Equalising bad and good players.

Agenericname

Glurin wrote: »

Agenericname wrote: »

The problem that many people have that prevents them from achieving their desired DPS is rotation. Crutch mechanics such as monster helms on normal wont bridge that gap. They'll offer a marginal increase in DPS at best, but whatever the disconnect is that prevents a player from transitioning between groups 1 and 2 will still exist.

A healthier solution overall would be to create the tools and an environment that allowed and encouraged those that wish to improve to do so in game.

No, it's more than that. An improved rotation shouldn't be producing results quite so dramatic as we see right now.

Someone in another thread on this subject might have hit on something I think when he said we have a lot of percentage based bonuses. So for example, consider if every aspect gave a 50% bonus to DPS. Using the "correct" race, the "correct" skills, the "correct" sets, etc. etc. Put some of these together and you get to say, 10k DPS. Add one more aspect and you get 50% more damage, which would only be 5k. So now you're at 15k. But look at what happens to someone who is at 30k. They start using the "correct" rotation (again, just as an example) and suddenly they're at 45k.

I don't know how much stock to put in that. I just think it's something worth considering. The main driving point though, at least for me, is that with results like this you might as well just toss the whole "play as you want" concept out the window. You're basically saying that in order to get DPS results of any significance, and thus stand any kind of real chance in vetDLC/trials, you must select one of a very short and specific list of race/class/build/rotation combinations.

Nobody is arguing that you should be able to pull 50k with a random smattering of abilities on your bar and gear that consists of whatever items you pulled at random out of the laundry basket. But there's no question that there's a pretty wide gap going on between people who can consistently pull 30-40k+ and people who struggle to get to 15-20k.

It is more than that. DPS is a game of inches, rotation just allows a person to cover more inches on the improvement ruler than most other aspsects.

I may have used the wrong number for the groups, but I'm specifically talking about the lower DPS to mid. If we were to take a look at the 15k players vs the 30k players I believe we'd find a common culprit that held a lot of folks back, light attack weaving.

A while back I posted a thread about my DPS. The answers varied from "work on your DPS" to "work on your DPS some more." I did. I watched the parses fairly closely. The largest single impact on the DPS came from light attack weaving. Light attack damage alone accounted for 3-4 times more DPS than the monster set. Between uptime on the dots and buffs, ultimate regeneration, etc, it's a lot. In my case it was around a 40% increase.

It wasnt suddenly though. It takes practice. It may have taken me a little longer, I'm probably older than most and dont have the reflexes some of the younger folks do, but I suspect that practice was involved for most.

The set bonuses from gear, specifically the cloudrest gear, benefit substantially from weaving light attacks into a rotation. If you look at a build the rotation will usually resemble "A skill>LA>B skill>LA>bar swap>..."

Personally I think that ESO puts a little too much emphasis on light attacks. Given that theres no formal introduction or explanation of weaving in the game, it's difficult to understand why they've allowed them to carry so much weight.

That's why I suggest that they should create an environment that allows a player to learn. Right now the DPS is heavily dependent on LA weaving for a rotation while nothing in game prepares a player for it. That alone will create a substantial gap.

Reducing the effects of light attacks is about the only solution that I see that would close the gaps a little while still allowing those who do practice to achieve better results. But that's not really my argument. Mine is simply, if your having issues breaking 20k look at your rotation. In most cases it'll have a bigger impact than a monster set.

Rungar

ATomiX96 wrote: »

Rungar wrote: »

"good players" often have really fast connection speeds

personally, there is nothing I prefer more than playing on 700 ping with my 56k modem

its not judgement eh. I'm just pointing out that there are things in the game which by the design of this game will limit players and they might not be aware of. All problems with combat pvp or pve are the same. Lack of a true global cooldown.

usmguy1234

Sanctum74 wrote: »

usmguy1234 wrote: »

tunepunk wrote: »

Posted this in another thread, but creating a new thread about because it was a bit off topic...

This is just some ideas for how to close the gap between good and "bad" players.

The definition of a bad player seems to be:
Someone that only uses one bar, and like light attack and skills spamming play style, especially during boss fights.

Let's face it. Not everyone is comfortable with upkeep 2 bars worth of skills dots and buffs, while staying mobile and and staying out of stupid.


The most equalising skill in game so far is Werewolf Ultimate.
Just trying out Werewolf for the first time on one of my characters yesterday I was surprised how potent this is. I was doing 30k + dps on dummy just light attacking, with some decent gear, and could stay in wolf form for the duration of the fight. I was clearing a normal dungeon solo way faster and easier than I do with any of my other characters.

As a VERY casual player I have a really hard time pushing 30k dps on a dummy on any of my characters. I REALLY suck at weapon swapping, keeping up buffs, dots and weaving, so the werewolf form was like a perfect match for me. It fit my play style like a glove. I'm surprised I never tried it before.

The whole mechanic of werewolf is quite interesting. Clicking that ultimate you opt out of using backbar, and get significant boost to your single werewolf bar in while in werewolf form.

Even if I geared up to the best of my potential, I could probably never reach dps equal to some of the best end game builds as a werewolf, but if felt REALLY good to be able to get some decent numbers without worrying too much about upkeep, dots, and weapon swapping.

But the point is. Werewolf does not fit all, in terms of Looks, and skills, mechanic.

Possible solution equalizing "bad" and good players?
What ZOS can learn from that is to come up with something similar that has a functionality similar to werewolf. Opting out of a backbar for a significant boost to your single bar is a great concept for equalising the difference in player skill, just like how werewolf works.

