe a few. But probably not many. How many long-term players care about their time investment now becoming an irrelevant decision? Probably a lot. Maybe I'm wrong. I know what camp I'm in. And I know what camp several other posters in this thread are in. But their opinions are selfishly motivated, right? And you're here to save us from our opinions.

RE: the game hemorrhaging players. Sure, I guess I'm speculating. Maybe the game is a thriving metropolis and is growing exponentially by the minute.

All I and others are saying is to actually test this stuff before you say the patch is trash and threaten to quit because what you have acquired is not viable.

If sharpened is trash and your build i ruined to the point it's not viable, than that certainly is a legitimate complaint - I too have all my sharpened stuff golden Sharpened should not be nerfed to the point where its not possible to have a best DPS with it.

But show us this with evidence, DPS parses, math, something.

LordSlif · July 2017

Joy_Division wrote: »

BigES wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

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

Thank you for the insight. We are fortunate to have folks such as yourself who actually analyze this stuff rather than take the perceptive that since they already farmed an Overpowered BIS item, the status quo should be preserved.

@BigES - All you had to do was something like this.

Ignoring the habitual "everyone's opinion outside of my own is worthless" typical direction. Let's have an honest discussion about this.

@Asayre is a god amongst men. Praise be to him that provides us with all of this knowledge. Seriously, thanks and props for still being around. Been seeing you less and less. (Though you only evaluated damage, which in terms of this discussion the advantage of sharpened probably no longer outweighs the other benefits of nirnhoned in terms of healing, maybe). <- assuming gender is wrong

@Joy_Division you're entitled to your opinion the same way that @BigES is entitled to his. You have some valid points, but that doesn't invalidate everything he said just because you take a dismissive haughty attitude.

Everyone pointed out how OP sharpened was when they made that change. People asked for it to be balanced on the initial PTS and ever since. ZOS did nothing about it, nor did they even comment on it. Therefore people assumed (yeah yeah enter assume joke here) that it was intended to be the most desirable trait. Every MMO I've ever participated in has had at least 1 or two absolute BIS items that are the most coveted available. WoW, Diablo, Destiny, all of them.

So people who care about having their character as powerful as possible spent the time, often hours or days farming these items. You can dismiss these people as stupid or wrong, but their opinion and playstyle is absolutely no less valuable than yours. ZOS could literally take away all weapons and items and a large number of people would still be perfectly fine with their roleplaying and questing. In this particular case however, these people who spent time battling the RNG gods (despite pleading for a token system or at least not having training drop on end game gear) have, in-arguably, a sizable investment in the game. This is often rewarding for ZOS, as these people who feel this level of commitment are also more likely to invest actual money in the game. So an argument could be made that their desires maybe should outweigh the player who shows up every month or so. But that's a different and subjective discussion.

What doesn't happen in those other MMO's is massive, sweeping changes irrespective of community input or discussion. Say what you want about Blizzard, but they are transparent as hell about that stuff. That's the overall complaint that I see on these forums and in my discussions with my guildmates. Some people want their character to be maxed. That's actually not that uncommon, despite the number of people making sweeping comments about them being the minority without any proof. These players get tired of having to completely redo a build, or refarm 2 year old content (that they spent hours/days in) to get an item that may be rendered completely useless 3 months from now at the whims of the combat team who operate in a complete black box. After a certain point, it becomes disheartening. I know three players who have spent hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars on this game, who unsubbed after reading the patch notes yesterday, because they're tired of farming instead of doing the content they enjoy (battlegrounds and cyrodiil).

Yes, MMOs change. Balance changes happen. BiS changes (usually very gradually, and the item itself usually doesn't, its level just does) over time. What doesn't happen in those games is the community pointing out that something is way overpowered, the dev team leaves it alone for over a year while ignoring all feedback, and then nerf it massively. (Before you come at me for being a min/maxer, my build hasn't changed since Thieves Guild and its still hella powerful).

TLDR: The issue expressed by @BigES and many others that is being dismissed out of hand with a haughty attitude can largely be boiled down to perpetual frustration with ZOS, which is they don't actually communicate with us. Key word is communicate, which is a two way transfer of information. If they'd keep an open dialogue about stuff like trait performance, people wouldn't be caught off guard having invested a million gold or so for sharpened war maiden swords, which came out on console almost a month ago exactly.

Again, this isn't an issue for me personally. But just because you have a different playstyle than someone else doesn't mean their complaint is invalid.

@SwaminoNowlino

A couple of things here.

