ZOS: You seem to have pushed people away from medium and light armour, rather than towards. (PVP)

jcm2606

With these changes, what is the actual point of running medium and light armour in PVP? Both lost their forms of mitigation, and you can easily offset the damage/sustain loss in heavy.

Light armour saw a 1-second cast time be tacked onto their only form of mitigation. While light armour did see the introduction of snare reduction and sprint cost reduction, it in no way makes up for the utterly pointless nerf to shields. Consider Zenimax's wording in their Update 20 Preview article: "provide counterplay opportunities for Damage Shield Abilities". Counterplay. They already did so by allowing players to deal critical strikes against shields, that right there is a form of counterplay. A form of damage such as oblivion damage, or some new type of damage that is more effective against shields, is also a form of counterplay. A 1-second cast time is not counterplay, it is a nerf, and ultimately a pointless nerf, considering that critical strikes against shields is likely more than enough.

Medium armour saw the removal of passive dodge chance from its active ability, Evasion, and its morphs. A passive dodge mechanic is arguably a bit strong, especially with a long duration, but this rebalance has indirectly made this active ability simply not worth running. Evasion, specifically Shuffle, is the skill that made medium viable for the vast majority of builds in PVP. Not for the passive dodge chance (though it helped tremendously), but for the snare removal and immunity.

Most stam builds that run heavy armour ran the Forward Momentum morph of 2H's Momentum ability, which removes snares and grants 8 seconds of snare immunity. If you were in medium, however, you were able to run Shuffle to gain Major Evasion (passive dodge chance), and 2.5-3.5 seconds of snare immunity & snare removal. This allowed you to run the other morph of Momentum, Rally, which granted access to a powerful burst heal.

Shuffle, prior to the Major Evasion changes, was already hard to justify running as it only granted 2.5-3.5 seconds of snare immunity with a cost of 3888 stamina, compared to Forward Momentum which grants 8 seconds of snare immunity, for 1783 stamina. Before the Major Evasion changes it was hard to justify, now it's unjustifiable. 3888 stamina for 2.5-3.5 seconds of snare immunity and some AOE damage reduction is ridiculous, and what does medium get in return? 3% weapon damage buff. Yep, you heard right, 3%.

All of the changes above don't pull people towards medium and light armour, they push people away from them. What's the point when you can get superior max health, healing, sustain, mitigation, and potentially damage from heavy? Light armour needs the 1-second cast time removed, medium needs its snare immunity and mobility looked at. Badly. And while we're at it, remove the damn 1-second cast time from Sorc's shields, they follow the same logic as the light armour shield.

NyassaV

One second cast time is incredibly stupid and unnecessary. remove shield breaker from the ga e while you are at it

Biro123

Don't forget shields using resists... Another push to heavy.

olsborg

jcm2606 wrote: »

Shuffle, prior to the Major Evasion changes, was already hard to justify running as it only granted 2.5-3.5 seconds of snare immunity with a cost of 3888 stamina, compared to Forward Momentum which grants 8 seconds of snare immunity, for 1783 stamina.

I do agree on this point, strongly. The root and snare immunity in 5-7 medium armor is riduculously weak for a 3.8k cost. It needs to be at the very least 6-8 seconds. I do welcome the other change, I never rly like the randomness of evasion, I much rather prefer the aoe dmg reduction.

_Ahala_

Where is the counterplay for a light armor Magden against medium and heavy characters now... tell me... I can wait

DDuke

Agreed, and I'd like to point out that dodge roll also lost a lot of iframes due/thanks (I think in general this is a good change) to this:

Updated the interaction between Roll Dodge and projectiles.
Fixed an issue where a projectile would always be dodged if the target was Roll Dodging at the moment the projectile was created.
Projectiles can now only be evaded if the Roll Dodge occurs within one second prior to their impact.

...which is a hit to (mostly) medium armor's survivability.


Also I find it a bit weird that ZOS decided to give medium armor more damage, which is something it didn't exactly lack.

What medium armor lacks (now even more so than before) is survivability and identity compared to heavy armor.