• They could even try to do it as a Potion to test it. Pop the potion pre boss fight. Locks your other bar, but gives you significant boost to your current bar. Pretty easy to balance as well. If max potential while using this potion was about 75-80% of what a good player utilising both bars would do, that would be a great start.
• Or they could try it as a 5 set bonus. 5th set piece prevents your from switching to your secondary bar but, significantly buffs your main bar. Let's say it would give you something like 1000 weapon/spell damage, or something along those lines. Not having a second bar would be a huge downside for some, but a good plus for some that has a decent 1 bar build.

Just by testing werewolf for one day, I found that this skill is a very good option for closing the gap between good and bad players, when it comes to DPS potential.

You shouldn't homogenize game mechanics... what you should do is make the experience more rewarding for killing skilled players. Take for example: KD ratios have been around for a really long time in most fps and mmo style competitive games. Imagine if a player with a low KD killed a high KD player. As of now, you get a small amount of ap. Imagine if you got 5k ap? This would be an incentive for the less good player to get better. If multiple people killed the "good" player they would share the 5k ap. If the good player killed multiple people while being attacked, he would get 5k ap, etc. So, long story short, it's better to give people incentives to play the game at their best instead of dumbing down mechanics and fostering a lazy culture in the game.

As it is groups chase down good solo players across the map, ult dump them, and then tbag like its a sense of accomplishment.

Increasing AP for killing good players would just end up chasing the good players out of cyrodiil who are already at a disadvantage since most of them are solo or in small groups.

I still stick to the belief that if you want to get better at anything in life you learn the basics and practice which is exactly what the good players had to do to become a good player.

I guess you failed to see the diminishing returns aspect of my idea. I am completely solo myself and when I come across another good solo player and spend 5 minutes fighting them, I'd like to be rewarded for my time instead of getting a small amount of ap or nothing at all. Especially when all the zerglings in this game are raking in ap taking resources and keeps 50 deep.

Kova

Haha, sure, why not. I want to see how far we can take this slow mo collision of a game.

I want to see 15k light attacks by the end of the year.

tunepunk

Kova wrote: »

Haha, sure, why not. I want to see how far we can take this slow mo collision of a game.

I want to see 15k light attacks by the end of the year.

Well that's doable already. Could probably be more if I was using Weapon damage glyph instead. This is from overland troll. With raid buffs, and debuffs would probably be even more.



I have a 1 bar bow build that I use to solo normal pledges when bored. LA is about 15k.

I'm working on single bar builds that can do 30k damage. It's doable, but are very gear dependent, so I'm testing different options. Would even be easy if I had access to sets like relequeen. In this image I'm just using 5x Hundigs, 5x Automaton, 2x kena.

ZeroXFF

tunepunk wrote: »

@NyxWrench Agree completely.

Up until just recently, and I've been playing for years, I've seen potions as a *** I'm low on health and resources, and not as a 6th skill, using it for Damage and Crit Chance buff.

Nowadays though I learned to use potions that way. Pop potion pre boss fight. It lasts longer than normal buffs, so needs to be refreshed less often, and I don't need to slot the buff on my skill bar.

Same goes for ultimates. It's a skill that has always been on my bar for emergency/burn situations, not as part of a rotation. Or as a stamina class used flawless dawnbreaker only for the passive increase to weapon damage, rarely using the skill itself.

2 bar optimised boss fight rotations with animation cancelling/weaving is not obvious for new players and some (like me) after years never even get used to it, as they spend 95% of their time exploring overland, and doing quests and collecting skill points.... less then 1 percent of your time you are actually engaging group dungeon boss fights.

1. Are they using potions? (i guess many just use them for resource/healing, emergency)
2. What food are they usually using, if any. (my first 2 years of playing i didn't even bother with food)
3. Are they bar swapping? (maybe some do, but maybe not as part of a rotation)
4. Do they stack dots?
5. How and when do they use their ultimates? (maybe mostly use them in emergency situations?)
6. Do they spam their dps skill? (Looking at how people play overland, I would say yes)
7. Do they spam light attacks? (Some do)
8. Which skills do they use?

Casuals don't need to be competitive, but at least buffed to do the minimum threshold required for participation. The span between a "bad" casual and a top dps is currently 15-60k ... if anyone could do 30k by using some buff, and dot, and spamming their main dps skill like wrecking blow/sweeps and reach 30k that would be perfectly fine. If you're doing that now, you'll reach about 20k even with decent golded gear at max CP. The span should be 30-60k instead of15-60k.

How ZOS solves the problem is up to them, but they need to have a casual representative to look at how they are actually playing the game. And I certainly don't think that complex rotations, weaving and dot stacking should be forced on people to at least be able to participate. If you're aiming high and want to compete... go ahead min/max, meta, BiS, dynamic rotations, all you want. But some people simply don't want to play that way JUST to be able to participate.

With the right gear choises:
Light attack builds should be viable but not competitive. (buffs, some dots & and mainly light attacks)
Skills spammer builds should be viable but not competitive. (buff, dots & spam main dps skill, with some heavy for sustain)
Single bar build should be viable but not competitive. (stack and upkeep as much as you can without much barswap)

Nobody is expecting to reach top DPS with simple builds, but at least be able to reach minimum threshold for participation.

For me, complex rotations results in DPS loss. I'm not using any addons to keep track of timers. My uptime get's worse with complexity. I'm wasting resources with more complex rotations, by casting skill from the wrong bar and general fumble.

So I'm stuck with 2 builds I play mostly pve dungeons. On target dummy I have A magplar that can just about reach 30k on a single bar, and a werewolf stamina build where I'm doing around 35k at the moment, without any BiS gear, just easily accessible stuff.

