Some Feedback on "Evasion"

Izaki

I really like the changes in this patch. There are 2 suggestions that I've made back in Morrowind and Horns Of The Reach PTS cycles that are finally being applied (Siphoning Strikes functioning with Heavy Attacks and Physical Damage on the Absorb Stamina Glyph respectively). Yay I'm a visionary! Or maybe it was just common sense? I'm just hoping that this piece of feedback will get applied before the Update goes live and not in one and a half years. Anyway, the class rework is looking good (although some fine-tuning is definitely needed) and most of the non-class combat changes are also good. I'm here to provide some feedback on Evasion buffs, because it's one of the biggest changes this patch and frankly, the one with the most issues. The great thing is that they are easily fixable.

First and foremost and not-at-all-off-topic: 1 second cast time on shields. This is just too long. I can get on board with a cast-time however. In PvE, it will be a massive loss of DPS to apply a shield with a cast time. It also limits their usefulness too much, since for the most part, shields were an emergency button. I say reduce the cast-time to 0.5 seconds. It still breaks the fluidity of the gameplay and prevents shield spamming in both PvP and PvE, but without becoming a painfully long, clunky and unreliable form of defense.

Now let's get to the main part of what I wanted to give feedback on. Minor and Major Evasion. They need to be renamed! The name Evasion doesn't under any circumstances imply a buff that reduces AoE damage. So a name change is definitely in order.

A simple substitution of one buff for another raises a couple of issues with the abilities. Dodge Chance was an insanely strong buff since it allowed to avoid 100% of the damage of a given single target attack. AoE Damage reduction? Much more situational. The Blur morphs were previously very strong alternatives to Shuffle, but now, they pale in comparison. I'd even dare say that the Snare and Immobilization immunity on Shuffle itself should get a slight increase in duration.
- Blur morphs. Getting Minor Resistance buffs or a speed buff in addition to a reduction in AoE damage doesn't compare to what Shuffle is doing or what Deadly Cloak is doing. Why? Deadly Cloak deals damage, which means that its application isn't a DPS loss in most cases, since its not an "empty cast" that doesn't deal any damage. Shuffle removes snares and provides short immunity to them (the duration of the latter should be increased slightly by the way). None of the Blur morphs compare to these two skills. Nightblades have A LOT of ways of getting Major Expedition: Crippling Crasp/Debilitate, Twisting/Refreshing Path, Dodge-rolling with a Bow equipped being the most commonly used ones. Double Take is mostly used on Heavy Armor Stamblade builds that don't incorporate the use of a Bow, other than that, there's no reason to use it over Shuffle in PvP or Deadly Cloak in PvE other than getting 2% Critical Chance (unlikely) and getting the Hemorrhage passive on one of your skill bars. The Minor Resistance buffs are only about 2% damage mitigation, and having that as a morph effect on an ability that reduces AoE damage by 25% is laughable.
So some changes to Blur morphs are definitely in order. Suggestions off the top of my head would be to put both the Minor Resistances and Major Expedition on one of the morphs and then add a "Buff-While-Slotted" (Minor Vitality which used to be on Swallow Soul for example) for example. These are just examples off the top of my head and I'm sure ZOS will come up with better solutions if they put their heads at it.
- Elude. While getting extra duration could be interesting, I doubt anyone would give up Snare and Immobilization removal/immunity for it.

After reading the Class Rep meeting notes regarding Dual Wield and Two Handed weapons in veteran Trials, I also wanted to mention the fact that most Stamina classes don't even really use Deadly Cloak anymore. Firstly because they don't have the space on their bars or the time to apply it in their rotation, secondly because its a DPS loss to cast it instead of a spammable when Major group buffs are active (I can provide a more detailed explanation if people are interested) and thirdly because it's not needed in the majority of the boss fights (because of the abundance of Red Champion Points and great group ways to limit incoming damage). The only Hard Mode bosses where I've used and seen the best players use Deadly Cloak are: The Warrior, The Assembly General, Stonebreaker, The Saints (vAS+2) and Z'Maja (vCR+3) (but no one even plays Stamina builds on these two last mentioned raids so it doesn't really count). So Deadly Cloak is a necessity on a grand total of 3 bosses out of the 19 bosses on which Stamina builds are used. That's right. Deadly Cloak is not the reason why Dual Wield is preferred to Two-Handed weapons. I don't know why the Class Reps think so, since the reason is much simpler than that: its the Daggers and Twin Blade and Blunt! Dual Wielding 2 Daggers gives us a massive 10% crit chance. So if you want Two-Handed to be just as viable... GIVE US A GREATDAGGER! (Or considering the fact that no one knows what a "Greatdagger" actually is or could be, give us a 4th type of Two-Handed weapons that gives us 10% Crit Chance with the Heavy Weapons passive). I still very much agree on making the AoE Damage reduction buff accessible to all Stamina builds no matter the weapon choices.

