PTS Update 20 - Feedback Thread for Non-Class Combat Changes

BigBadVolk

Soris wrote: »

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@Soris , no, I was just confused by you saying "If the buff remain in blade cloak, we will see dw become fotm once again for both magicka and stamina." - so was surprised, since DW already had that buff on the Blade Cloak, so for dual-wielders nothing have changed, not like there's a reason for DW to be more popular than on live.

Now, I can see stamina builds running 2H/Bow builds using same buff from armor line, so those builds may benefit from it. I'm not sure about PvP specifics though - how often magicka runs medium armor (shuffle needs five pieces slotted) or DW? Or you mean hybrid builds?

With the medium armor evasion skill, all medium builds will naturally have aoe mitigation since the passive dodge removed from game. Stamina chars in heavy armor using dual wield for bleeds will now have a good reason to slot blade cloak. Because their medium armor cousins will widely use the new evasion and it will become no-brainer skill to not to use it with heavy armor. Popularity-wise people who use blade cloak with heavy armor will increase in numbers.

Magicka builds will see this popularity increase and they will qq about it. And they will think if all stamina builds will now have aoe dmg reduction, they will use it too through blade cloak. (Not medium armor) Using dual wield in magicka builds is not a bad setup anyways. I already have one dual wield build for my templar and dk and i will use it if those stam builds start countering my damage. I will counter their damage too. Hopefully i have explained the point right.

All im saying is; something already in game will become flavour of the month and be used by everybody. The only non affected class will be the nbs. They now have 3 different sources of new evasion and all their damage is single target including ultimate. So it is a big buff for them.

no necessary, magblades have blur for this at least minor If I remember correctly

Doctordarkspawn

Anhedonie wrote: »

I think you could nerf the living *** out of all healing spells and make a passive ability that buffs all healing spells by 300% while restoration staff equipped.
This would make healers desirable, because nobody would be able to heal themself properly otherwise.

Please no. Dont give them idea's. They'll actually do it.

SmackNCheese

Just some 2 cents about non class based combat, I like where the evasion changes are going because any game with an active dodge mechanism shouldn't also have a passive dodge stat. Give real damage mit rather than a chance at 100% damage mitigation. However some classes rely on AoE heavy skills so these changes will hurt them the most.

To leave some input about channeled shields, the biggest impact of the channeled shields is the effect it will have on solo content, whether that be PvP'ing open world, or vMA the time spent casting will a lot of time just get you killed. If you guys are really focused on making shields non instnat I recommend having it maybe just be a delayed cast. (I.E. you cast a shield and .5 seconds later it "grows", or have the shields strength ramp up from maybe 50% of its value to 100% over a second).

joaaocaampos

joaaocaampos wrote: »

Damage Shield changes

The best way, the best solution.

Instead of increasing cast time to 1 second, the cost should be increased. Healing Ritual is an example: the ability had 1 sec cast time and now is instant cast, with increased cost.

• Annulment costs have been increased to 7290 Magicka from 4590 Magicka. That is, an increase of 59%.
• Conjured Ward costs have been increased to 5580 (+59%), 5890 (+68%) or 6210 (+77%) Magicka from 3510 Magicka. Respectively, the Empowered Ward cost would be 5570, 5440 or 5740.

Unfortunately, something needs to be done. Increased cost has worked before, may work again. No shield spam!

If you want increased cost, press "Agree".
If you want cast time, press "Insightful".

Carbonised

You do realise that with Evasion changes, PvP will be nothing but heavy armor Stamblades with cloak. Extreme defenses due to heavy armor, even more defense against AoE due to Evasion, and the possibility to evade all single target damage with the click of a button - cloak. Meanwhile, all their single target abilities, which are the majority of their toolkit, including their ult, their proc and all their powerful skills, are working at full capacity against anyone since they are not affected by major evasion.