You're supposed to be quick & avoid hits in medium armor, but after this patch you avoid even less as Major Evasion is gone and heavy can still be just as quick (Swift+Speed Pots) with more or less permanent snare immunity from Forward Momentum.


Not cool.

leepalmer95

Zos have no clue what they're doing.

On a mag sorc currently i struggle to kill anything with a brain in pvp, i simply cannot burst heavy users because my dmg sucks and imy burst is so telegraphed.

Zos achieved:

Making shields weaker when they was already weak open world.
Critting shields basically gave everyone 50-60% dps burst boost again them.

Then to 'counter' this they let armour value reduce dmg... sure my light armour is going to make such a difference.

Which means i'll be forced into heavy, i'll get little benefit to the light buffs, i'll have to get more sustain and overall lose even more dmg than i do now.



Literally the worst combat balancing team i've seen in any game i've ever played.

NBrookus

jcm2606 wrote: »

With these changes, what is the actual point of running medium and light armour in PVP? Both lost their forms of mitigation, and you can easily offset the damage/sustain loss in heavy.

Light armour saw a 1-second cast time be tacked onto their only form of mitigation. While light armour did see the introduction of snare reduction and sprint cost reduction, it in no way makes up for the utterly pointless nerf to shields.

Many damage oriented magDKs and magplars have been running light for several patches now without shields. You can build quite tanky in light armor while retaining the other light armor benefits.

The light armor changes are small buffs that I like; I run sprint cost reduction in CP in this speed meta Wolfhunter patch that I can now allocate elsewhere (or keep.)

That said, I see nothing that makes heavy less desireable for stamina toons. They don't need more damage. The changes to medium basically buff gankblades... and they don't need more damage either.

Ocelot9x

As a -mostly- only pvp player who spent 3 years pvping as a stamina toon I welcome the change to shuffle. Shuffle was OP when everything was dodgeable,they needed it by 5% then they made burst inevitable (if you don’t know *** to land a 100% sure burst pls don’t bother responding). What really killed medium builds was the unavoidable death when 2+ people dropped an undogeable hard cc+burst on you,so people started building for more passive mitigation.
AoE mitigation is what medium really needed (and is huge) so I think I’ll give medium armor a try (couldn’t be worse than now lol)

DeadlyRecluse

Biro123 wrote: »

Don't forget shields using resists... Another push to heavy.

I'm curious to see if a heavy armor shield-using magsorc build emerges out of these changes. Probably something high sustain, possibly with pets and Daedric curse for pressure. It's not looking great, though.

jaws343

NBrookus wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

With these changes, what is the actual point of running medium and light armour in PVP? Both lost their forms of mitigation, and you can easily offset the damage/sustain loss in heavy.

Light armour saw a 1-second cast time be tacked onto their only form of mitigation. While light armour did see the introduction of snare reduction and sprint cost reduction, it in no way makes up for the utterly pointless nerf to shields.

Many damage oriented magDKs and magplars have been running light for several patches now without shields. You can build quite tanky in light armor while retaining the other light armor benefits.

The light armor changes are small buffs that I like; I run sprint cost reduction in CP in this speed meta Wolfhunter patch that I can now allocate elsewhere (or keep.)

That said, I see nothing that makes heavy less desireable for stamina toons. They don't need more damage. The changes to medium basically buff gankblades... and they don't need more damage either.

Magplars and magdks have extremely strong instant self healing, including damage skills that heal. Magsorc does not have this.

The_Brosteen

"Some aoe damage reduction"

So can we add "some damage increase" and just add major beserk passively for 5 piece medium

redspecter23

This almost feels like we're seeing half the picture. The intention is to balance defense and offense for the armor sets perhaps? Light and medium both lost some defense and gained some small offensive benefits, but I may have missed the notes on heavy losing some of its offensive punch. If we also see heavy lose much of its damage potential, it might make more sense, even if I don't agree with all the changes.

