[Class Reps] Meeting Notes - September 25

code65536

Nifty2g wrote: »

So now that cast time is removed, we're left with overly strong PvE shields with resistances. While that is cool and all, that should probably be removed for balance in the future.

Why not just allow shields to be crittable and no other change

@Nifty2g Um, I can only assume you missed the part about shields being capped to 40% of health? For the typical mag DD using Harness, that's shredding the shield size by half. You'd need to be at the resist cap for resistances on shields to compensate for this strength nerf, but no light armor wearer will be anywhere near the resist cap.

CritsTheBed

Acrolas wrote: »

I'm more concerned that this sends a message to certain people that you can throw tantrums and bully online until you get what you want.

I don't care what the developers decide on. They're the developers and they get to decide the creative direction the game takes. I have fourteen other characters to fall back on if one's ever not ideal for a certain situation.

Even giving the illusion that it's a community process has left us in worse shape than we were before Update 20 testing. The community needs to dial it back, and the developers need to grow a backbone because even without a lot of face time, it's still a leadership role and it has to feel like leadership. Not a constant push-pull with the social media comment sections

Acrolas wrote: »

I'm more concerned that this sends a message to certain people that you can throw tantrums and bully online until you get what you want.

I don't care what the developers decide on. They're the developers and they get to decide the creative direction the game takes. I have fourteen other characters to fall back on if one's ever not ideal for a certain situation.

Even giving the illusion that it's a community process has left us in worse shape than we were before Update 20 testing. The community needs to dial it back, and the developers need to grow a backbone because even without a lot of face time, it's still a leadership role and it has to feel like leadership. Not a constant push-pull with the social media comment sections.

Adding a cast time is a HORRIBLE idea for the game in pve and pvp. Everyone knows that. What happened needed to happen. I cant believe youre disappointed that the community voiced their opinion(loudly) over bad balance and the developers actually listening to us and the reps.

Ankael07

Having the 3rd Overlord bar could solve Sorcerers 2 problems at the same time.

1-) Sustain problem with a long lasting skill(s) like Dark Deal being 20 seconds (could be buffed up to 30 seconds)

2-) Lack of bar space (which is something we've been complaining for a long time now) but only if the transition to Overload mode is fixed to be smooth

code65536

Acrolas wrote: »

The community needs to dial it back, and the developers need to grow a backbone

Since you seem to see it fit to dictate what other people should do, I shall follow suit: You need to gain a better understanding of how combat in this game works in endgame PvE and competitive PvP, because you clearly don't understand why the devs are wrong if you think that they should grow a backbone and push through a bad design change.

Bhelen

While I think the overall direction of changes has taken a healthier turn after the meeting it seems to expose a larger problem

---

That the changes being made are to combat PvE power creep and have serious implications on PvP.

So perhaps it would be an altogether better approach to either address CP, or use battle spirit as a compromise. Altogether the changes need a lot more testing and I would like to see changes addressed in different ways.

Glurin

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We think it’s great some players want to play like a glass cannon, but those builds should have tradeoffs in reduced survivability. By limiting damage shield strength on max health, it makes the health stat much more attractive than it was previously for damage shield users.

This got me thinking, and I figured it was worth mentioning. I don't particularly like playing a glass cannon. But in order to get the kind of damage output that people need or expect in end game content like vet trials and vet DLC dungeons, it really feels like you must build as a glass cannon to even come close to those numbers.

It looks like this might have come up at the end, but I just thought I'd go ahead and voice my own concerns on the topic.

Crafts_Many_Boxes

40% of max health for shields is just too low, even with the resistance change. 60, even 70% seems more reasonable. At 40%, as some have echoed here, it's not even worth slotting anymore.

With the crematorium guards in VMA, unless you're amazing at river dancing around them, that fire breath takes down an entire 20k shield in its cast. How is a sorc to surrive that with half the shield strength? Light armor resistances are low, so the shield won't even be that much stronger. We might get an effective 50, 55% shield when factoring in resistances, which is still a huge nerf.

As far as stamdk goes, it was my first character and I totally agree that it needs more of an identity. It's mostly just weapon skills, which is lame. To replace noxious breath, why not like an acid spit or something? One morph is a magma glob, the other is acid. Done.

ezio45

HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO PLAY MAG WITH A 6K SHIELD

TheInfernalRage

Message sent, received, and responded positively. Thanks to the Devs, and most especially to the Class Representatives.