And that's one of the reasons why we need to put light attacks on the same GCD as skills and treat them as viable option for a spammable. It's an instinctive application for light attacks, and there is no good reason for weaving in its current form to even be a thing.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Ultimately, there are three types of players in this game, but there is a bit of a spectrum between the last two. I will explain.

1. The first type of player is bad either by choice or due to not being able to press buttons satisfactorily. These are the ones you see bashing AC on the forums, spamming bow light attacks in the corner on a high elf, etc. They stink for one reason or another. Things like werewolf, Overload back in the day, etc, can be a reasonable band aid solution. I have no problem with them as long as they arent leading DPS races (which they arent currently).

2. The second type of player is one that has a reasonable understanding of the game, has researched or developed a competent build, and has practiced their rotation. These are the people clearing most if not all vet content, but they arent setting WR scores. They are often in BIS or close to BIS gear, and their ability to weave and AC is competent. They either do static rotations, or a somewhat simplified dynamic rotation. Type 2 is not as prevalent as type 1 overall, but type two makes up the bulk of the end game community.

3. Type three is the pure min.maxer that surrounds themselves with the same. They run meta gear, meta group comps, and use dynamic rotations. Their goal is to push score in whatever content they are doing. They are by far the smallest group, but they are often the most visible on youtube and the like. 2 and 3 can blend a bit depending on how competent a player is with a dynamic rotation as it is more of a sliding scale.


You will never close the gap between 1 and 3, and nor should you. Time, effort, and of course skill, should be rewarded. The gap between 2 and 3, however, has widened significantly in the past year or so. This is largely due to the emergence of dynamic rotations, as it is the highest skill barrier in the game.

If your goal is to close the gap between 1 and 3, you will be left with a pile of garbage that nobody wants to play. Bad players will always be bad. If your goal is to close the gap between 2 and 3, well that IMO is reasonable as long is your goal is to not completely eliminate it. Again, time, skill and effort should be rewarded.

As the biggest culprit between the two is the rise of the dynamic rotation, the obvious way to shrink the gap it to reduce the benefits of such a rotation. The most obvious way to do that is to homogenize skill duration among various types of skills. If all single target DOTS were 10 seconds, and all player buffs/debuffs were say 20 seconds, a purely dynamic rotation would not be as beneficial.

I am certainly not suggesting broad sweeping changes across the board, but it is something I think they should consider in future content updates when trying to control the gap, which is frankly getting a little out of control.

There is just one flaw with your statement, going from a static to a dynamic rotation is good design and rewards actual skill rather than good ping and the usage of macros. LA weaving on the other hand is bad design, because it is unintuitive and does reward good ping and basically screams "this is something that should be macroed". Intuitively people treat light attacks the way experienced players treat spammables, so this is exactly how the devs should treat them when they design game aspects like gear and other skills (after putting LA on the same GCD as skills, the way Overload works before Murkmire and Mend Wounds) if they want the game to be more accessible. Going from group 1 to 2 will still be quite a steep learning curve, but at least it will be a logical and obvious one.

And this is coming from someone on the higher end of group 2 with near perfect LA weaving who is doing around 40k dps with a static rotation on multiple characters.

@ZeroXFF

I am not sure it's actually a flaw in my statement. Of course a dynamic rotation rewards skill, and of course, I think that is a good thing. I even stated, "You will never close the gap between 1 and 3, and nor should you. Time, effort, and of course skill, should be rewarded." I play a dynamic rotation, maybe not as well as Liko or LZH, but I certainly use one, and i practice it constantly.

I am certainly not suggesting that be eliminated. What I am suggesting is that perhaps the gap between dynamic rotations and non dynamics rotations has gotten a little out of line as of late. I believe that is hard to argue with when you look at what the guilds at the top are able to do compare to average guilds. We were just talking about this the other day in my guild discord.

Do we want 2 guilds competing for top score or do we want 10 or more? Probably the time where you actually had the most guilds attempting to compete and push score was the heavy attack mSorc and sDK meta (post VMOL, Pre VHOF). Now, I think that was a little too far to the other extreme, as those rotations where frankly boring, but If I am being honest with myself, I think a middle ground would be healthier for the game. During that era a lot more players were able to execute a rotation at the highest level because it was easier. Its not an either or, its a spectrum. I think we have swung to far the other way. I think the easiest way to close the gap dynamic and non-dynamic rotations would be to make an effort to standardize skill durations to some degree.

End of the day, a small percent of the player-base is going to play dynamically and a much larger is going to play with a static rotation. ZOS has stated they want to close the gap, well this is the biggest source of it.

But you're focusing on reducing the reward for actual skill instead of reducing the reward for using broken game mechanics. Dynamic rotation is skill, LA weaving is broken. And getting rid of LA weaving would also close the gap between all groups (especially between 1 and 2).

LA weaving absolutely takes skill, not sure why you think it doesnt. LA weaving has been around since launch. Dynamic rotations really only become super prevalent post morrowind when everyone hoped on the mageblade bandwagon. Since then we have seen a sharp increase in the gap between the best of the best and your average raiding guild (that still takes things very seriously). Now virtually all classes are being played dynamically at the highest level (although on live, that's really only one class).

So you are correct that I dont think we should alter weaving, a game mechanic that has been there since launch, which IMO is in no way broken. Its there for everyone to use. It takes skill but not obscene amounts of skill to be effective. Nor am I suggesting that we give no incentive to those that are able to expand their rotation and play dynamically. That would be a step in the wrong direction. What I am suggesting is that perhaps we look to reign it in a bit.