MehVahdJukaar

"You seem to have pushed people away from medium and light armour, rather than towards"
I totally agree with this. It proves that they have absolutely no clue of what they are talking about and would rather have a flawless crown store that a well balanced game. Every "balance" change they claim they make each patch instead goes either into stripping every class of what uniqueness it had or into buffing the class/playstyle that was already overperforming(i.e. nb in pve, heavy armor pvp). I really hope they see this. After this patch I won't be surprised if there will be a big player base drop.

NBrookus

jaws343 wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

With these changes, what is the actual point of running medium and light armour in PVP? Both lost their forms of mitigation, and you can easily offset the damage/sustain loss in heavy.

Light armour saw a 1-second cast time be tacked onto their only form of mitigation. While light armour did see the introduction of snare reduction and sprint cost reduction, it in no way makes up for the utterly pointless nerf to shields.

Many damage oriented magDKs and magplars have been running light for several patches now without shields. You can build quite tanky in light armor while retaining the other light armor benefits.

The light armor changes are small buffs that I like; I run sprint cost reduction in CP in this speed meta Wolfhunter patch that I can now allocate elsewhere (or keep.)

That said, I see nothing that makes heavy less desireable for stamina toons. They don't need more damage. The changes to medium basically buff gankblades... and they don't need more damage either.

Magplars and magdks have extremely strong instant self healing, including damage skills that heal. Magsorc does not have this.

I agree; I was just responding to the notion that no one will run light in PVP. Magicka really can't make up the damage while in heavy like stam can, but you can be pretty tanky in light.

Mag sorc either needs a good heal that doesn't have to be double-barred or Ward cast time needs to be reverted.

Hutch679

Yeah in what way does light and medium look better than heavy now? Lol this is hilarious! ZOS thinks they make medium and light better and instead they completely break them and essentially super buff heavy armor hahahaha! They created the game and still can't figure it out! It's so comical lmaoooooooo

BigBadVolk

NyassaV wrote: »

One second cast time is incredibly stupid and unnecessary. remove shield breaker from the ga e while you are at it

tbh with the change shieldbreaker got nerfed too, cause if there are no sorcs in cyro, there is no use of shieldbreaker gg ZoS

lucky_Sage

I've never said this about a patch but this patch notes are the worst this game has ever had

katorga

Many damage oriented magDKs and magplars have been running light for several patches now without shields.

Massive burst healing, something sorcs and mageblades don't have access to. DK's and Magplars will be directly countered by the soldier of anguish set regardless of using light or heavy armor. Sorc's will be countered crushing shock or bash.

Convert to a stam sorc for this patch.

nemvar

katorga wrote: »

Many damage oriented magDKs and magplars have been running light for several patches now without shields.

Massive burst healing, something sorcs and mageblades don't have access to. DK's and Magplars will be directly countered by the soldier of anguish set regardless of using light or heavy armor. Sorc's will be countered crushing shock or bash.

Convert to a stam sorc for this patch.

Dark Deal got nerfed. Sorry I meant that it got buffed by 2%. This buff was paid for with your soul having half the resources be restored over 20 seconds effectively cutting the restore in half and giving you about ~230 additional stamina regen (which does not get modified in any way by anything). Stamsorc sucks now.

The only way to have fun playing solo is oneshotting nubs as a NB. Deal with it.

EDIT: Also Overload doesn't grant a third bar anymore, so another appeal of stamsorc gone.

LittlePinkDot

Didnt they say there was suppose to be changes to sustain?

IAVITNI

DDuke wrote: »

Agreed, and I'd like to point out that dodge roll also lost a lot of iframes due/thanks (I think in general this is a good change) to this:

Updated the interaction between Roll Dodge and projectiles.
Fixed an issue where a projectile would always be dodged if the target was Roll Dodging at the moment the projectile was created.
Projectiles can now only be evaded if the Roll Dodge occurs within one second prior to their impact.

...which is a hit to (mostly) medium armor's survivability.


Also I find it a bit weird that ZOS decided to give medium armor more damage, which is something it didn't exactly lack.

What medium armor lacks (now even more so than before) is survivability and identity compared to heavy armor.