Auroan

"Since Bosses don’t have CP, they aren’t getting the -X% modifiers. The end result is that players quickly out-scale and become too strong for any PvE content that gets released."

Jackpot.

@ZOS_GinaBruno In my opinion, the best solution to solve this, while also keeping your (ZOS) "all content at any level" label, is to ditch Normal and Veteran difficulties, and create a Scaled and Unscaled difficulty option. Scaled would replace Normal, and Unscaled would replace Veteran. This will allow players to continue having the opportunity to play all the content with reasonable ease/joy (please remember that we have to consider ALL players experience, not just medium/top tier players), while also serving the veteran members with harder content each update.

Increasing level caps for players and enemies is a very common thing in most MMO's, as with having different Tiered Gear, or Gear/Item Level. ESO use to have leveled Zones, which I personally enjoyed because it made you feel like your were progressing, and encouraged you to become stronger if you were at a halt (where now everything seems to be spoon fed, provided you don't wear level 1 gear the entirety of your playthroughs). While I understand that you (ZOS) won't revert this change, and will continue to maintain your label of equality for Open World play, I believe you (ZOS) can at least make this adjustment for Dungeons/Trials. There are recommended CP requirements for Dungeons (DLC having higher requirements), you might as well make those the actual CP of the enemies.

Allow Casual players to go through it on Scaled CP 160 difficulty, while Veteran players can choose to go into Unscaled CP 780 difficulty to get a run for their money. In my opinion, that would be most beneficial.

Auroan

@code65536 I think you missed the entirety of long, on-going shield debate. Mag users have always been Easy-Mode because of two things.

1: High DPS at safe Distances
2: High Mitigation via Shield Spamming.

You know just as well as I that Magblades are the dominate force when it comes to harder content like vAS HM, vCR HM, etc, and basically just in general. Does Mag pull as high numbers as Stam? Of course not. They never will, and it should stay like that. However, that doesn't mean that what they're pulling isn't extraordinary, none the less. Just because you can "only" Pad 5 burn Rhakkat HM instead of Pad 3 burn isn't a bad thing. Just because people can get IR, GH, etc., in 10 minutes instead of 8 isn't a bad thing.

Every Top Tier player knows Parse is basically everything. If one class/set-up can out parse the other, that's the new go-to and everyone starts making and playing that class/set-up to get juicy scores and show how big their ego is. People confuse "bad" with "not as good". Just because one class/set-up doesn't pull as high as another, doesn't make it "bad". It means it's "not as good". I'm not saying you, or some others have expressed this point of view, but I know a large hand full of Top Tier players with a mindset like that, but the reality of the situation is 50k/60k ST is still 50k/60k ST, which, no matter how you look at it, is more then enough to clear all content very smoothly if you're with an experienced, organized group.

So what does this have to do with Shields? Well, why would anyone play an unsafe class in a mobile, unsafe environment, when they can pull almost equal to (or at the very least, still extremely high) DPS, but with a safe class? The answer is simple and that's why Mag users (mainly Magblades) are Meta. In some situations for harder content, Mag can actually outparse Stam, not because Mag actually do more damage then Stam, but because Stam is hindered by only being being able to do their max damage when the enemy is in their face, where if you're Mag, you can just stand in the middle and just turn the direction you're pointing and start tossing some salads.

In most situations, Mag and Stam DPS typically have the same health pool and resistances. However, think about this. Hardended Ward and Vigor are roughly the same cost, though Vigor is slightly more expensive. However, Hardened Ward Shields more Damage than the amount healed from Vigor. Vigor scales with resistances, this is true, but the average resistances for a DPS can be anywhere between 10k - 14k resistances. That's about 16% - 22% mitigation.

If Vigor heals for about 12k health, that means your total mitigation is worth 14.4k health with an average 20% mitigation. That means Hardended Ward (and shields in general) outscale Vigor.

Note that putting points into things like Blessed and Quick Recovery would still not benefit Vigor as well because both of those have a max % of 15% (so 30% total with 100 CP into each, meaning 200 CP spent total), where Bastion's max % is 25% (so 25% total with 100 CP into just that, meaning 100 CP less spent compared to a Stam user).
That means Hardened Ward (and shields in general) outscale Vigor.