My final piece of feedback on AoE Damage Reduction or the so-called "Evasion buffs" (really gotta change that name), is that the mitigation percentage should be reduced. Bring down Major Evasion from 25% to 15% (or 20%, but I'd lean more towards 15%).. Why? Because in PvP, most ultimates are AoE (Dawnbreaker, Dragon Leap, Crescent Sweep, Elemental Storm, Meteor, Standard, Nova, Negate, etc. etc.) Anyone who has a 25% AoE damage reduction will be virtually unkillable by these abilities. And here we're talking about Nightblades and Stamina classes (AKA the ones that are already at a strong advantage in the current patch). Just to make everyone happy and avoid the infamous "PvE getting nerfed because of PvP" comments, I'll also mention that if left at 25% mitigation, Mirage/Double Take will make Magblades once again the favored Magicka damage dealing class in Trials since they will have much stronger defensive capabilities than the others. Obviously, healers wearing sets like Gossamer are an option, but why have a healer wear Gossamer instead of a set that either boosts stats or buffs sustain? It would be much easier to just throw in some Magblades and call it a day. A 15% damage reduction is already very strong, but it is a bit more in line with other classes' defensive mechanics.

So there! My lots of cents on Evasion and some other stuff when I went off topic.

Izaki out

Sharee

Izaki wrote: »

In PvE, it will be a massive loss of DPS to apply a shield (1 sec cast time + 1 second GCD).

The GCD on a skill starts when the skill is activated, not when the cast completes. So there will be no loss of DPS, since casting a shield takes 1 second of your time both on PTS and on live.

Kanar

The other piece to address with 2h is that DW shouldn't get full strength of enchants and % based traits (nirn and infused). Each weapon on DW should have half strength enchant and half strength trait (already done for some traits like sharpened and precise, so do the same thing for nirn and infused).

Shuffle/evasion should have their cost reduced. As-is, no one can afford to run them in PvE even if we did have bar space.

Izaki

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

In PvE, it will be a massive loss of DPS to apply a shield (1 sec cast time + 1 second GCD).

The GCD on a skill starts when the skill is activated, not when the cast completes. So there will be no loss of DPS, since casting a shield takes 1 second of your time both on PTS and on live.

In theory, yes you are right (sort of). In practice, you are wrong. The reason why you're only sort of right, is because if the GCD did really start during the channel, you'd be able to queue the next ability and it would activate literally at the same time as your shield. That is not the case. The ability that you've queued will have a slight delay (about 0.3-0.4 seconds). Same goes for the light attacks (that's without mentioning the fact that its extremely clunky to do a light attack weave straight after a cast time ability, hello Dark Flare or Wrecking Blow). In practice, try just try activating a shield during your rotation on Live and then on the PTS. And check the DPS results.

Funny that the first comment isn't even about what 97% of the post is about though, didn't expect that heh

Izaki

Kanar wrote: »

The other piece to address with 2h is that DW shouldn't get full strength of enchants and % based traits (nirn and infused). Each weapon on DW should have half strength enchant and half strength trait (already done for some traits like sharpened and precise, so do the same thing for nirn and infused).

Shuffle/evasion should have their cost reduced. As-is, no one can afford to run them in PvE even if we did have bar space.

Yeah but that doesn't have much to do with Evasion itself so I didn't bother going even more off-topic that I have.

Sharee

Izaki wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

In PvE, it will be a massive loss of DPS to apply a shield (1 sec cast time + 1 second GCD).

The GCD on a skill starts when the skill is activated, not when the cast completes. So there will be no loss of DPS, since casting a shield takes 1 second of your time both on PTS and on live.

In theory, yes you are right (sort of). In practice, you are wrong. The reason why you're only sort of right, is because if the GCD did really start during the channel, you'd be able to queue the next ability and it would activate literally at the same time as your shield. That is not the case. The ability that you've queued will have a slight delay (about 0.3-0.4 seconds).

I was just testing shield on the PTS(because someone claimed the cast time is 2-3 seconds instead of 1). The result was that i was able to cast 39 shields in 46 seconds. That comes at slightly over 1.1 second per shield cast. So there definitely is not a 0.3-0.4 delay. (i can put the video on youtube if you want to see for yourself)

Izaki

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

In PvE, it will be a massive loss of DPS to apply a shield (1 sec cast time + 1 second GCD).

The GCD on a skill starts when the skill is activated, not when the cast completes. So there will be no loss of DPS, since casting a shield takes 1 second of your time both on PTS and on live.