If people assume - your word - that ZoS intended for something to be BiS without any evidence or source from ZoS that is their fault. Given the large discrepancies in power among gear sets, morph choices and the fact they ZoS keeps trying to buff stuff like Maw of the Guardian and Templar skill like Healing ritual to make them useful or desirable and they continually fail to do something makes anything ZoS intends highly suspect to begin with.

You are going to call me out for being having a "dismissive haughty attitude" while people such as BigES are far more dismissive - without offering any actual evidence, says the game is on the brink of failure, and threatens to quit if he doesn't get his way ... and you're writing an essay how I should be more understanding of his grievances? I have written many posts on these forums in which the issues I raise examine ALL sides of an issue and the proposals I come up with attempt to satisfy ALL parties. I think I have amply demonstrated that I am understanding of perspectives not my own thank you very much.

I do not dismiss people who farm for hours a day for BiS gear as stupid or wrong. I do question their motivation when they come onto these forums, threaten to maintain the status quo or quit with ZERO analysis. That is the worst form of feedback. It's baseless speculation that is selfishly motivated. Such posts deserve to be called out, especially since this patch ZoS at least made an effort to re-balance this stuff without a sweeping nerf. If sharpened is indeed trash, then demonstrate that with proof, evidence, gameplay footage, math, DPS parses, something. That standard is not asking to much and holding people to it is not dismissing them as stupid or wrong.

Every time I had an issue with ZoS changes, I have always demonstrated with evidence why I think their changes are short sighted or will negatively effect balance. Always, with math, screenshots, DPS parses, videos, quotes form developers.

I'll just continue to dismiss your personal attacks because its clear you want a directed and constructive conversation.

Its fine if you want to question my motives. But I think I've been pretty transparent. I invested a lot of time farming several gear sets for traits that optimized my build. I weighed the cost of my time compared to the benefit I would receive from getting that optimal item. This is pretty straightforward cost-benefit analysis.

Now the benefit side of the equation has suddenly changed. Precise, Infused, Sharpened... they marginally equivalent. If it were like this, and I just picked up Morrowind, sweet! But how many new players do you think actually give a damn about this optimization stuff? Maybe a few. But probably not many. How many long-term players care about their time investment now becoming an irrelevant decision? Probably a lot. Maybe I'm wrong. I know what camp I'm in. And I know what camp several other posters in this thread are in. But their opinions are selfishly motivated, right? And you're here to save us from our opinions.

RE: the game hemorrhaging players. Sure, I guess I'm speculating. Maybe the game is a thriving metropolis and is growing exponentially by the minute.

All I and others are saying is to actually test this stuff before you say the patch is trash and threaten to quit because what you have acquired is not viable.

If sharpened is trash and your build i ruined to the point it's not viable, than that certainly is a legitimate complaint - I too have all my sharpened stuff golden Sharpened should not be nerfed to the point where its not possible to have a best DPS with it.

But show us this with evidence, DPS parses, math, something.

Yep. They must test all options before to say something, i see a lot of players that wanna have an op character instead a good game

Draqone · July 2017

BigES wrote: »

Status quo? There's always a status quo. The question is, are the adjustments that are made significantly warranted and needed to moderate something that's disrupting to the average. Seems to me, their changes just result in new status quo's. Now I heavy attack for my resources. New status quo. Now everyone is just going to throw on Twice Born Star on ever character for every situation, PvE and PvP alike. New status quo. Huzzah for build variety, and this well diverse patch. We've done it! Balance is achieved!

BigES wrote: »

Now the benefit side of the equation has suddenly changed. Precise, Infused, Sharpened... they marginally equivalent. If it were like this, and I just picked up Morrowind, sweet! But how many new players do you think actually give a damn about this optimization stuff? Maybe a few. But probably not many. How many long-term players care about their time investment now becoming an irrelevant decision? Probably a lot. Maybe I'm wrong. I know what camp I'm in. And I know what camp several other posters in this thread are in. But their opinions are selfishly motivated, right? And you're here to save us from our opinions.

RE: the game hemorrhaging players. Sure, I guess I'm speculating. Maybe the game is a thriving metropolis and is growing exponentially by the minute.

@BigES

You made some very bold statements in the previous posts.

First you correctly identify that there is always a BiS. That's of course correct but you fail to realise this is a result of the fact people have the freedom to wear anything in this game. The only way to not have BiS items is to put artificial barriers and limit what players can wear because of game design philosophy.

As long as the gaps between sets and traits are small enough players will not be barred from content because of their gear choices and that creates variety and diversity. Thus, balance is achieved.