Think of it this way:

Weaving is pass fail. You can either effectively weave or you cant. if you can't weave from a skill standpoint, no way you can pull of a dynamic rotation. If you removed the ability to weave you would see a flat reduction in DPS from anyone that weaves, which is all of groups 2 and 3 that I outlined. You might close the gap between 1 and 2, but that is not really the problem we are talking about. Bad players are just going be bad in most cases, and I certainly dont want to balance combat around that, which is essentially what removing weaving would do.

Dynamic Rotations are more of a sliding scale. Once you break out of the static bubble, there can be huge DPS differences based on how effective you are at juggling skills independently. I would never suggest removing that advantage, but I think the differences under ideal conditions between a static and dynamic rotation is something that needs to be analyzed and addressed. The best way that I can see to reign things in would be to standardize skill duration to some degree, especially within the classes themselves. I am certainly not suggesting giving every skill the same length. Rather, they should perhaps look at how rotations are performed statically and dynamically on each class, and then analyze the tool kit of each class to perhaps find a middle ground so one doesnt wildly outperform the other.

But if both group 2 and 3 do lower damage, they can balance new content around that, creating less of a gap between old and new content, providing a more gradual difficulty curve, and making it easier to find the sweet spot where they make the content doable for lower skilled players and making it impossible to just skip mechanics with more DPS keeping it engaging for highly skilled players, which is also a good thing.

And while we can argue about LA weaving being "skill", depending on whether you consider mindlessly pressing the same button every second regardless of what's going on "skill", it definitely does not add any depth to the game. It's just an unnecessary complication from the perspective of game design. It's in fact so stupid, there is literally not a single gameplay reason not to macro it, because you're doing it at the same moment when you're using a skill already anyways. It's as if while playing lotto you always had to pick the number 1, because the lottery always had 1 in their winning numbers, regardless of what other numbers were rolled. It's absolutely pointless.

I don't understand why people still don't see how stupid that is.

That it would have the desirable effect of bringing the floor and ceiling closer is just a bonus.

I guess we can agree to disagree on that. I believe a skilled swordsman for example would weave in light attacks between harder hitting abilities. I find it immersive. If it didnt take skill, people wouldnt *** about it. As to a macro, well maybe you do it, I dont know, but I am fairly confident the best of the best do not. Macros + Ping always lead to problems. I fully admit that in the comfort of my own house, I have messed with LA macros on a dummy. Combat immediately feels clunky and funny, and my DPS takes a small hit. No way I would bring that into a trial.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

NyxWrench wrote: »

tunepunk wrote: »

I've seen people struggle to hit 20k on a skelly. Sure they might not get everything right. Bet when they feel ready, and have the time to practice and start to compete they could go for meta builds and practice complex rotations, or not.... if it's not their cup of tea, but they should at least be able to participate.

/waves hand

I have not yet hit 20k DPS on my magSorc. My current best is 19k. A few weeks ago, it was 18k. I'm also at CP340 or so, and was around CP300 when I got 18k (and had been creeping upwards in the weeks before that, probably around 16k-17k).

While it looks like I got better, I have to wonder whether the improvement was solely because of more CP, rather than an actual improvement in skill. Any attempts I make to speed things up generally either cancels light attacks entirely, or causes skills to not fire, so it feels like the limit of what I can physically manage.

However, if I extrapolate out the same gains from CP increases to the 780/810 limit, I should eventually reach around 28k-30k DPS. Which then leads me to wonder whether all the comments about it being "easy" to hit 30k DPS are from people at max CP who ignore the impact that CP has on a player's output, and then mock people who can't reach those numbers when they're still around 200-500 CP.

Of course that's not the only factor. I have no gear that I cannot collect myself, which means only overland and crafted gear, plus any dungeons I can manage to solo on normal mode (and I have not found anything in that latter group that seems worthwhile).

Looking at what some of the best-in-slot gear does, there are some absolutely massive boosts to damage potential from some of the high-end gear. And (not entirely unreasonably) pretty much anyone talking about DPS values is going to view it from the perspective having access to some of the best gear possible. That does leave me, someone without any of that high-end gear, nor the money to make everything gold on a whim, completely clueless about how much damage I "should" be able to do, given my current circumstances.

For example, am I weaving decently? Probably not, but I don't have any realistic benchmark to compare myself to. No one is ever interested in showing how people should progress, in either CP or gear, instead only comparing the sky-high numbers that are clearly the only worthwhile goal. All I can do is try to work out the math of what is actually doable. Maybe I need to start collating this information myself, and make a thread somewhere.


There are, of course, other factors. Use of ultimates is not an ingrained habit for newer players, and thus won't necessarily be included in a DPS test. Use of potions is using an extra external resource that I personally still cannot incorporate in my activities, as it just goes against the grain of how I approach the game. Potions are a limited resource, and, to me, should only be used when necessary, not chugged on a continuous basis like a junkie. Yet these types of things are implicitly included in DPS numbers, without most demo-ers spending the effort to explain what sort of differences they make.

These are things that experienced players might include naturally, but that might never even occur to beginner players, making their DPS potential look worse than it is because they're not actually comparing the same things.


The point, in relation to the current topic, is that there's not just one thing a bad DD needs to learn, nor one factor in them being a 'bad' DD. Limiting the scope of what needs to be learned helps make learning those things easier. You don't learn how to drive in a Formula 1.

CP is pretty front loaded. You will certainly see your DPS increase as you approach the cap, but if you are extrapolating in a linear manner, you are going to be disappointed. 30k is certainly a very reasonable and doable benchmark in the current meta for a max CP player in non trial gear, but it does take time, practice and a competent rotation/build. Rotation is probably 75% of the battle. You keep talking about beginner and experienced players, well what do you think the difference is? Practice!

As to a benchmark on weaving, its pretty simple if you have combat metrics. With no heavy attacks, a respectable light weave is in the neighborhood of about .9/sec. The best of the best are more like .94. If you are below .8, you have serious issues. Now obviously, if you need to heavy attack, that is going to fall a bit.

