Master, Maelstrom, and Asylum Weapons Unchanged (Why?)

TheYKcid

I'm a PvP player. I've got all the vMA and vDSA weapons. What exactly is the problem here?

Are you somehow locked out of said content?

Minalan

I’m not entirely upset about my VDSA staves not getting buffed. It opens up more build options for me that don’t use it.

A build with a completed monster two piece or a willpower staff is arguably stronger in every scenario.

SirMewser

It's just their way to give us the middle finger for playing their most difficult content, only to have what we've earned, changed.

Haquor

I had a rant all planned up. But ill settle for this:

It is quite annoying.

DoctorESO

SirMewser wrote: »

It's just their way to give us the middle finger for playing their most difficult content, only to have what we've earned, changed.

Well, technically, the weapons aren't changed. It's just that everything else was made better. But from an absolute, as opposed to a relative, sense, the weapons are just as good as they were before.

Emma_Overload

TheYKcid wrote: »

I'm a PvP player. I've got all the vMA and vDSA weapons. What exactly is the problem here?

Are you somehow locked out of said content?

The problem is that there is no PvP activity that enables you to obtain BIS PvP weapons. I don't care about the Maelstrom staff, but the Master's staff is practically required for PvP Sorc builds these days, and the Asylum staff would be amazing in PvP, too. I can't imagine any scenario where I could find somebody who would be willing to run vDSA with me at the odd hours that I'm not at my job, and the Asylum staff is probably out of reach for 99.9% of the ESO playerbase.

BTW, the Master's weapons used to be available from PvP leaderboards, but they stopped doing that for some reason. I don't know if ZOS has ever even explained why.

TheYKcid

@Emma_Overload

But why must BiS PvP gear come from PvP itself?

For one thing, it's not like there isn't precedent. Many monster sets and BoP 5pc sets are BiS for PvP—and they all come from PvE content, some of which is substantially difficult (DLC vet dungeons, for example). And on the flipside, plenty of things crucial to PvE... come from PvP—Vigor, Caltrops and Warhorn, to name a few.

Cross-mixing the player populations is a good solution to keeping the game healthy. Think it's hard to find a vDSA group? Imagine how much worse it would be if a large chunk of the people running it no longer had the incentive to. No one benefits from low-population content. Likewise, you'd also see fewer people participating in PvP if they weren't incentivised to enter Cryodiil or BGs to begin with. Not so say that nobody abandons to PvP after unlocking vigor/trops/WH—many do—but these incentives reliably give people exposure to content that they would otherwise never set foot in. And they may just grow to like it, and even prefer it! I, for one, became a PvPer in this manner.

Practicalities aside... it's also good game design to give players avenues for progression. To put it one way: if someone is truly passionate about PvP, they'd be willing to do what it takes to improve themself—and that includes going out of your comfort zone and developing a new set of skills. Offering useful rewards behind a skillwall such as vMA gives serious players a way to distinguish themselves from their more casual counterparts. And if you're a casual player, then you wouldn't be fretting about 100% absolute BiS to begin with, since there is no content that can't be cleared with a normal 5/5/2 setup.

I'd interpret ZOS' removal of vDSA weapons from PvP leaderboards as an indication that they share this design philosophy. The boards do no reflect player skill in any way. I personally know people who have earned Emp by exclusively repairing walls.

Crafts_Many_Boxes

Unpopular opinion: I support the changes. VMA is not a good assessment of player skill in regards to group content. The rewards should not be must-haves for endgame group content.

VMA takes a lot of skill in solo-ing, sure, but trials aren't solo content. Dungeons aren't solo content. The whole point of group content is to specialize in your chosen role, not to be an all-rounder. The two are at odds with one another.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get cool rewards and lot of cred for completing VMA, I'm just saying that maybe, just maybe, the elite solo instance shouldn't be a hard requirement to be competitive in any sort of high-level group content.

I think the devs finally understood this, and that's why they didn't buff them to maintain their dominance.

Beamer_Miasma

DoctorESO wrote: »

SirMewser wrote: »

It's just their way to give us the middle finger for playing their most difficult content, only to have what we've earned, changed.

Well, technically, the weapons aren't changed. It's just that everything else was made better. But from an absolute, as opposed to a relative, sense, the weapons are just as good as they were before.

What people seem to overlook is the fact that everything else getting better also makes the older trials a little easier to complete. You can't expect them to update the old weapons to current standards without also updating the difficulty of obtaining them to current standards. This is typically hard to do or justify by changing existing trials, and easier/fairer to do by introducing new content.

Would people be willing to re-do the older trials at updated difficulty so they could get the weapons in an upgraded version, or would they rather prefer to just see a new trial with better rewards? I'd vote for the latter. Of course this being ESO, most of the population seems to feel rather entitled to getting stuff without effort, so they'll all vote for "gimme now, both!", but it's hard for me to see the argument that it would be the right way to handle it.

JPcrazysquirrel3

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Unpopular opinion: I support the changes. VMA is not a good assessment of player skill in regards to group content. The rewards should not be must-haves for endgame group content.

VMA takes a lot of skill in solo-ing, sure, but trials aren't solo content. Dungeons aren't solo content. The whole point of group content is to specialize in your chosen role, not to be an all-rounder. The two are at odds with one another.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get cool rewards and lot of cred for completing VMA, I'm just saying that maybe, just maybe, the elite solo instance shouldn't be a hard requirement to be competitive in any sort of high-level group content.

I think the devs finally understood this, and that's why they didn't buff them to maintain their dominance.

Ditto. I definitely tire of hearing "Oh, you don't have vMA staff? GTFO!". That is one of the reasons I have not played my PvE DPS toons in such a long time. Having a vMA or whatever other special arena weapon doesn't necessarily make you any better in your role than someone without.

TheMystid

Emma_Overload wrote: »

I don't think they should bother with these weapons until they find a way to make them available to PvP players or introduce new weapon sets that PvP players could obtain.

on the contrary: if a PVP player spend huge amount of not-so-enjoyable time grinding, say, vMA weapons because he has a build in his mind (like myself), I guess he should be somehow rewarded by ZOS. But no, ZOS keeps nerfing/outdating them. Im out.