Your double standards are extremely blindsided, on one hand you nerf shields because they were "clearly out of line", at the same time, you hand out a huge buff to a class and spec that was already ruling supreme in both Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds.
Or is it perfectly alright to have heavy armor stamblades being clearly out of line in every PvP environment?

Cinbri

Weapon damage enchant procing not only on light attacks but also on skills now is great addition. Can safely backbar it now.

John_Falstaff

By the way, if anyone tested - would Twin Slashes and morphs now proc both glyphs of DW bar on cooldown, even after bar swap? If so, might as well leave weapon damage glyph on infused off hand since it should proc reliably on both bars while dot's running.

Agenericname

John_Falstaff wrote: »

Magicka folks on PTS, could you run a few rounds of vMA and see how shields feel with 1s cast time? I have a feeling that it's a disaster in making.

I've run 2 characters with shields on PTS so far. My magsorc with empowered ward and my templar with harness magicka and healing ward.

I'm not maxed CP and dont have BiS gear and I've yet to clear vMA. I'm on the final boss. So you're getting this from closer to a new-ish guy perspective.

The magsorc wasnt all that bad. It took a little adjustment, but overall not bad. My biggest issue was using the vanilla UI vs my add ons and how I see the shield and its duration. I was over casting a few abilities (mainly the shield to avoid a lapse) which lead to resource management issues.

Calculating the damage with resistance prior does increase the strength and duration significantly, even in vMA. There were still times of heavy damage when the shield got ate up quickly, but not as quickly. Getting caught with the shield down can be nasty.

I'm not a fan of how the cast times feel, but as far as functionality, for me, in vMA, it wasnt as bad as I had anticipated it would be. I was initially concerned about how the changes would affect play such as vMA for newer players. I really dont think that it's going to put a clear out of reach.

John_Falstaff

@Agenericname , thanks for giving it a go. There's some hope at least; I wondered earlier if mobs will be interrupting the cast often, but apparently ZOS is going to make it uninterruptible.

I'm curious what we'll have on 3rd week of PTS, and after people will give it a go in vCR.

Bladerunner1

John_Falstaff wrote: »

By the way, if anyone tested - would Twin Slashes and morphs now proc both glyphs of DW bar on cooldown, even after bar swap? If so, might as well leave weapon damage glyph on infused off hand since it should proc reliably on both bars while dot's running.

Yes, rending slashes keeps up a 90-95% infused berserker enchant uptime, 3kdps from an infused disease enchantment on the other dagger, another 3k poison enchantment from a back bar infused bow.
DW has an overall 3-4k dps buff compared to live. Bow/Bow and 2H/Bow not so much, more like 1kdps if there's a weapon DOT running on both weapon bars.

Universe

General feedback:
1. Undaunted Passives: I have undaunted passives and they are useful, but they shouldn't work in PVP since they give an unfair advantage over too many players who don't have high undaunted guild rank.
2. Eye of the Storm: This ultimate ability morph is being spammed in cyrodiil way too often.
It is OP when many Eye of the Storm are stack in one area and there is little counter play to deal with this.
This contributes to unskilled gameplay when there are 6+ eye of the storm running in groups.
This ability shouldn't be the only ultimate being spammed(it's being overused by far too many, it suggests something is missing and there is a balance issue).
This ability should be adjusted so it won't over perform.
I suggest to make it so that it can't be stacked or it can only be stacked twice.
If this adjustment isn't good, you can reduce it's area of effect by additional 3 meters.

AceAegis

For the medium armor changes, can we add a change to the elude skill?
Elude = Get Minor evasion. Removes all snares and immobilizations from you and grants immunity for 8 seconds, 2700 stamina. While slotted reduce sprint cost by 10 percent.

This will give people a choice for more or less mobility and aoe defensiveness.

Bladerunner1

John_Falstaff wrote: »

By the way, if anyone tested - would Twin Slashes and morphs now proc both glyphs of DW bar on cooldown, even after bar swap? If so, might as well leave weapon damage glyph on infused off hand since it should proc reliably on both bars while dot's running.