You're supposed to be quick & avoid hits in medium armor, but after this patch you avoid even less as Major Evasion is gone and heavy can still be just as quick (Swift+Speed Pots) with more or less permanent snare immunity from Forward Momentum.


Not cool.

Should they decrease Roll Dodge stacking costs at this point? A lot of dodge change was removed and the value of each individual dodge roll got diminished as well.

I think the weapon damage was to bring stam damage up in PvE and to increase heals in PvP, since it would be needed due to increased incoming damage.

I was against it before, but now giving Shuffle increased root and snare immunity sounds perfectly fair. Forward Momentum can be changed to solely snare, but target can still be rooted. Maybe decrease duration of roots/allow players to "Break Free" from snares while the skill is slotted.

DDuke

IAVITNI wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Agreed, and I'd like to point out that dodge roll also lost a lot of iframes due/thanks (I think in general this is a good change) to this:

Updated the interaction between Roll Dodge and projectiles.
Fixed an issue where a projectile would always be dodged if the target was Roll Dodging at the moment the projectile was created.
Projectiles can now only be evaded if the Roll Dodge occurs within one second prior to their impact.

...which is a hit to (mostly) medium armor's survivability.


Also I find it a bit weird that ZOS decided to give medium armor more damage, which is something it didn't exactly lack.

What medium armor lacks (now even more so than before) is survivability and identity compared to heavy armor.


You're supposed to be quick & avoid hits in medium armor, but after this patch you avoid even less as Major Evasion is gone and heavy can still be just as quick (Swift+Speed Pots) with more or less permanent snare immunity from Forward Momentum.


Not cool.

Should they decrease Roll Dodge stacking costs at this point? A lot of dodge change was removed and the value of each individual dodge roll got diminished as well.

I think the weapon damage was to bring stam damage up in PvE and to increase heals in PvP, since it would be needed due to increased incoming damage.

I was against it before, but now giving Shuffle increased root and snare immunity sounds perfectly fair. Forward Momentum can be changed to solely snare, but target can still be rooted. Maybe decrease duration of roots/allow players to "Break Free" from snares while the skill is slotted.

Maybe, I'm not sure at this point...

I tested the dodge roll iframe changes on PTS, but failed to really notice any difference to how it works on Live server. Here's a quick video I recorded on PTS:
https://youtu.be/OobskWU_Xk0

...you'll notice that contrary to what the patch notes imply, I'm still dodging snipes during their cast time & having the projectiles miss - i.e. it seems to work exactly as it does on Live still.

I'd like to be able to test the full extent changes of this update before rendering opinions on medium armor.

brandonv516

Double post.

brandonv516

Yeah pic didn't work...

jcm2606

olsborg wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Shuffle, prior to the Major Evasion changes, was already hard to justify running as it only granted 2.5-3.5 seconds of snare immunity with a cost of 3888 stamina, compared to Forward Momentum which grants 8 seconds of snare immunity, for 1783 stamina.

I do agree on this point, strongly. The root and snare immunity in 5-7 medium armor is riduculously weak for a 3.8k cost. It needs to be at the very least 6-8 seconds. I do welcome the other change, I never rly like the randomness of evasion, I much rather prefer the aoe dmg reduction.

Yeah, I agree that a random chance to dodge a given skill can be a bit too strong, my point was more that Major Evasion is what made Shuffle sort of justifiable for the stamina cost. 3888 stamina for 2.5-3.5 seconds of snare immunity, combined with a random chance to dodge incoming attacks for ~20 seconds.

Now that Major Evasion has been changed to an AOE reduction buff, realistically you'd only be running it for the snare immunity, in which case, what's the point of running a skill worth 3888 stamina that only grants 2.5-3.5 seconds of immunity? There's no point.

If Evasion (the skill) makes it to live the way it is now, I'm just going to be dropping it on my stamDK, and will probably move to heavy.

redspecter23 wrote: »

This almost feels like we're seeing half the picture. The intention is to balance defense and offense for the armor sets perhaps? Light and medium both lost some defense and gained some small offensive benefits, but I may have missed the notes on heavy losing some of its offensive punch. If we also see heavy lose much of its damage potential, it might make more sense, even if I don't agree with all the changes.