Now also consider that you CANNOT crit a shield, where as you can crit health. This means nothing in PvE, as monsters cannot crit. However, in PvP, critting shields virtually does nothing anyways. A large majority of PvP'ers will likely have CP into Impen. They will likely also be wearing Impen gear. Though this is enough to mitigate crits almost entirely, there are people (like Attunes) who use Transmutation, which overkills your Crit Resistance. In other words, your shield won't take crit damage anyways.

Now also consider that you're not only getting more mitigation from your shield then a Stam user with Vigor, but you're also getting the FULL mitigation benefit INSTANTLY, where Stam users get it over the duration of 5 seconds.

Note that shields can be used at any % health, meaning that your theoretical maximum health is higher than a Stam users, as you can shield while at 100% health to survive longer. If you're at 18k health with a Mag user, you can theoretically have more health. But as a Stam user, if you have 18k health, that's all you got unless you slot Bone Shield, lol.

Shields, and Mag users in general, are incredibly safe and Easy-Mode. The nerf to shields is necessary and this is the only thing ZOS could think to try and nerf it, while also making sure everyone is happy being able to spam it. The numbers you posted actually reinforces the idea of this well needed nerf. Remember what ZOS's idea was. They wanted Healers to feel more useful, but it was tough since Mag users could just spam shields through things anyways. It made content too easy, especially 4-man content where people don't even have healers anymore since they can shield and just heal each other with Funnel Health and such. My Sorc can pop an 18k shield. That's more than my maximum health (depending on what food I have). What your post essentially said is, "I should be able to shield through all damage without the need of any other help". As of now, we can shield for anywhere between 16k-18k on average per second with spamming. That's a lot. With the 40% cap, that will put it at a sweet spot, especially in comparison to your example.

Average health of a DPS in vCR HM is recommended to be about 20k. 40% of 20k is 8k. However, now you have scaled resistances, so your theoretical shield is worth about an average of 9.6k with 20% mitigation. 9.6k shield > 8.1k damage. Yes, there are other things coming at you that deal damage, but again, you have to remember what ZOS's ideology is here. They want people to relay more on their healers instead of being self reliant 24/7. This will help ZOS achieve that. This will help Healers be looked upon more ideally, this will help people be more cautious and strategic about their decisions, this will help make content "harder" for the many Top Tier players that've yelled for it (without making a higher difficult that will essentially have enemies with double health and 1 shot), and overall, it will make people have better group synergy with their roles then ever before.

It was a necessary and inevitable change and I think, as of now, it's good one.

Aliyavana

please make a stamina overload. A stamina atronach sounds like it would be immobile and wouldn't fit our playstyle in pvp

Nifty2g

code65536 wrote: »

@Nifty2g Um, I can only assume you missed the part about shields being capped to 40% of health? For the typical mag DD using Harness, that's shredding the shield size by half. You'd need to be at the resist cap for resistances on shields to compensate for this strength nerf, but no light armor wearer will be anywhere near the resist cap.

Well the reason you're getting this nerf is partly cause the resistances are still on the shields, and this will propose a problem in the future likely
Imagine igneous, shimmering shield, absorb magic etc with the resistances currently, mainly for tanks. It's just going to be nerfs in the long run, I don't see why resistances need to apply to shields. Always a catch with ZOS when they want to revert a change I guess.

I just don't see how this is fixing their issue really, shields didn't need resistances added to them, they were fine now they're trying to fix an issue they didn't need to have. My post wasn't just directed at harness and ward

code65536

Hey @ZOS_Wrobel - Tell me how shields that are 40% of max health will help when your content has damage that looks like this?


This, BTW, is Veteran Blackrose Prison on the PTS. The damage in this death recap came from mobs--not bosses. And these hits are standard attacks, not special abilities or mechanics. Three hits, each over 8K, in the span of 1.1s. Are you still going to claim that shields are OP in PvE?