I made a mistake on my earlier reply since I forgot the test included Deadly Cloak in addition to Rending Slashes.

Enchantments are proccing a little less often without Deadly Cloak.

Rending slashes only:

80-85% Berserker Uptime, 2.7k dps Disease Glyph

Rending and Deadly Cloak:

90-95% Berserker Uptime, 3.2k dps Disease Glyph

Live with Rending and Deadly Cloak:

40-45% Berserker Uptime, 2.2 kdps Disease Glyph

Elsterchen

Universe wrote: »

General feedback:
1. Undaunted Passives: I have undaunted passives and they are useful, but they shouldn't work in PVP since they give an unfair advantage over too many players who don't have high undaunted guild rank.
2. Eye of the Storm: This ultimate ability morph is being spammed in cyrodiil way too often.
It is OP when many Eye of the Storm are stack in one area and there is little counter play to deal with this.
This contributes to unskilled gameplay when there are 6+ eye of the storm running in groups.
This ability shouldn't be the only ultimate being spammed(it's being overused by far too many, it suggests something is missing and there is a balance issue).
This ability should be adjusted so it won't over perform.
I suggest to make it so that it can't be stacked or it can only be stacked twice.
If this adjustment isn't good, you can reduce it's area of effect by additional 3 meters.

Ability reads:

Create a cataclysmic storm above you that builds for 2 seconds then lays waste to all enemies in the area, dealing 616 Magic Damage every 1 second for 7 seconds.
The storm is cast above you, and follows you wherever you move.

28m range
8m radius
(Ground)

-> I would assume its concidered an aoe and will be getting the evasion treatment in PVP (i.e. 25% damage reduction when hitting a target that actively uses evasion (utilized in any way))

Maybe some stickwielders have time to test this explicitly? ... I only know jabs damage is going to be reduced by alot if enemy uses new evasion in PVP.

Zer0oo

Can we look at the balance in no-cp pvp? bg are no no-cp so it would be time to balance around no cp

• Procs are really over performing(including infused/torugs oblivion enchants)
• Bleeds are also extrem strong(ignoring resistances and with the less healing you have dot builds are really strong)
• mag chars have a hard time dealing with roots and snares
• everything that has some fixed value that does not scale with stats is extrem strong in no cp

jerrodbuffington

My perspective is pve related. The shield cast time to me is horrible. It will make content way harder. If I cant instantly shield when I need it then I will die more. Maybe some are just not smart enough to know when the damage is coming all the time. It can be learned I geuss, but this game already takes way more time to learn than any other. If the conal poison blast from vas lands on me as mag character I block cast shield. If a stam toon gets targeted they block and cast vigor..but if the shield has a cast time I cant block cast it. can other stats be learned? Yes.. but it further widens the gap between the great teams and the casual teams. Vma will be rediculous with a vast time shield for those of us who dont memorize everything.

The cast time shield
1) widens the gap between top players and the players who struggle.(me)
2) makes the hardest content in the game even more frustrating.
3) will require even more time to learn how to survive.

There has to be other options for the shields. Cast time makes us more vulnerable in a time we need a rescue.

My 6 month eso subscription is up and I'm not gonna renew it until I see how these changes are when they go live. I like playing this game, please dont make it so difficult that it's not fun.

Would the company miss my subscription? No.. they will continue on, no doubt.. but if this causes people to quit then the people left will also suffer bu not having people to complete the content.

idk

The animation for magicka based shields is far longer than the 1 second activation time.

Queueing a skill on the same bar seems to cut the animation short to at least approximately one second, but bar swap has to be timed to AC properly.

You are well aware that a vast majority of players are challenged with the most basic aspects of AC so this change will disproportionally harm the more casual players. Even more so since the players that clear the most challenging content tend to do a better job of avoiding damage and have the most skilled healers. Of course this still hinders even the best players in the newest content where magicka is heavily used due to the sheer damage put into the fights and virtual requirements of having dps go to areas without a healer.