Lastly, if you dont use ultimates or potions when you test, you are never going to get the numbers you are after. Believe me, I get not wanting to spend on potions, but that becomes a bit of a different debate. Players test under ideal conditions. Those conditions include things like major sorcery and prophecy. No better way to get them than potions because you sacrifice neither a bar space nor a GCB in your rotation. Lots of ways to get flowers in this game, and it is an MMO after all. If you dont dabble in the economy and basic crafting, you will probably struggle.

FakeFox

Equality of outcome is not equality. There is absolutely no reason for "closing the gap", rewarding people for playing bad and giving them everything for free in the name of equality is nothing but devaluating and insulting to good players, that actually worked for what they have earned. Bad players should stop feeling entitled to get everything just thrown at them for free.

adeptusminor

So may people complained about the snipe/light attack spammers when pugging dungeons, so ZOS buffed light attacks. I honestly wouldn't mind if they buffed light attacks even more so that people that have no interest in "getting gud" could light attack spam all day and clear vet dungeons no problem.

NyxWrench

Warning: Huge post. I didn't intend it to be initially, but certain things led to other things, which led to more...

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

CP is pretty front loaded. You will certainly see your DPS increase as you approach the cap, but if you are extrapolating in a linear manner, you are going to be disappointed. 30k is certainly a very reasonable and doable benchmark in the current meta for a max CP player in non trial gear, but it does take time, practice and a competent rotation/build. Rotation is probably 75% of the battle. You keep talking about beginner and experienced players, well what do you think the difference is? Practice!

As to a benchmark on weaving, its pretty simple if you have combat metrics. With no heavy attacks, a respectable light weave is in the neighborhood of about .9/sec. The best of the best are more like .94. If you are below .8, you have serious issues. Now obviously, if you need to heavy attack, that is going to fall a bit.

Lastly, if you dont use ultimates or potions when you test, you are never going to get the numbers you are after. Believe me, I get not wanting to spend on potions, but that becomes a bit of a different debate. Players test under ideal conditions. Those conditions include things like major sorcery and prophecy. No better way to get them than potions because you sacrifice neither a bar space nor a GCB in your rotation. Lots of ways to get flowers in this game, and it is an MMO after all. If you dont dabble in the economy and basic crafting, you will probably struggle.

I have a more elaborate post I'll put up later, but I wanted to address a couple things from here first.

People frequently say that CP is front loaded, and that is true, but only from the perspective of a single star. The truth is, each new star you can fill in compounds the overall results, so you continue to get stronger at a faster rate as you increase in CP.

To explain: I'm going to use 50 points in a star as the baseline, as 50 points will give you 75% of that star's effectiveness.

As a sorcerer, I'll start with Elemental Expert, as 50 points in that star increases all magical damage (which is everything I do) by 11%.

Then I'd put 50 points in Spell Erosion for more penetration. 50 points will give you 3960 penetration, which negates roughly 8% of the target's resistance. That 8% translates to a 9%-10% increase in damage, depending on how much total penetration you have. This will also affect everything I do. So this is another 10% increase in total damage, compounded with Elemental Expert.

Then I'd put 50 points each in Master at Arms and Thaumaturge. (OK, not really, because there are CP passives that also affect the choice, but I'll ignore them for now.) That gives +18% to each of direct and DOT damage. Assuming an even split between the two, that's about +18% damage for another 100 CP, roughly equivalent to 9% for each 50 CP spent.

Then I'd put 50 points in Elfborn for +18% crit damage. Everything I do is crittable, so this scales directly off of my crit rate. If I have a 50% crit rate, then the +18% crit damage affects 50% of my damage. Of course this is on top of the base crit damage, so it doesn't give as much return as the others. This 50 points is +7% damage at a 50% crit rate. It would be +8% damage at a 60% crit rate.

Aside: The next step would be putting points in Staff Expert. 50 points there would be +26% to light and heavy attacks. If light and heavy attacks total 40% of all of your damage, this is another +10%, but the reality is likely closer to 20%-25% of all damage, so the boost would be maybe +6% to total damage.

I've now spent 250 out of the 260/270 points available for a single category, and gained close to +10% damage each time I added another 50 points. It goes slightly down at the end, but these are compounding effects.

What does this scaling look like in numbers?

1000 - base
1110 - Elemental Expert (+110)
1221 - Spell Erosion (+111)
1441 - MaA + Thaumaturge (+220 for 100 CP, so +110 each)
1545 - Elfborn (+104)
1633 - Staff Expert (+88) (beyond the current max CP)

Now, this doesn't count the +20% to the resource stats for getting to 300 CP, nor the bonuses from the passives (eg: +12% crit rate, +5% for targets under 25% health, +10% vs off balance enemies, etc). Much (but not all) of that is indeed more front-loaded, but still compounds with everything else, so the actual benefits you gain at the beginning vs the end are still pretty similar.

Overall, the performance increase as you gain CP is pretty steady. It's not as front-loaded as people claim because the compounding effects build on the previous improvements.

---

The second note is mainly a personal preference. I find it easier to understand the effects of light attack counts vs time by using seconds per light attack, rather than light attacks per second. Seconds per light attack has more freedom to change in the 'worse' values, and slows down as it gets to the 'best' values, whereas if you invert it, you get very small changes at the 'bad' end, and very fast changes at the 'good' end, which doesn't reflect the reality of how we improve.

I also do it that way as it better matches up with understanding how the animation cancelling is removing time from the cooldown buffers.

