Rethink Durations/Resource Costs for Major Expedition and Snare Immunity

IAVITNI

4 seconds is far too short for Major Expedition buffs. That really only translates to 3 seconds due to GCDs.

Proposal:
Major Expedition:

• 6 seconds from stamina skills
• 8 seconds from magicka skills
• ***Elusive Mist remains at 4 seconds

Snare Immunity:

• Forward Momentum is increased to 6 seconds for snare immunity, but root immunity is removed and replaced with 25%-50% root duration reduction
• Shuffle increases to 6 seconds

For all skills, costs need to be reduced to to maintain current Live cost:effectiveness ratios. The exception to this change would be Evasion, as AoE reduction is a new component that has greater ramifications attached to it and Forward Momentum, which would probably be balanced at 6 seconds.

Reasoning:
Duration is simply too short on PTS in conjunction with the Swift and Speed Potion nerfs. The speed changes hit solo play the hardest, not because of the duration decreases, but rather because of accessibility. Access to Major Expedition is locked behind very high cost skills that currently have horrendous cost:effectiveness ratios.

So why 6 seconds?
6 seconds worked for shields prior to the nerfs. It allows for 5 GCDs for an offensive rotation. Technically, 5 GCDs for most builds is too short of a duration, especially when you consider that a Vigor will likely be cast as part of the defensive rotation. However, immunity is less of a prerogative compared to shields, so downtime would arguably be considered balance.

8 seconds on magicka sources is necessary to balance magicka against stamina sources. Magicka characters suffered the most from these duration changes when they were not even a concern within the speed meta. A longer duration reduces the nerf to magicka builds,however, 8 seconds duration for stamina builds should not cause these builds to over-perform. Furthermore, from a stamina perspective, these skills see much less use and compete with other utility skills for those builds, as utility skills often draw from the magicka pool. 8 second duration for these skills creates a reason to use a magicka source over a stamina source for stamina builds. Arguably 10 seconds is more reasonable, but 8 should be the testing point.

Elusive Mist MUST remain at 4 seconds. The skill is perfectly balanced as is. A reduction in duration would make the skill useless and an increase would open up opportunity for abuse. This is THE mobility skill as it grants snare, root and CC immunity. As the strongest form of mobility, this skill should have the lowest duration and should not have been selected as the standard.

Snare Immunity is a powerful but necessary tool in a snare meta where snares can be applied from pretty much any spammable without any effort/intelligence required. Snare application should have been modeled after Templar snares, but unfortunately this wasn't the case.

8 seconds was far too long for Forward Momentum. However, 4 seconds is slightly too short. Referring back to old Shield durations, 6 seconds is an acceptable window. Builds that run Forward Momentum are still sacrificing the best stamina burst heal from Rally, and therefore there must be an acceptable pay off. Decoupling root and snare immunity would give Shuffle it's own role of a true mobility skill while Forward Momentum would still leave users susceptible to roots.

*Some side notes* (Relevant as this buff is attached to many skills that would be affected by proposed changes)
Minor Evasion should be increased to 15%. This puts the buff "more in line" with other effects such as Minor Maim. 25% AoE reduction is simply too strong for PvP. All skills that would grant Major Evasion in the PTS should then be changed to Minor Evasion. This would greatly reduce the indirect nerf to Templars while still providing significant value to Major-->Minor Evasion skills as well as making Deceptive Predator a viable alternative to Bird of Prey.

Now before you PvE madmen shoot me down, let me finish. Erhmmm **Clears throat**.

PvE sucks. That is all.

Just kidding. I love stamina in PvE (ironic, as I am a magmain for PvP) so I would never propose a nerf to the AoE reduction.
There are 2 ways to handle this.

1. The simplest fix would be to have these skills grant Minor Evasion for PvP and Major Evasion in PvE. Nothing changes. War. War stays the same.
2. The second solution would be to maintain Minor Evasion on these skills and incorporate Major Evasion somewhere else, preferably on tank/healer focused skills. The perfect candidates would be Blood Alter, Circle of Protection and Force Siphon. This would not only increase the value of these skills (probably making them mandatory tbh, so potentially a bad change) but would be a net buff to PvE since stamina would now always benefit from Minor and Major Evasion. Blood Alter and Circle of Protection would simply grant it to those in their AoE and Force Siphon could grant it to any player that deals direct damage to the target for 2 seconds to also grant it to magicka builds without making it over-powered.

The above changes would still be in line with the desired direction that ZoS is heading. Up-time should still take a considerable hit, but Major Expedition would still be worth the investment, which it simply is not on the PTS. This would still provide solo players with the last skill based tool they have and not completely gut speed based builds. Increased opportunity costs for speed was necessary but the current changes placed heavy emphasis on cost with little opportunity involved.

There is the special exception of Rapids. As a primarily solo player I do not feel comfortable addressing this skill. Limiting the skill to 4 players may be a valid option. But like I said. IDK.

Thank you for your time. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Oh I meant bye.

jcm2606

Rather good ideas in here. 100% agree in that Major Expedition and Shuffle's snare immunity need to have the durations increased.

del9

I like your proposals. It makes sense to change FM to 6 seconds from 8 seconds. 4s is a hue jump. Smaller incremental changes allow us to assess more accurately.

I also love capping Rapids at buffing 4 players. I wrote a whole post on this. It only makes sense that this skill be brought in line with every other snare immunity and expedition skill.