It has been suggested the use of a debuff that either decreased the effectiveness or increases the cost of the next shield would serve the game much better as either would require more strategic use of the shield skills. The debuff can be set to end 4 seconds after the shield either expires or is destroyed. Of course 4 seconds is borrowing from the debuff on the Sorc Streak skill which has served the game well.

Frawr

I enjoy this game but this development team seems intent on ruining it.

I want the game that I bought 4 years ago It was really fun. These days the meta is a proc set lag fest. It is like a left wing SJW testing ground to see what 'equality of outcome' you can force on the player-base while still maintaining a steady revenue stream.

I am happy to pay monthly and even buy crowns to buy other stuff e.g. mount speeds xp pots to level alts. I really really want to give you more money. I really don't want to cancel my sub and go play another game...

But you make such awful design decisions that I just cannot face giving you the money.

The changes that you make to combat have no tangible common thread. It looks as though you examine a spreadsheet each quarter and nerf whatever is being used the most.

If the combat team had been on holiday for the last 4 years then the game would be more fun for me (and ZOS you'd have had an extra £240 + whatever crowns i had purchased).

Think about that - each time you make some change to reduce the impact of player skill and replace it with a new armour set, you lose money from players like me.


The changes that you have made over the last 4 years just look like you don't want people to be better at the game than other people. Who do you think you are pleasing with these changes? Those Light-attack-spamming newbs are not going to notice the difference regardless of what you do, but those streamers who tell thousands of people that you don't know what you're doing to your own game - I wonder how much that costs you.

Remove the stupid sets and raise the player skill ceiling back up to where it was at launch.
Put the speed (and other) calculations back on the client to give us back the Cyrodiil performance of launch.

Please understand: I would rather have a few cheaters if the PVP experience were to be playable. Your changes made it sh*t for all of your players just to stamp out a few cheaters.

Please ZOS - I really want to give you my money, please change direction.

John_Falstaff

By the way, I probably had a momentary fugue or something... I seem to have missed a moment since which shields cannot be stacked anymore - somebody remind, when that change was introduced?..

olsborg

Bleeds are currently grossly OP on live, you can stack multiple bleeds from one player and they all ignore resistances and can crit etc, they are especially potent with dw master axes. I was hoping you would adjust these for pts, but so far no good.

Elsterchen

olsborg wrote: »

Bleeds are currently grossly OP on live, you can stack multiple bleeds from one player and they all ignore resistances and can crit etc, they are especially potent with dw master axes. I was hoping you would adjust these for pts, but so far no good.

Been worried about bleeds and oblivion damage as well, but it seems these are the options left specifically for Medium-(DW- to a lesser extend) users. The transition from primarily aoe dmg builds to primarily single target builds in PVP is a little easier this way (evasion changes). Imo.

NBrookus

John_Falstaff wrote: »

By the way, I probably had a momentary fugue or something... I seem to have missed a moment since which shields cannot be stacked anymore - somebody remind, when that change was introduced?..

Same-skill shields cannot be stacked. You can't have 2 Igneous for example.

John_Falstaff

@NBrookus , thanks; the wording is awkward and, for a moment, I had the impression that no shields can be stacked anymore, even from different abilities. Which would be a trifle upsetting.

rosendoichinoveb17_ESO

Those last patch new changes to shields do nothing for PvE as interrupting is not the problem there. The problem is that in most cases you have less than 1 second to cast a shield or you are dead.

They totally miss the point for the necessity of shields in PVE:

Magicka based characters have a lot less resistances compared to stamina and therefore take a lot more damage. Also stamina characters have other instant cast defensive abilities such as blade cloak. Also stamina DDs have a lot larger stamina pool to dodge roll and block one shot mechanics compared to magicka.