Basically, 1.65 seconds per light attack has no animation cancelling. You're using as much time as a normal skill + light attack. 1.25 seconds per light attack is what I typically see in demos on YouTube, and is roughly where you need to be to hit 40k DPS. 1.10 seconds per light attack is the high end, as you're only using an extra 10th of a second beyond the time-cost of the skill itself. I believe 1.07 is the lowest I've seen, where the light attack time is almost non-existent, and requires extraordinary time sense and reaction times.

This is also easier to calculate when you have a parse that includes heavy attacks, since you cannot light attack during the heavy attacks. Without factoring them out, you won't get numbers accurately reflecting how you're doing with light attack weaving. (A heavy attack + buffered skill takes 2.9 seconds.)

Also, as it relates to the previous section on the rate of improvement with CP, you can also benchmark the light attack weaving time as percentage increases in DPS:

1.65 - 0%. Anything above this is leaving gaps between actions.
1.5 - +10%
1.36 - +10%
1.24 - +10%
1.13 - +10%
1.02 - +10%

Each +10% compounds with the ones above it. So 1.02 isn't +50% (summing the five +10%'s), it's +61% overall compared to the baseline.

Not counting action gaps, a 'good' player will have reached the third increment, with about 1.24 second weave times, which should put them in range of 40k DPS. An average player (who takes the time to learn light weaving) will probably only reach the second increment at 1.36 seconds. An excellent player will hit the fourth (1.13), though even an exceptional player won't be hitting the fifth, instead capping out at about +55% from all the compounding.

However, it needs to be noted that if a 'good' player with a 1.24 second weave time can hit 40k DPS, that implies that they can hit 30k DPS without any animation cancelling at all. Therefore people need to consider how someone who does no light weaving at all should be capable of hitting 30k, and what factors push you to that limit.

If you combine that with the impact of CP, someone who can hit 40k with good weaving should be at about 17.5k DPS with no weaving and no CP. So what factors are contributing to being able to reach that threshold, compared to someone who might start off at 5k DPS? Race, potions, ultimates, skill/morph choices, gear (a biggie), and additional time gaps between actions (another biggie).

So those factors are the fundamentals that really separate players, and would need to be looked at to see what's really creating the gulf in character capability.

Race - Do you choose what you want, or do you choose the ideal?
Skills - Generally advice from other players helps here. Takes time to unlock and skill everything up.
Gear - Tons of variability here. Top-end gear is a major barrier.
Time gaps - This is probably the hardest thing to fix. This is a separate factor from weaving/light attack animation cancelling.
Weaving - Can be learned. Useful, but not as important as people make it out to be.
CP - Will improve over time naturally, but limits lower-level players in ways they (or others) may not realize.
Misc - Potions, ultimates, and self-buffs. Just need to encourage good habits.


Everyone focuses on weaving like it's the holy grail, but they're just slightly off the mark. The real problem, I think, is not getting people to have perfect light attack → skill transitions, but that there is a mental cooldown after the skill is finished, where you're trying to decide what to do next. Which skill do I use next? What bar is it on? What DOTs are about to fall off? And, in real fights: Is the monster attacking me? Do I need to block? Am I standing in a target area and need to move? What's my health at? Am I running out of stamina? Etc, etc.

A half-second decision time between actions could drop your damage output by 20%-30%, even if your light attack weaving is pretty good.

People are naturally wired to want to watch an action to completion before switching to thinking about what to do next. Those at the top end don't have that delay. That is, they're already considering what to do next the instant they press the key for the action. They're disconnected from the actual game, and are working on their own internal model that doesn't get distracted by that other stuff. It's similar to how things work in fighting games.

However, the average player doesn't have that disconnect. To them, the events on screen are important, and occupy mental time until they're completed. That's part of why light weaving is so hard for many to learn. And that gap can't be fixed by changes to the game itself. You can't change how much damage light attacks do, or rework the damage scaling of gear sets, or anything else, and have any impact at all on that fundamental difference in how different people think about and play the game.

So "raising the floor"/"lowering the ceiling" doesn't really work. The only place so far where it has worked is the werewolf build, and that's because there are no decisions to be made. I don't have to switch gears after every single action to figure out the new game state, and where I should go next. I just click the mouse button, and keep on clicking the mouse button. Every action feels complete because the light attacks are limited by their own cooldown, and thus the animation fully plays out each time. There's no feeling of an artificial disconnect.


So how do we fix that in the general sense? Well, that's a problem. There is no 'flow' from one action to the next. In fact, the most prominently pushed technique, weaving, is all about disrupting the visual flow, cancelling animations, and jerking from one position to another unconnected position. It works at a technical level, and if you can disconnect your mental view of the combat from the actual displayed view.

In fighting games, there are a lot of moves you can't do from the wrong starting position. If you start doing A, you can do B and C, but not D or E. There's a flow, and it works because your options from any given starting point are limited, and those limits stem from actual realistic physics. The fewer options there are available, the easier it is to figure out what to do next. See the werewolf for the extreme example of that.

In a game like ESO, however, there are no limits. Any skill can be used following a light attack, and there are no limitations on what skills can follow others. You have a massively complicated tree branching out from any single point. Dynamic rotations embrace that, and benefit from it, but that is very difficult for the average player.

I would say that the problem is fixable if you created a series of flows that players could use, where A implies B, or possibly C, rather than picking random letters out of the alphabet. However that would require a massive overhaul of the entire conceptualization of how the game works, and thus, for all practical purposes, probably isn't going to happen.


So from a more practical standpoint, bringing the player base closer together largely involves finding the true root causes of the largest gaps, and working to educate people on how to fix them. Gear is probably the largest gap that isn't fixable in that way on the player side, though the devs could introduce more accessible mid-range gear that helps close the gap. Getting off the weaving bandwagon, and helping people more with the decision tree issue, is probably the next best improvement. And continue down the line of where gaps lie.