Unknown_Redemption

.

shaielzafine

Great! I'm glad ZOS has been considering things and it seems they are possibly listening to what the class reps are saying. That's a good summary of things they brought up, IMO. Looking forward to see what ZOS decides to do based on talking to the class reps. Whoever came up with that idea to nerf shields in that way, along with creating that soldier of anguish set, yep those are a terrible ideas. Hopefully the coming patch will have better changes that help with class balance and combat. Let's see if shields are gutted completely and if proc sets will still reign supreme in pvp. Please listen to the feedback the majority of your players are giving. I don't think it's good that the latest pts changes have split the playerbase into pve'ers blaming pvpers and sorcs vs non sorcs. But hey, at least it is discussed in the forums. Now, if you could also fix some bugs like sprint bug & resource drain bugs that affect combat, I'm sure you will get at least 2 people (me & my SO) to play open world PvP again, resub & I'll buy another notable house for my collection.

Dagoth_Rac

On the subject of combat pets dying in endgame PvE. Instead of playing whack-a-mole and having to investigate every boss encounter to see if it is "pet friendly", just make pets immortal in PvE. If pets died in PvE because of bad decisions by players, it would be one thing. But pet deaths in PvE are almost always beyond player control. Seriously, ZOS, you are going to waste a lot of time looking at hundreds of bosses and thousands of boss attacks/skills/mechanics. And what is the final result going to be? You are going to tweak everything by hand so it does not kill combat pets. It is the only logical solution if you don't want Pet Sorcs locked out of a bunch of PvE content. Save yourself a lot of time and just make combat pets immortal in PvE. It will accomplish your goal quickly and easily and it will be future proof so you don't have to revisit the "pet-friendly" question for every new dungeon/trial/arena that comes out.

We already have to double bar them and have to incorporate their special attacks into our rotation if we want them to be competitive with other builds. With the additional of the active pet abilities, combat pets in PvE are now functionally all but indistinguishable from Liquid Lightning or Endless Hail or Blazing Spear or Caltrops or whatever. Just another button we have to time perfectly into our rotation if we want to get good DPS. At this point in the game, having our combat pets die makes about as much sense as having Endless Hail suddenly become grayed out and you need to spend 1.5 seconds re-enabling Endless Hail before you can cast it again.

Darkenarlol

40% hp shields are laughable but... it is just laughable and not grim-dark-depressing as it was with cast time.

i mean i can accept that devs decided to put my main in the basement of food chain.

at least now when i shelve my main it gonna be motivated by overall weakness in compare to other classes

not because it freaks me out with cast time.


as for vMA clears troubles with crem guard - try iceheart

noone ever said that we HAVE to be 17k hp max dps machines even if we feel that it is our only way


good job reps, good job all

i was heavily depressed and almost devastated by first pts patch notes...

now i'm just like - oh another update another nerf notes for my main (nothing new it was just another nerf sorc year)

but nothing changes for my stamblade =D

LeHarrt91

ezio45 wrote: »

HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO PLAY MAG WITH A 6K SHIELD

Have more than 15K health.

React

Very disappointing to see shuffle and forward momentum at the bottom of the list. It is crucial that shuffles immunity duration be extended before the release of murkmire, and also important to consider a reduction to forward momentum's immunity duration. If these changes are not made, the VAST majority of stamina builds will be in heavy armor. Please do not interpret this suggestion exclusively as a "nerf heavy" argument, as the overall more valuable change is an adjustment to shuffle itself.

ezio45

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

ezio45 wrote: »

HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO PLAY MAG WITH A 6K SHIELD

Have more than 15K health.

alright how should i do that

Faulgor

Phage wrote: »

Also consider this ZOS: if you're trying to even the survivability between mag and stam, that contradicts every change you've made in the past 3 years when you said you wanted mag to have higher survivability but stam to have higher damage.

If you nerf mag survivability to bring it in line with stam, you also need to buff mag damage to bring in line with stam. It's only fair.

.. When have they ever said something like that?

Vogtard

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

ZOS asked us about our feelings about heavy attacks, whether or not we felt they were worthwhile. We indicated the Stamina model was smoother mostly because they were faster, easier to connect in PVP (or would be if players weren’t zooming around) for the sustain, and fit the pace of the game better. In contrast, Ice and Inferno attacks feel slow, not very impactful, and were too easy to deny resources in PvP via dodge or tapping block. Lightning staff as a channel felt ok because the user was always doing something (although single target damage is not great).

The class reps indicated that speeding heavy attacks them up would be desirable, but players are mostly looking for impact and to feel like they accomplished something worthwhile by taking the time to do a heavy attack rather than using a skill. Resources are ok, but it feels more of a chore and something that had to be done just to resume a DPS rotation rather than the heavy attack itself being impactful.