The problem is, how would they do that? For stam at least, the offense of heavy comes from the sets that you can run, combined with being able to play more aggressively with the mitigation of heavy. The only way to reduce damage while in heavy is to literally make it reduce damage done, which sounds too "clunky" to me. As if it was shoehorned in with no forethought (which it would be, this is Zenimax we're talking about).

DDuke wrote: »

Agreed, and I'd like to point out that dodge roll also lost a lot of iframes due/thanks (I think in general this is a good change) to this:

Updated the interaction between Roll Dodge and projectiles.
Fixed an issue where a projectile would always be dodged if the target was Roll Dodging at the moment the projectile was created.
Projectiles can now only be evaded if the Roll Dodge occurs within one second prior to their impact.

...which is a hit to (mostly) medium armor's survivability.


Also I find it a bit weird that ZOS decided to give medium armor more damage, which is something it didn't exactly lack.

What medium armor lacks (now even more so than before) is survivability and identity compared to heavy armor.


You're supposed to be quick & avoid hits in medium armor, but after this patch you avoid even less as Major Evasion is gone and heavy can still be just as quick (Swift+Speed Pots) with more or less permanent snare immunity from Forward Momentum.


Not cool.

Yep. The snare immunity between Forward Momentum and Shuffle need to be swapped in my opinion, with Shuffle getting the 8 seconds and FM getting 4 seconds. The cost of Shuffle is way too high for the immunity it gives.

BrokenGameMechanics

Trying evaluate the new Shuffle/Evasion here.

If I'm running Medium, most likely I'm wielding DW or 2H.
If 2H -> FM superior CC immun for less cost.
If DW -> Deadly Cloak gives me Major Evasion (25% AOE reduct) + 3 sec tic Damage over 15 secs + Enchant procing + Direct Melee procing of Sets (specifically will proc Selenes, which DW Rapids doens't and Rending doesn't except the intial hit as both are considered indirect melee)

If I take the CC and then absorb the break free cost, I'll get CC immun (4 secs??).

In other words, seems to be to take FM or Deadly Cloak over Shuffle every time. The couple of secs of CC immun for the cost seems to be poor in comparison to the other options.

Ocelot9x

BrokenGameMechanics wrote: »

Trying evaluate the new Shuffle/Evasion here.

If I'm running Medium, most likely I'm wielding DW or 2H.
If 2H -> FM superior CC immun for less cost.
If DW -> Deadly Cloak gives me Major Evasion (25% AOE reduct) + 3 sec tic Damage over 15 secs + Enchant procing + Direct Melee procing of Sets (specifically will proc Selenes, which DW Rapids doens't and Rending doesn't except the intial hit as both are considered indirect melee)

If I take the CC and then absorb the break free cost, I'll get CC immun (4 secs??).

In other words, seems to be to take FM or Deadly Cloak over Shuffle every time. The couple of secs of CC immun for the cost seems to be poor in comparison to the other options.

BrokenGameMechanics wrote: »

Trying evaluate the new Shuffle/Evasion here.

If I'm running Medium, most likely I'm wielding DW or 2H.
If 2H -> FM superior CC immun for less cost.
If DW -> Deadly Cloak gives me Major Evasion (25% AOE reduct) + 3 sec tic Damage over 15 secs + Enchant procing + Direct Melee procing of Sets (specifically will proc Selenes, which DW Rapids doens't and Rending doesn't except the intial hit as both are considered indirect melee)

If I take the CC and then absorb the break free cost, I'll get CC immun (4 secs??).

In other words, seems to be to take FM or Deadly Cloak over Shuffle every time. The couple of secs of CC immun for the cost seems to be poor in comparison to the other options.