In theory, yes you are right (sort of). In practice, you are wrong. The reason why you're only sort of right, is because if the GCD did really start during the channel, you'd be able to queue the next ability and it would activate literally at the same time as your shield. That is not the case. The ability that you've queued will have a slight delay (about 0.3-0.4 seconds).

I was just testing shield on the PTS(because someone claimed the cast time is 2-3 seconds instead of 1). The result was that i was able to cast 39 shields in 46 seconds. That comes at slightly over 1.1 second per shield cast. So there definitely is not a 0.3-0.4 delay. (i can put the video on youtube if you want to see for yourself)

That's not the test I'm asking you to do. Of course you can just spam a 1 second cast time ability and have almost no difference to a instant cast ability. What I'm saying is: activate the shield (or any other cast time ability for that matter, like the Acceleration thing from Psijic Order) and then activate another ability straight after you press your shield. If what you were saying was true (the GCD starts on skill cast) then both the shield and the instant cast ability you activated afterwards, would go off at exactly the same time. This is not the case.

Amdar_Godkiller

Kanar wrote: »

The other piece to address with 2h is that DW shouldn't get full strength of enchants and % based traits (nirn and infused). Each weapon on DW should have half strength enchant and half strength trait (already done for some traits like sharpened and precise, so do the same thing for nirn and infused).

Shuffle/evasion should have their cost reduced. As-is, no one can afford to run them in PvE even if we did have bar space.

No need to nerf DW. Let's just push form a buff to 2H, primarily by increasing light attack speed and the damage over time provided by cleave.

ankeor

Greatdagger? You mean short sword or something? xD
Rather have a long spear. People ask for spears for a long time anyway.

Sharee

Izaki wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

In PvE, it will be a massive loss of DPS to apply a shield (1 sec cast time + 1 second GCD).

The GCD on a skill starts when the skill is activated, not when the cast completes. So there will be no loss of DPS, since casting a shield takes 1 second of your time both on PTS and on live.

In theory, yes you are right (sort of). In practice, you are wrong. The reason why you're only sort of right, is because if the GCD did really start during the channel, you'd be able to queue the next ability and it would activate literally at the same time as your shield. That is not the case. The ability that you've queued will have a slight delay (about 0.3-0.4 seconds).

I was just testing shield on the PTS(because someone claimed the cast time is 2-3 seconds instead of 1). The result was that i was able to cast 39 shields in 46 seconds. That comes at slightly over 1.1 second per shield cast. So there definitely is not a 0.3-0.4 delay. (i can put the video on youtube if you want to see for yourself)

That's not the test I'm asking you to do. Of course you can just spam a 1 second cast time ability and have almost no difference to a instant cast ability. What I'm saying is: activate the shield (or any other cast time ability for that matter, like the Acceleration thing from Psijic Order) and then activate another ability straight after you press your shield. If what you were saying was true (the GCD starts on skill cast) then both the shield and the instant cast ability you activated afterwards, would go off at exactly the same time. This is not the case.

If GCD did not start on skill activation, i would not be able to spam one shield per second, period.

Izaki

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

In PvE, it will be a massive loss of DPS to apply a shield (1 sec cast time + 1 second GCD).

The GCD on a skill starts when the skill is activated, not when the cast completes. So there will be no loss of DPS, since casting a shield takes 1 second of your time both on PTS and on live.

In theory, yes you are right (sort of). In practice, you are wrong. The reason why you're only sort of right, is because if the GCD did really start during the channel, you'd be able to queue the next ability and it would activate literally at the same time as your shield. That is not the case. The ability that you've queued will have a slight delay (about 0.3-0.4 seconds).

I was just testing shield on the PTS(because someone claimed the cast time is 2-3 seconds instead of 1). The result was that i was able to cast 39 shields in 46 seconds. That comes at slightly over 1.1 second per shield cast. So there definitely is not a 0.3-0.4 delay. (i can put the video on youtube if you want to see for yourself)

That's not the test I'm asking you to do. Of course you can just spam a 1 second cast time ability and have almost no difference to a instant cast ability. What I'm saying is: activate the shield (or any other cast time ability for that matter, like the Acceleration thing from Psijic Order) and then activate another ability straight after you press your shield. If what you were saying was true (the GCD starts on skill cast) then both the shield and the instant cast ability you activated afterwards, would go off at exactly the same time. This is not the case.

If GCD did not start on skill activation, i would not be able to spam one shield per second, period.

