Monthly Combat Update – December 2017

technohic

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

Hmm, the nerf to gapclosers might be unneeded. Ranged builds already have the advantage of attacking from height without fear, requiring melee to be closer, and generally better options to flee.

even less reasons to use vMA 2h now..

other than that,
I might seriously drop 2h if they nerf crit rush.
already enjoying dual wield on my new stam warden for a while now.

having major expedition for 10 seconds beats having a gapcloser.

IF you don't have a speed buff, a.k.a. stamDK, then your life just got more miserable I guess.

I am running both on my stamplar now. Making use of momentum as well. Sure you can purge snares but you can't keep them off and that cost of extended ritual now

Cinbri

All changes, beside unclear changes of cast time, sounds great. Especially Cyrodiil one.

amasuriel

code65536 wrote: »

I just want to reiterate the concerns and skepticism that I expressed in last month's update about what block cost nerfs will do for PvE tanking. And there already have been a lot of resource nerfs for PvE tanking over the years, I might add--nerfs that contributed substantially to the dwindling diversity of endgame tank classes.

Suffice it to say, we have trust issues. And for good reason.

There are not enough ways for me to upvote this. Tanking used to be a mix of resource management and utility / buffing skills, more and more it's a resource management only role and any non-trivial fight.

Please do not make PvE tanking any worse then it is to adjust PvP. If you have to change something related to block for PvP, do it with battle spirit.

I'm literally begging.

Minno

Cinbri wrote: »

All changes, beside unclear changes of cast time, sounds great. Especially Cyrodiil one.

All we need now are those Templar fixes and sexy new escape ability!

Solariken

Minno wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

All changes, beside unclear changes of cast time, sounds great. Especially Cyrodiil one.

All we need now are those Templar fixes and sexy new escape ability!

How about a gentle Extended Ritual change - no immediate debuff cleanse BUT purges all snares/immob and grants immunity for 4 sec. Also purges 2 negative effects every 2 sec while standing in the circle.

xSkullfox

Somehow i have the bad feeling that pve will be nerfed again with the pvp changes.

DosPanchos

Definitely appreciate the transparency and I apologize on behalf of the hypercritical babies on this forum.

I especially agreed with the need to damage groups from afar and ultimate diversification!

Draxys

DosPanchos wrote: »

Definitely appreciate the transparency and I apologize on behalf of the hypercritical babies on this forum.

I especially agreed with the need to damage groups from afar and ultimate diversification!

I haven’t seen many hypercritical babies in this thread, mostly just people in support or people giving sound reason for why the changes shouldn’t be made. So why are you in support of damaging groups from afar?

Reverb

Thanks for the updates! I look forward to testing u17 on the PTS.

Quantum_V

Um, thanks.

zassasaurus

Can you tell us when update 17 will be on the pts for us to try out?

Domander

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Another thing you’ll see when Update 17 goes to the PTS is a reduction in damage for some charge abilities. Decreasing their damage is going to ensure that at-range players who are utilizing movement and terrain to maintain their distance from melee enemies are better rewarded for that tactical advantage.

The thing is, a LOT of builds already do away with a gap closer all together because they can become immune to snares/roots and CC and have a permanent major expedition from potions.

Subversus

What about fixing shade in the meantime? And maybe talking about how wings (reflective scales) 100% shut down a magicka nightblade? Where is the counterplay in that?

UppGRAYxDD

casparian wrote: »

Thanks for this, Gina!

Back in the Morrowind patch, magicka templars started reporting (in the Bug Reports section and elsewhere) that the execute damage from Radiant Destruction wasn't scaling correctly when combined with other % bonuses (CP, Minor Berserk, etc.). Turns out the problem affected % scaling executes in general (their bonuses were being calculated additivy instead of multiplicatively), and so y'all fixed the problem in the HOTR patch -- except for Radiant Destruction, which is still being calculated exactly the same (incorrect) way as in Morrowind. There have also been numerous reports that Puncturing Sweeps is suffering from the same issue, despite not being an execute ability.

Can you tell us whether anyone is looking into these bugs?

^^^^^^^^^This here @ZOS_GinaBruno , please...

Ragnarock41

Domander wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Another thing you’ll see when Update 17 goes to the PTS is a reduction in damage for some charge abilities. Decreasing their damage is going to ensure that at-range players who are utilizing movement and terrain to maintain their distance from melee enemies are better rewarded for that tactical advantage.

The thing is, a LOT of builds already do away with a gap closer all together because they can become immune to snares/roots and CC and have a permanent major expedition from potions.

also I gotta mention gapclosers rarely do connect now.
And hard countered by things like eternal hunt, rearming trap , mines etc..
only on really slow builds I consider them worth using now.
and that is only a case when you have to use tri-pots/heal over time pots, over speed pots.