Things that would require dev involvement:
1) Gear
2) Racial disparity

Things that involve player education:
1) Time gaps/decision trees
2) Skill choice
3) CP
4) Weaving
5) Misc utility (potions, ultimates, etc)


Final note on weaving: I see people push really hard for this because, in their parses, light attacks are the dominant factor in their damage. Thus, the more light attacks you can fit in, the better your damage. However I also find that that is heavily biased based on gear sets. Without endgame gear sets, light attacks are only a middling component in overall damage, and improved weaving has a very small impact on DPS. However that's its own analysis and discussion.

Rungar

you play a game where the highest damaging skill by far in your parse is the free skill, light attack and the value of this free skill multiplies in literally increments miliseconds far beyond most of the players natural ability and even the reliability of the internet.

this system is poison for this playerbase. True global cooldown is the antidote.

Sparr0w

I'm not a millionaire but want to have the same luxury as one. Plz give me without me needing to do anything.

It is just practice, even easier when you're on PC since you have timers that tell you when skills are expiring, rather than trying to pick out from the massive bar at the bottom of your screen...

FakeFox

NyxWrench wrote: »

Final note on weaving: I see people push really hard for this because, in their parses, light attacks are the dominant factor in their damage. Thus, the more light attacks you can fit in, the better your damage. However I also find that that is heavily biased based on gear sets. Without endgame gear sets, light attacks are only a middling component in overall damage, and improved weaving has a very small impact on DPS. However that's its own analysis and discussion.

How is that supposed to work? The only set used in endgame PvE that pushes exclusively light attacks is the MSA staff and that is not used by stamina and for magicka the difference is not so much that light attacks suddenly drop by 50%.

Sparr0w

FakeFox wrote: »

NyxWrench wrote: »

Final note on weaving: I see people push really hard for this because, in their parses, light attacks are the dominant factor in their damage. Thus, the more light attacks you can fit in, the better your damage. However I also find that that is heavily biased based on gear sets. Without endgame gear sets, light attacks are only a middling component in overall damage, and improved weaving has a very small impact on DPS. However that's its own analysis and discussion.

How is that supposed to work? The only set used in endgame PvE that pushes exclusively light attacks is the MSA staff and that is not used by stamina and for magicka the difference is not so much that light attacks suddenly drop by 50%.

Agree, light attacks will still do a decent % of your overall dps no matter what you're using. Plus classes e.g. nightblades rely on these for sustain and damage (bow proc).

Besides what reason is there not to weave? It doesn't effect your rotation in any way since they're just used between skills...

Katahdin

The problem with doing something that "raises the floor" is that it will also raise the ceiling (we have alreadybseen this happen) because a buff is applied/available to everyone unless the devs somehow put a hardcap on damage output. I doubt that is going to happen

SugaComa

FakeFox wrote: »

Equality of outcome is not equality. There is absolutely no reason for "closing the gap", rewarding people for playing bad and giving them everything for free in the name of equality is nothing but devaluating and insulting to good players, that actually worked for what they have earned. Bad players should stop feeling entitled to get everything just thrown at them for free.

I agree, but that's why I believe the game should offer three tier setting for trials

Normal, vet and leaderboard

Normal should be for everyone and should be doable by most people who can get a minimum DPS with out the need for weavinv and animation canceling and on subpar gear

Vet should be for people running top tier gear able to do an imperfect rotation but no full mechanics so rotations aren't as important and knowing the mechanics

Leaderboards should for those looking for a greater challenge ... Awarding multiple tiered reward for those top tier players
No death, speed, and a damage score for the amount of damage dealt

This way everyone has a goal to achieve based on their current skill level

Thogard

This thread got way too political way too fast.

Buffing siege dmg or nerfing siege pots might be a bad idea, but it doesn’t mean that ZOS is run by devout communists lol

NyxWrench

Sparr0w wrote: »

FakeFox wrote: »

NyxWrench wrote: »

Final note on weaving: I see people push really hard for this because, in their parses, light attacks are the dominant factor in their damage. Thus, the more light attacks you can fit in, the better your damage. However I also find that that is heavily biased based on gear sets. Without endgame gear sets, light attacks are only a middling component in overall damage, and improved weaving has a very small impact on DPS. However that's its own analysis and discussion.

How is that supposed to work? The only set used in endgame PvE that pushes exclusively light attacks is the MSA staff and that is not used by stamina and for magicka the difference is not so much that light attacks suddenly drop by 50%.

Agree, light attacks will still do a decent % of your overall dps no matter what you're using. Plus classes e.g. nightblades rely on these for sustain and damage (bow proc).

Besides what reason is there not to weave? It doesn't effect your rotation in any way since they're just used between skills...

I never said you shouldn't weave. Regardless of large or small, it's an improvement with no real downsides, so you might as well. The problem I have is with people parading it around as the ultimate fix for all your DPS woes. Almost every time I see someone trying to figure out why their damage is bad, one of the first answers is invariably, "Practice your weaving", as if that fixes everything.

I have worked on adding light attack weaving, and improving my skill at it, but mathematically it just doesn't add up to the totals that are presented. The increase in total DPS from lowering the time per light attack+skill cycle has a fundamental limit, and that limit is nowhere near high enough to bridge the gap to where the high-end parses are.

The real major differences I see between my parses and others on the web is that damage per action is around twice what mine is. For example, my light attacks are currently averaging about 4800 (compared to Liquid Lightning at perhaps 3500). If I look at a high-end parse, however, I see light attacks averaging 11k-12k (compared to Liquid Lightning at perhaps 5k). That improvement can in no way be gained from "practicing weaving".