I did say that you were sort of right in my first post, didn't I? I never said that GCD didn't start on skill activation, but I never confirmed it either. I don't know exactly how cast times work with global cooldowns, but what I do know is that if you're spamming the shield button without anything in between: its basically as if the shield were an instant cast, except instead of getting the shield on the press/release of the button, you'd be getting the shield 1 second after the press/release of the button. And I also know that if I queue an ability or a light attack immediately after I cast a shield (which has a 1 second cast time), the ability will not go off at exactly the same time as the shield, but will go off afterwards. Make whatever conclusion you want about the functionality of Cast Time abilities with Global Cooldowns, but you can't deny that a 1 second cast time on a shield will be a larger DPS loss then having an instant cast shield.

So you can keep arguing about one sentence in the 3 line off-topic paragraph in my Wall-Of-Text-OP if you want, but I'd rather talk about Evasion which is the main topic of this post.

Sharee

[edit] You know what, this is not really worth arguing about. All i wanted to say is - GCD starts at skill activation, not on cast completion. Its been like that ever since the game was released, and is true regardless of what skill you used, or what skill you use next.

Any delays you perceive are due to either internet latency, or imperfect button presses.

Izaki

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

I never said that GCD didn't start on skill activation

What you said was this: "If A was true, then B would be true. B is not true." - that is basically the same thing as saying A is not true.

"If what you were saying was true (the GCD starts on skill cast) then both the shield and the instant cast ability you activated afterwards, would go off at exactly the same time. This is not the case."


GCD starts on skill cast. Thats simply a fact.

It is possible that some skills include a delay after they complete (not GCD!) that will cause the next skill to start after said delay. For example, from the latest PTS patch notes:

Crystal Fragments (morph):

The icon on your action bar now changes when you have an instant-cast proc.
Fixed an issue where using the instant-cast proc would cause you to stop blocking, and would prevent you from taking other actions for 0.2 seconds.


But this is not the case with shield (otherwise the next shield would start after a delay, which it does not.).
I suspect what you called "GDC" is just an artifact of internet latency. It can make skill seem to fire much later than you would expect. The only advice i can give you - test it yourself with a long test. That is, try to spam a shield+other skill combo over and over, then count how many you did in a given period of time.

Just a couple of corrections:

1. I never explicitly said that you were wrong about the fact that the global cooldown starts on the release of the button because I have no idea how a GCD works with cast time abilities. I did say that you were right in theory but wrong in practice about the fact that there isn't any more of a time loss/DPS loss with the shield having a cast time. What I was saying in that quote, is that if the global cooldown on cast time abilities worked the same as with instant cast abilities, then you have both the shield and the queued ability going off at the exact same time, much like a synergy and a skill. They aren't however. The second ability is queued and activated after the cast finishes, which is perfectly logical and expected.

2. I'm not calling the delay between the skills a GCD. I know perfectly well what a global cooldown is. In all the previous posts, I've referred to the delay as the "delay of 0.3 or 0.4 seconds". Latency is latency and you can tell when it is coming into play.

3. What you should be doing is performing a rotation on Live with a shield cast every 10 seconds (or 12 or whatever as long as it is regular enough) and then performing the same thing on PTS and checking the CMX data for the number of total skill casts and light attacks. Its pointless just "spamming and counting" things because they don't represent an actual combat situation. A target dummy doesn't do that either, but it does enough to be able to come to a conclusion in a perfectly controlled environment. And a raid situation would amplify the number of lost skill casts and light attacks for obvious reasons.

Also its worth mentioning that a light attack weave in a perfectly controlled situation takes about 1.1-1.3 seconds. In your test, you were simply spamming the shield every 1.1 seconds. So you are losing time.

Sharee

Izaki wrote: »

2. I'm not calling the delay between the skills a GCD. I know perfectly well what a global cooldown is. In all the previous posts, I've referred to the delay as the "delay of 0.3 or 0.4 seconds". Latency is latency and you can tell when it is coming into play.

Dude, whatever you do, don't get caught blatantly lying. You DID call if GDC in your original post, before you edited it out just now. You can still see the unedited version in my first reply.

*throws hands up in the air and walks away*

Izaki

Sharee wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

2. I'm not calling the delay between the skills a GCD. I know perfectly well what a global cooldown is. In all the previous posts, I've referred to the delay as the "delay of 0.3 or 0.4 seconds". Latency is latency and you can tell when it is coming into play.

Dude, whatever you do, don't get caught blatantly lying. You DID call if GDC in your original post, before you edited it out just now. You can still see the unedited version in my first reply.

*throws hands up in the air and walks away*

Huh? I didn't edit this part out.

"In theory, yes you are right (sort of). In practice, you are wrong. The reason why you're only sort of right, is because if the GCD did really start during the channel, you'd be able to queue the next ability and it would activate literally at the same time as your shield. That is not the case. The ability that you've queued will have a slight delay (about 0.3-0.4 seconds)."

^ Here's the quote that you quoted in your first reply.

Sharee

[nvm]