Thank you for the info. Lots of good stuff.

Good points about heavy attacks. Also happy to see the devs' interest there.

What about medium attacks?
For me, they are absolutely the most satisfying thing to use in the game because they feel analog (similar to Angry Birds) and really give full control over the time/damage. But they need to return resources, scaled like damage.

Emma_Overload

Solariken wrote: »

Good stuff here. A few thoughts:

4 seconds of immunity on Forward Momentum would be more appropriate and more in line with Shuffle. Shuffle also needs a decrease in cost and Major Evasion duration.

Swift. It needs toned down but not straight up nerfed. I've suggested it be changed to +5% movement speed AND +5% sprint speed. This retains the maximum benefit but slows people down when they are actually in combat and casting skills.

The Major Expedition speed amount is balanced in my opinion, the only problem is uptime in some cases (*cough* speed pots).

As for shields, I guess a health component is ok. Another cool idea from the forums in "shield over time" like a HOT.

Mmm... The problem with buffing sprint speed is that you're biasing the Swift trait in favor of Stamina builds, since Magicka builds don't do a lot of sprinting. The way it works now, Swift benefits Magicka and Stamina equally.

If player speed needs to be nerfed, the fairest way to do it is to simply lower the max speed cap.

Aeowhyn

thank you very much for the detailled report-out! :-)

Still .. I think it´s a terrible choice to change anything on the shields. There´s a phrase i´d like to throw into the room: "never change a running system"!!!

I think ZOS should invest their time into some new, interesting gameplay or even better, they should invest their time in concepting, testing and creating maybe a new character class instead of fiddeling around with the current ones!

f047ys3v3n

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

So with that, below are the meeting notes compiled by the Reps themselves (mainly @JoyDivsion - thank you!).

First off, thanks to Joy for putting this together and for, along with the other class reps, talking the wobbler off the ledge. Cast time sheilds would have just wrecked PVE combat the way things are currently set up. This is not the 30k health softcap days of crazy high dps checks not being the dominant mechanic in almost every fight.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Sorcerer Shields:
We spent at least 30 minutes discussing shields. .....There’s only so much I can type and not every detail from our conversation is printed above. I came way from this conversation with the impression that the Devs are open. They know it’s a big change, they know there are potentially better ways to achieve their goals.

The shield magnitude nerf is..... really there is no way to know how it is without testing it out for a bit. It won't instantly break combat like adding a cast time though. Maybe it will be more balanced, maybe not, time will tell.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Champion Points
While not a update 20 specific concern, we spent a fair amount of time discussing the Champion Point system because it is our belief that the power creep in this system is responsible for many of the issues ZOS is trying to address in the first place (such as players being able to avoid mechanics, not have to make difficult build choices, and the feeling that healers are not needed).

I'll make this my anti-CE rant. My belief is that the lack of trade off and over-powered nature of many top level players is, and has been for years, primarily due to cheats. When I look at the numbers many are posting, they are not even plausible adjacent. I haven't tried out all the classes, rotations, and gear combinations in vogue, but I have done a few with good enough up-times to see that things are not even close to adding up. I believe that the biggest balance issues in PVP and scaling and dps divergence issues in PVE are cheats plain and simple, that they have been ignored so long that they are commonplace, and that at this point you really can't blame the players for juicing.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We also said it was unfortunate that much of our class identity has been taken away because the Champion System (and gear) has so much power.

Now no NB off heals at all, sorc has same magnitude shield as harness..... Yea, everything becoming the same is a pretty strong trend. Yawn, balance fail. Combat does suck compared to homestead or there abouts.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Player Speed
ZOS told us they are aware players are moving too fast and are too difficult to target with melee and short ranged abilities. They want to slow us down. Swift Jewelry was something that was specifically mentioned. The Major Expedition buff being too strong was hinted at. The reps agreed that players are too fast and that Swift Jewelry is a primary offender, especially when it was additive to other speed boosts and Forward Momentum. The reps did not agree that the Major Expedition was too strong. It was mentioned that diminishing returns may be a better way to address the issue than flat out nerfs as it is the stacking of speed that is the primary issue.

This is the biggest meta I see in PVP. Fast stam toons with durational slow immunity and the strong CC and burst of stam pretty much wreck face.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Sorcerers:
Much of their feedback was included in the discussion with shields. Sustain isn’t good, mobility took a hit, offense was nerfed, etc.