Zer0oo

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Since we posted the November update, we’ve been mainly focusing on fixing bugs (some that you’ve seen in recent incremental patches, but most of are still internal and for Update 17) and doing some work for Update 18, which we aren’t quite ready to discuss yet.

That is really nice to hear. Does that include a fix for invisible group members in dungeons or trials, stuck in heavy attack snare bug, feeding pit achievement, stuck in combat which means unable to rez after a wipe in a trial or the slide on the ground after cc breaking? Just to name a few bugs.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We’re also continuing to work on improving interrupt, including adding a short cooldown to any interrupted ability. We noticed some confusion when we first mentioned this change, so we’d like to clarify: the reasoning behind this change is to add more strategic play when you interrupt another player’s ability, and in turn give players using abilities with a cast time an opportunity to use them against other players who repeatedly use interrupts.

Don't think it is wise since many of the ability, that can be interrupted, don't offer any other counter-play than interrupting. And there are other skill i don't even want to use even if the enemy can't interrupt me anymore. e.g. crystal blast

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Last month, we mentioned that we were looking at shortening the Heavy Attack cooldown, but ultimately decided not to go with this change to avoid making too many dramatic changes at once.

Again that so many people left or don't enjoy the combat has only secondary to do with heavy attack are boring but more with the fact that you are forced to spam heavy attacks in pve. Heavy attack builds were already before morrowind not weak(infinit sustain and most of the time easier than light attack builds but lower dps than light attack build), but after morrowind you could not sustain a light attack build without loosing too much damage. For me the combat before morrowind was way more fun, faster, skill-based and interesting.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Not enough effective options to deal damage to clustered groups from afar

In cyrodil is it not always possible not to stack especial if a group goes for objectives and tries to take a keep. The group will stack when the keep has a breach or to take a flag. If there would be a skill that could be safely used from range to kill stacked people there should be some kind of counter-play to prevent wiping a group on choke point which exists from game design. Also there is already some "zerg killer" ingame a.k.a proxi det/Vicious Death but this skill/set is more a skill which is used by exactly those groups they should kill or by "bomb-blades"(nightblades who sneak and try to ulti bomb a group who is not paying attention or has to stack at one of the choke points). So please do not give those extrem stacked groups another toy.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Block cost changes

If you change it to make it harder to block there will be even less classes who can tank in pve. It is already so a big gap between the classes in this respect.

Maybe think about how much protection blocking with s&b provides in pvp (70+% damage reduction).
My idea:
Give players a stack-able buff when they are hitting a blocking target in pvp. This way pve doesn't get changed at all, player who only block a short tine don't get any disadvantages and players who block a lot for a long time will take more damage the longer they block till block doesn't offer any more protection.
Blocking is still a good defense but if you block too long the other player can build enough stacks of the buff to nullify your block protection but if you drop block from time to time the stacks getting lost and you can block again with full protection after some time.

SorataArisugawa

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[...]

We’re also beginning to look at ways to improve group combat in Cyrodiil, particularly when groups of varying sizes fight each other. Some specific concerns we’ve been looking into include:

• Not enough effective options to deal damage to clustered groups from afar
  [...]

This is a problem of the PVP of this game of the very start.
I don't know who thought, it would be a good idea to give the Inevitable Detonation 2 sec cast time (casttime in PVP... are you serious???) and the Proximity Detonation (perfect zerg skill) is an instant...
The AOE System in this game is just plain s****** Stacking groups gain to much power through stacking and all AOE are DOTs or to weak...

rush1776

Magicka dds pull like 10 20k less dps than staminas in trials. Its actually pretty sad they stopped posting their cringey dps since morrowind. Main reason why stamina dds are hitting harder is off balance. It boosts their heavy attacks so much and they can easily heavy attack 3 even 4 times in their rotation while magickas are stuck with 1, rarely 2 if they are lazy sorcerers. Which makes stamina dds sustain waay better and makes gap even larger. I assume thats why you will change HA and off balance. But from what i see putting delay between each off balance proc and nerfing off balance upkeep will hurt both sides. Magicka dds should hit harder. nerfing stamina dds to make them equal would make things even worse. And templars beam still doesnt work properly. I assume you are too afraid of pvp babies that will cry about it thats why you didnt fix it since 9999 years while impale works fine.

Idinuse

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

T4T2FR34K wrote: »

When are you going to do something about Miats?

You'll see something in the next update - it will likely be detailed in the API notes so addon authors can make necessary adjustments before the update is released.