Secondly, you complain that the game is haemorrhaging players and yet in the same post you make an argument that having one clear BiS is best for the game. For new players, or even experienced players with less time on their hands, the fact that the traits will finally be somewhat balanced is incredibly good. Grinding gear is one of the most disheartening activities in this game and if a new player knows he can work around 4 traits instead of only 1 it means the grind time is cut by 75%.

Those changes are good for new players and if Asayre's numbers are correct it's not true that your "time investment is now an irrelevant decision". Your time investment means you can still be on top, just not by such a wide margin.

That said!

@Asayre
I looked through all your calculations and I don't understand how you got the 50000 in the denominator. Is it simply a number you arrived at while trying to best approximate the game damage calculations? You claim that it "represents the mobs being level 50" but that does that actually mean?

BlitzWing97 · July 2017

Praise the Lord, I can dodge Selene now!!!!!

Draqone · July 2017

BlitzWing97 wrote: »

Praise the Lord, I can dodge Selene now!!!!!

You always could. Now you will have a red rectangle as well as a huge bear trying to maul off your face as a warning sign. I am sure it'll make dodging it easier.

Shadesofkin · July 2017

Sigh, yet another hosing of a DK passive.

zibnaf · July 2017

patch looks good.

nerf viper set

sucks

MikeyMutz · July 2017

Dont nerf sharpened by that much it's a slap in the face to those who put the time and effort in to get their vma weps in sharp. myself included i feel like if its a nerf it shouldn't be by that much. I personaly think it should remain the BiS by 8%+ with these changed it is looking like its BiS for some occasions and only by like 1-2%. you should not change something thats been the best for so long cause people get that gear and think it will remain best so they gold it out. I played this game on console over a year ago and sharpened was the best back when i played, then i quit for a year 2 months ago i made a pc account and got my shaprned vma weps and golded them out litteraly 4 days ago now im getting told i pretty much wasted my gold and need to refarm vma -.- *** off with that garbage. This change is hurting the players dedicated to aquiring the BiS gear and bandade helping the casuals. I don't mind a nerf but by about 45% is a bit overkill.

Noxji · July 2017

I be damned! I've always supported ZoS changes for a hope of a better future. But this changes takes the cake. Best patch notes I've read in 2 years. Tears me up a little :')
IMO

Bobby_V_Rockit · July 2017

Well, keeping sharpened at 2752 is still the equivelant of 4 set bonuses of 688 weapon/spell crit, but as the set bonuses are going to be raised by 55.5% (Weapon Critical or Spell Critical rating has been increased by 55%) sharpened should be kept at the new level, say 4265.

I find it very curious that they nerfed it to the exact crit chance applied by 4 set bonuses (2x 688 crit chance from VO, + 2x 688 crit chance from another set). And I wonder if the oversight in making sharpened match 4x 688 set bonuses was actually supposed to be it matching the new bonus of 4x 1066...

Rev Rielle · July 2017

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

So... what's everyone think of putting all the combat-related things in its own section and calling out balance-specific changes? I agonized for days over how to format it.

@ZOS_GinaBruno It's nice, but personally I preferred it when we could see all the class changes/balances that will occur in one place. The way things are now, they are spread out over a couple of sections. It's a minor thing, as personally initially I read through the entire notes from start to finish, but when referring back to them in future I found it handy to be able to do a quick Templar search, for example, and get to the one place on the patch notes I knew all the Templar specific changes would be.

Juhasow · July 2017

MikeyMutz wrote: »

Dont nerf sharpened by that much it's a slap in the face to those who put the time and effort in to get their vma weps in sharp. myself included i feel like if its a nerf it shouldn't be by that much. I personaly think it should remain the BiS by 8%+ with these changed it is looking like its BiS for some occasions and only by like 1-2%. you should not change something thats been the best for so long cause people get that gear and think it will remain best so they gold it out. I played this game on console over a year ago and sharpened was the best back when i played, then i quit for a year 2 months ago i made a pc account and got my shaprned vma weps and golded them out litteraly 4 days ago now im getting told i pretty much wasted my gold and need to refarm vma -.- *** off with that garbage. This change is hurting the players dedicated to aquiring the BiS gear and bandade helping the casuals. I don't mind a nerf but by about 45% is a bit overkill.

Wait....whaaat ? So You dont want to have things ballanced because You golded out something that is broken and overperforming by a mile ? So fact You used materials worth max 100k which You can make easily in hour is enough for You to stop game changes and ballancing things despite the fact sharp still will be one of the stronger if not the strongest trait ?

Where is LOL button when it's needed ?...

Also if You're player "dedicated to aquiring BiS gear" then You should be happy if things are changing so You'll be able to dedicate to that again

YOB · July 2017

Viper's String ... ??? u mean Viper's Sting.