And yes, it's a lot more complicated than that, between CP boosts and crit damage and execute-range passives and other buffs. Throwing together some quick guesstimate math, it looks like a base damage increase from 4800 (mine) to 6400 (high-end), which is close to matching the gain from using the Maelstrom staff.

In this case, light attacks are massively boosted compared to all other damage skills, which of course means that light weaving will have an outsized impact on your DPS. The more that light attack damage increases without increasing the rest of your damage (or at least scales up more quickly), the more important light attack weaving becomes. Without that bit of gear and other amplifiers, though, light attacks (and thus weaving) do not have nearly the impact on overall DPS.

Of course that's for sorcerers. For nightblades, light attacks have less impact on overall DPS, but are key to their sustain, which means the value from weaving is indirect rather than direct. It's still useful, but is not in and of itself the key to higher DPS. So, again, weaving will not solve your DPS problems.

MetalHead4x4

BAD = anyone who doesn't run a high sustain, high burst build that runs around Cyro looking to 1vX people on their OP builds. Cause I sure as hell get a lot of hate from these people because I don't play THEIR way. Apparently I can't kill anyone 1v1 according to them. Apparently I'm "scared" to fight them 1v1 even though I'm not running a high sustain, high burst build and prefer skirmishing to seeking out solo kills.

GOOD = anyone who goes where the fighting is and does their job fighting be it seige or small/large group play. I'm not a fan of ball zerging (spin to win crap) I think there should be more open field battling which is where I shine the most. If you kill more than you die, you're doing alright.

aeowulf

ZeroXFF wrote: »

tunepunk wrote: »

@NyxWrench Agree completely.

Up until just recently, and I've been playing for years, I've seen potions as a *** I'm low on health and resources, and not as a 6th skill, using it for Damage and Crit Chance buff.

Nowadays though I learned to use potions that way. Pop potion pre boss fight. It lasts longer than normal buffs, so needs to be refreshed less often, and I don't need to slot the buff on my skill bar.

Same goes for ultimates. It's a skill that has always been on my bar for emergency/burn situations, not as part of a rotation. Or as a stamina class used flawless dawnbreaker only for the passive increase to weapon damage, rarely using the skill itself.

2 bar optimised boss fight rotations with animation cancelling/weaving is not obvious for new players and some (like me) after years never even get used to it, as they spend 95% of their time exploring overland, and doing quests and collecting skill points.... less then 1 percent of your time you are actually engaging group dungeon boss fights.

1. Are they using potions? (i guess many just use them for resource/healing, emergency)
2. What food are they usually using, if any. (my first 2 years of playing i didn't even bother with food)
3. Are they bar swapping? (maybe some do, but maybe not as part of a rotation)
4. Do they stack dots?
5. How and when do they use their ultimates? (maybe mostly use them in emergency situations?)
6. Do they spam their dps skill? (Looking at how people play overland, I would say yes)
7. Do they spam light attacks? (Some do)
8. Which skills do they use?

Casuals don't need to be competitive, but at least buffed to do the minimum threshold required for participation. The span between a "bad" casual and a top dps is currently 15-60k ... if anyone could do 30k by using some buff, and dot, and spamming their main dps skill like wrecking blow/sweeps and reach 30k that would be perfectly fine. If you're doing that now, you'll reach about 20k even with decent golded gear at max CP. The span should be 30-60k instead of15-60k.

How ZOS solves the problem is up to them, but they need to have a casual representative to look at how they are actually playing the game. And I certainly don't think that complex rotations, weaving and dot stacking should be forced on people to at least be able to participate. If you're aiming high and want to compete... go ahead min/max, meta, BiS, dynamic rotations, all you want. But some people simply don't want to play that way JUST to be able to participate.

With the right gear choises:
Light attack builds should be viable but not competitive. (buffs, some dots & and mainly light attacks)
Skills spammer builds should be viable but not competitive. (buff, dots & spam main dps skill, with some heavy for sustain)
Single bar build should be viable but not competitive. (stack and upkeep as much as you can without much barswap)

Nobody is expecting to reach top DPS with simple builds, but at least be able to reach minimum threshold for participation.

For me, complex rotations results in DPS loss. I'm not using any addons to keep track of timers. My uptime get's worse with complexity. I'm wasting resources with more complex rotations, by casting skill from the wrong bar and general fumble.

So I'm stuck with 2 builds I play mostly pve dungeons. On target dummy I have A magplar that can just about reach 30k on a single bar, and a werewolf stamina build where I'm doing around 35k at the moment, without any BiS gear, just easily accessible stuff.

And that's one of the reasons why we need to put light attacks on the same GCD as skills and treat them as viable option for a spammable. It's an instinctive application for light attacks, and there is no good reason for weaving in its current form to even be a thing.

I can definitely get behind the removal of weaving... Would need to be for the right reasons and there's a ton of stuff that would need to be revisited. Too much content almost relies on it these days. No overly keen on my toon looking like he's doing some strobed disco dance when fighting anyway. Well, except on a Saturday night in his white suit maybe.

Banana

If only everyones ping would equalize

Rungar

Banana wrote: »

If only everyones ping would equalize

since you cant do that you can at least minimize its effects with a true global cooldown. 0.8 seconds is enough for pretty much anyone to play fairly. <0.4 seconds (LA<Skill<Bash) is far to aggressive and in this game very exploitable.

its not really about good and bad players at all but rather a level play field.

instead of addressing the problem call nerf for every skill, call down all the players for being no good, blame heavy armor in pvp, lag or whatever other perceived problem is doing its rounds of haunting.......