Also in trials stamina characters are stacked on the boss and constantly focused by healers. Magicka are ranged and get a lot less healing. Just force all stamina DDs to swap positions with magicka DDs and they will be most certainly dead.

These are the main reasons on why we are trying ZOS to change their minds for the shield cast times.

I just know that only the top leader-boards will be able to complete vAS+2 and vCR+3. My group does 100k+ score in vAS and I know that we will need at least 10 hours of practice to even clear the thing with the shield cast times as a lot of people will be dead and the group will wipe because of that. You cannot just avoid the one shot mechanics there if not casing a shield. If you have a one second of cast time on the shield while someone near you is targeted with the poison cone you are just going to die. Dodge rolling this mechanic also results in insta-deaths in most cases are usually people need to shield and block walk away from the cone. Also people will not be able to cast a shield while kiting the meteors as it will slow their movement and result in a certain death.

As suggested by other members here there are a lot of better alternatives to nerf shields rather than that horrible cast time:

- increase the cost of consecutive shield casts (the same as how streak functions)
- decrease the the shield strength

Solariken

zos_GinaBruno wrote:

Combat pets will now take 0 damage while in a Dungeon, Trial, or Group Arena.

I sincerely hope they were smart enough to make this also mean that pets will take 0 aggro lol.

Rikumaru

Rest in pieces swift

olsborg

Forward momentum is still the better choice by far for snare and root immunity. You might be looking at 2-3s with Shuffle in regular pvp setup and 5s with Forward momentum, only Shuffle costs almost double stamina to use.

Solariken

The nerf to Swift is too heavy-handed. How about 8% for Swift (or 6% movement and 6% sprint) and also 8% for the Steed Mundus?

idk

Most shield morphs and bastion are not useful over the base skill. One morph seems to have not been changed over it's performance on live.

With 38k magicka and 17,156 Health, 5 pc light armor, No CP into Bastion

Conjured Ward and both morphs are 7088

Annulment is 7088
Dampen Magic is only 6862
Harness Magicka shields for 19,928

With 38k magicka and 17,156 Health, 5 pc light armor, 23 points into Bastion (10% increase)

Conjured Ward and both morphs are 7089

BUG with Hardened Ward - If the 23 points was placed into Bastion after the morph was selected the shield tooltip increased to 7789 but the shield itself remained 7089. Logging out and back in did not correct this discrepancy.

Annulment - 7089
Dampen Magicka is only 6863
Harness Magicka is 19,929

Conclusion

Clearly Bastion is no longer worth placing any points into for magicka shields.

Hardened Ward is a useless morph as it provides nothing over the base skill. It also has the tooltip bug listed above.

Harness Magicka is certainly overperforming.

The fix for Dampen Magic seems to have made the skill worse than the base skill rather. Adding 2 more pieces lf light armor did not change the shield strength. It seems capped at a lower HP than even the base morph.
Dampen Magic (morph): Fixed an issue where this morph was not scaling in size based on how many pieces of Light Armor your character was wearing.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Wrobel @ZOS_Finn

BTW, 100 points into Bastion (25%) did not increase shield strength further. It did increase the tooltip error with Hardened ward.

Rianai

Mobility nerfs are too much.
Nerfing Swift down to 8% at golden quality would be enough i think, especially when considering the nerf to Forward Momentum. Skills and Sets which grant Major Expedition didn't need any nerfs at all - they already saw little use. 4s buff for 3-4k cost (and in case of DK's chains even additional limitations) is very underwhelming. Also balance doesn't mean making everything equal. Skills still have different costs and additional benefits (or downsides), so equalizing the expedition duration doesn't necessarily increase balance. Major Expedition procs from Sets aren't that easy to obtain in PvP and speed isn't an issue in PvE, so the durations were ok. Again no nerfs needed. Small (!) nerfs to speed pots are justifyed i guess, just don't cut them down too much. Maybe 30s would be ok?