Lol no

Forward is good because the long snare immunity but any competent pvper prefer rally every day for the burst heal. Medium was unplayable so people swapped to heavy , then armor skills were locked behind armor type so people were forced to use forward. Forward is a good skill but rally is way better for every build that can remove snares in some other ways ( or have access to a burst heal like wardens)

jcm2606

Going to paste an excerpt from a comment I left, as it better explains how this change affects PVP, from what I can tell giving it some thought:

In PVP, this will just cause people to switch to Forward Momentum + Blade Cloak. Forward Momentum provides an extra 4-6 seconds of snare immunity, on top of Major Brutality and a HOT for 33 seconds, for 2.1x less stamina than Shuffle. Blade Cloak provides 8 seconds less AOE reduction, but it provides an additional DOT that can proc your dual wield enchants (now it can potentially proc both main and off hand enchants), and if you pick the Quick Cloak morph, it also provides 5 seconds of Major Expedition, for 1.7x less stamina. You get more out of Forward Momentum + Blade Cloak than Shuffle, at a far lower cost.

Assuming my math is right, which it probably isn't but whatever, Forward Momentum + Blade Cloak is 2.9x cheaper to maintain than Shuffle, if you want to keep 100% uptime on the snare immunity. That isn't counting over-casting Blade Cloak, either, since Blade Cloak could actually be cast every 2 casts of Forward Momentum, since the Blade Cloak duration is roughly half that of Forward Momentum's snare immunity. So Forward Momentum + Shuffle could actually get even cheaper.

The implications are greater than just foregoing Shuffle, too. The main thing that allows you to run medium in PVP is Shuffle: it provides another, albeit far inferior avenue to gaining snare immunity, which allows you to run Rally instead of Forward Momentum, and the mitigation from Major Evasion somewhat makes up for the lack of innate mitigation. Drop Shuffle, start using Forward Momentum + Blade Cloak, what's the point of running medium armour? Heavy offers better health, health recovery, healing, resistance, sustain (heavy attacks and Constitution), and potentially damage. I'm already thinking of swapping my stamDK over to heavy if Shuffle hits live the way it has currently, and I am certain I'm not the only one who will entertain this thought.

JinMori

OooH, sprint costs less on light armor, wow, ever wanted that on my light armor said no one ever....

Why does medium armor still have sneak passives when you can get them from ledgerman? can we just get physical penetration like light armor, that would actually be useful....

No one ever asked for sprint cost on light armor, did you even think before implementing this change? why would you need sprint cost reduction on light armor? you should not even have a big stamina pool on it since you are probably putting all your points into magicka if you are using light armor, so wouldn't it be better to give something that synergizes better with magicka rather than stamina i wonder?

I know, those are some pretty wild suggestions.

jcm2606

JinMori wrote: »

OooH, sprint costs less on light armor, wow, ever wanted that on my light armor said no one ever....

Why does medium armor still have sneak passives when you can get them from ledgerman? can we just get physical penetration like light armor, that would actually be useful....

No one ever asked for sprint cost on light armor, did you even think before implementing this change? why would you need sprint cost reduction on light armor? you should not even have a big stamina pool on it since you are probably putting all your points into magicka if you are using light armor, so wouldn't it be better to give something that synergizes better with magicka rather than stamina i wonder?

I know, those are some pretty wild suggestions.

To play devil's advocate, sort of, sprint cost and snare reduction is actually an upside for PVP. Ever since the snare meta hit, it's been common knowledge that mag had by far the hardest time dealing with it, since they had zero reduction to sprint cost and snare effectiveness/duration, and very few ways to access snare immunity. DK's Reflective Plate and vamp's Mist Form are the only abilities that offer snare immunity for magicka that come to mind.

Conversely, all stam classes have access to Forward Momentum (8 seconds of immunity) and Shuffle (0.5 seconds per piece of medium armour, 2.5 for 5, 3.0 for 6, 3.5 for 7).

When you look at the changes, this buff actually came at no cost, since the passive spot it now sits in was merged with Evocation. So, when you ignore the shield nerf(s), which I feel are separate to this buff and absolutely need to be addressed, magicka received a pretty good buff for free in PVP, and a somewhat useful free buff in PVE.