The week 2 changes to Dark Deal were needed and the skill is something that sorcerers can work with now.

We talked about sorcerer ultimates. The loss of a third bar from Overload has crowded sorcerers’ bars and ZOS is asking players to completely change how the class is played. ZOS indicated that they were thinking of changing one of the Ultimates into a Stamina morph since they were the only class that didn’t have one and the reps simultaneously said “Air Atronach”.

Overall we felt that from a Stamina sorcerer perspective, update 20 was more about what was being taken away, rather than was being added to make the class more interesting to play. The same, of course, is true from a Magicka perspective.

I'm maining a Sorc right now so I'll weigh in:
1) Yea, it's basically a nerf patch since our shields was better. Though mNB's took a huge hit so we got off better than the competition for ranged raid slots. We are still dependent on a heavy every rotation but wasn't that the wobbler's goal with his huge combat fun destruction in Morrowind?

2) Do dark deal and other resource return skills relay make a lot of folks slots? On a crowded Sorc bar no less. Honestly, unless a skill allows me to actually sustain like siphoning strikes did I think not. Who really cares about current gen lame return skills. I need the slots for more dps in PVE and more utility in PVP. I can't afford to slot a sustain skill that dosen't let me sustain anyhow.

3) The overload thing certainly breaks those PVP builds and effects everyone else not at all. Few will care at all but boy will they ever care.

4) The whole stam ulti thing, your just going to make it weak because you want us all using all the same ultis so they will be balanced. If that is not the goal it is what has happened. Also, we don't let mag sorcs run atro in our raids. It screws up mechanics and complicates the tank getting the synergy prompts they are looking for. You know, the basic pets don't work problem.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Nightblades:
There was a feeling the patch was more about what was being taken away rather than what was gained. Nightblades DPS is still good, but tank and healing NBs were particularly affected by the changes. More of this will be put into the respective sections

It was also mentioned that the cumulative changes to Nightblades, in particular the loss of healing, has turned the class into more of a “brawler” that relies on non-Nightblade stuff like gear that defines their builds.

We were running low on time, so specific Nightblade feedback will be sent to the Developer team.

I dropped my mNB main when you nerfed path last patch because I guess I'm just a noob and can't get enough procs from the stupid hinky bow ability to make up for the weak ass DoT's. Man, you wrecked them good this patch though. No off heals at all for group utility and you have to heavy now that you don't get free procs. Ouch. Remember the days when mNB's provided decent dps and some strong group utility with off heals and fast ulti-regen coupled with a powerful group damage mitigation ulti. Not sure how we got from there to uber glass cannon zero utility dps mainstay that all the cool kids play cause only they can handle the complete lack of regularity in the rotation entirely dependent on one proc skill but I guess somebody likes it.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Pets:
No critical resistance and the shield change mechanic means they are squishier. ZOS indicated to us they are willing to look at specific problematic PvE fights in which pets do more harm than good via triggering boss mechanics, dying, etc. The reps already have a thorough list and will send it to the Devs.

Yea, I'm down to only running twilight in vCR because the oblivion damage more or less requires it. Pets basically just don't work in endgame PVP, or really PVE and they take two bars to not work. They are for casuals I guess.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Healers
Healers did not believe that shield changes would make them more desirable. What healers want most of all is too have impactful skills that make a tangible difference to other players such that groups would genuinely feel they were better off to have the healer than another DPS. This led into another discussion about how we think the CP system and power creep has made it easier for groups to avoid mechanics and just DPS burn stuff without the need for healers.

Nightblade and sorcerer healers have concerns with Update 20. Twilight Matriarch will have less shielding and loss of Overload bar and additional skills means sorcerers have to make adjustments and do so without getting any buffs to compensate. Nightblade healers won’t be able to be as offensive or aggressive in their healing, which again compels change via nerfs rather than buffs.

We also mentioned that it would be a good idea if healers had access to impactful skills that could not be replicated via gear or overlapping buffs from DPS. The Siphon Spirit skill, to take one example, is terrible (cast time, has a cooldown, and offers redundant buffs more efficiently acquired elsewhere). This used to be an interesting and dynamic skill that was a stable of healers back in the day.

Tasear has an extensive list of more specific feedback that was passed to ZOS.