Gravord

rush1776 wrote: »

Magicka dds should hit harder..

Why is that exactly? Is your magicka pool used for dodging and blocking? Do you have to stay in melee range all the time to do any real damage? Does stam dds have access to 2 stam steal as magicka users to mag steal? Can stam users cast absorbs higher than their health pool to ignore mechanics?

Drakkdjinn

Happy to see a shift towards polishing turds that have been rotting in the sun for months, so long as its not another empty promise PR damage control stunt as its been in the past.

PvP -

How is a group preparing, testing, organizing, and fulfilling specified utility roles a problem for PvP? You going to nerf all dedicated healers and tanks in Cyrodiil by that definition too? Hope not...glad to see Earthgore die in a fire tho.

Biggest concern: no mention at all here of the primary culprit in PvP imbalance that has been well documented and presented by the community time and time again - Champion Points.

We gonna get an update on Miats' training wheels addon that's killing playstyles/builds anytime soon either?

The uninformed have possibly won over the dev's attention again...let's hope they test their changes independent of the zergling QQ first before pushing another beta patch to live.

Addendum: "Not enough effective options to deal damage to clustered groups from afar" Not enough effective options to deal damage to clustered groups up close either without relying on an extremely limited set of Mag-friendly ults -- don't forget that bit either, if you overbuff ranged damage to the point where they can damage a group sitting in healing springs you're going to initate a lame point-n'-click meta cheese wave that rewards low effort, low skill, low risk skills like cliff racer.

usmcjdking

Until the AOE damage scaling is reversed, none of these cyro changes will amount to anything significant. When a half vegetative state group is capable of doing 20k+ damage per second to any target that dares enter their AOE radius, without even being aware of that players presence, your base game is broken.

pzschrek

HaroniNDeorum wrote: »

IF they really want to kill organized guilds in favor of casual mindless zergs, fine. Long Live ZOS.

Agreed. I fell in love with PVP for the group synergy play. If the powerful advantage of an organized group is nerfed, you guys can all have your potato zerg hell.

ccfeeling

There are not many classes can play perma block , once ZOS increase block cost formula , all other non-meta tanks die faster .

Xsorus

Organized guilds are nothing more then organized zergs in this game. Don’t kid yourself that you’re any different

The_Brosteen

@ZOS_GinaBruno

For what it's worth, from a pvp perspective I think that generally speaking combat is more balanced now than it has been most of the games lifetime. So focusing efforts on improving synergies, interrupt counterplay and ultimate diversity is a great focus to have right now. That being said I'm not sure how much you can improve combat between groups of different sizes. If one group has players utilizing some sort of support role and the other doesn't well that's honestly just good strategy. Earthgore is pretty absurd though. I always loved chokethorn as a healing set because it saves lives so very often, but it's downside was that it only would save 1 players life, not EVERYONE's life like earthgore does.

On top of what is being worked on right now, it is quite apparent that the company has implemented a strategy to improve customer relations. I am very happy to see zos move forward and try to not only improve the quality of their product but also their service. @ZOS_MattFiror was quoted in an article that recently came out saying that he see's this game is at a point in it's lifetime where service is a priority. Continue the improvement on that end and you will see the lifetime of this game extend and be very profitable.

All in all, it seems to me that zos is moving in the right direction. Minus the bots. Bots are a huge problem. Heck, I'll go bot hunting for you and you don't even have to pay me, just do something about the bots please.

James-Wayne

Cast time changes ?? So small chance Magplars have something to look forward to...

NyassaV

This is giving me ***

GandTheImpaler

Thank you guys very much for this. Love the way you're doing these now

Rainraven

Ok. Thanks.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We’re also beginning to look at ways to improve group combat in Cyrodiil, particularly when groups of varying sizes fight each other. Some specific concerns we’ve been looking into include:

• Not enough effective options to deal damage to clustered groups from afar
• Earthgore is too powerful in group vs group battles
• Not enough diversity in Ultimate choice
• Large groups can have players take on specialized utility roles, reducing counter-play options against them

We’re still talking about what exactly we’ll be doing, but once we have a better idea of the direction we’re taking, we’ll include it in one of the next combat updates.

Good, so somebody is hearing this. Earthgore needs to disappear from Cyrodiil: I'm sure it's nice for some high-intensity PVE situations but it's a terrible idea in PVP, and devastating when stacked. And of course it's stacked.

It'd be nice to see something done about the ability of ball groups to run with constant rapids and endless purges, but please be careful. They aren't the only ones using those tools.

If PVPers had some new things to do in Cyrodiil, that might help a lot.

Anyway, I'm glad the team is thinking about these things. Good luck.