Yea, healers problem was not shields, it was the mechanics ZOS designed, the fact that dps is the answer to everything, and the fact that healing staff skills are not really very good. In much of the content their most important skills are ele D (destro skill) and purge (PVP skill.) Take mutagen for instance, a basic skill, This thing does not purge anything unless your almost dead and give you the smallest HoT ever. As for Healing springs, the only heal mainstay of the role, you all did a good job keeping us from stacking. So, not much use for a healer is there then. Maybe you should give them a decent heal or, maybe, make their basic buffs actually healing abilities.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

ZOS asked us about our feelings about heavy attacks, whether or not we felt they were worthwhile. We indicated the Stamina model was smoother mostly because they were faster, easier to connect in PVP (or would be if players weren’t zooming around) for the sustain, and fit the pace of the game better. In contrast, Ice and Inferno attacks feel slow, not very impactful, and were too easy to deny resources in PvP via dodge or tapping block. Lightning staff as a channel felt ok because the user was always doing something (although single target damage is not great).

The class reps indicated that speeding heavy attacks them up would be desirable, but players are mostly looking for impact and to feel like they accomplished something worthwhile by taking the time to do a heavy attack rather than using a skill. Resources are ok, but it feels more of a chore and something that had to be done just to resume a DPS rotation rather than the heavy attack itself being impactful.

Heavy attack suck, did I get in a time machine to last year. Of course they suck, nobody liked the morrowind heavy for everyone requirement. Also,
1) They do not scale as stated since only medium attacks took the dps nerf and they don't give any resources whereas full heavies do their original damage and give resources.
2) Server lag and tricky timing makes light attacks very hard to get 100% of the time
3) Medium attacks do *** all damage and yield no resources yet comprise almost all potential attack timings. Like a giant black hole of suck. Don't fall in now.
4) With channeled staves (shock, resto) a slight over duration light attack yields exactly no damage but tricks the player by playing bot the animation for the cast and the enemy is being hit animation. Surprise, no damage for you.

The very least you could do is make the light attack duration a little more forgiving and give some resources back to medium attacks.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Forward Momentum, Shuffle, and Evasion. We were under a time crunch and did not discuss these related mechanics nearly enough. Forward Momentum enabling heavy armor builds to be more maneuverable than medium armor was identified, and ZOS indicated this was undesirable. Forward Momentum was also identified as one of the mechanics that enabled players to be too fast. It would not surprise me if this skill was adjusted. Evasion is a topic that deserved more discussion. We indicated it was difficult to judge the impact it would have in PvP and PvE setting as only so much can be done on the PTS. We did express our concerns that heavy armor, mostly in conjunction with non-heavy armor things (specific sets like Fury, Evasion, Forward Momentum, mostly Stamina stuff), will still make for stronger PvP builds than medium.

Yea, nerf forward momentum. All you stam builds can stand in the Cyr quicksand like everyone else.


[

Mayrael

Can we remove shields from battle spirit now?

Qbiken

Unknown_Redemption wrote: »

Hey, how about some WW discussions. Even the discord is a sad demonstration for lack of passion. What the heck.

Aside from maybe a new skin for werewolfs I can´t really see what you would want the devs to do more. They´re in a really good spot and doesn´t need more fine-tuning (Both from a PvE and PvP perspective).

GoonyGoat

Thanks for your efforts all, it can't be easy being the go-between for the community and devs ( especially for free )

I still think the shield change needs tweaking. Peeps are relieved that the cast time may go away, but we are still left with tiny, non-stackable shields that can be critted.

Also the reasoning of sorcs will get better offense in the future is off ... That's like giving a knight some cardboard armour and a sword coupon before sending him to the front-lines.

Mayrael

Drummerx04 wrote: »

So are any of these changes meant to allow sorcs/mag characters to keep themselves alive with shields at all? What is a 7k capped shield going to do for me in pvp (or difficult pve for that matter). If you really don't want mag characters to be able to survive things, then just remove shields outright and stop pretending they'll be useful in their super nerfed forms.

It's not an "exciting" choice to require extra health for slightly more usable shields or full glass cannon with a shield that can't survive a single god damn strike from a stam character.

At this point just turn Annulment into a magicka Vigor and call it a *** day.

Well I'd really like to have magicka vigor, it would be far better than shields.