Hi everyone,
Now that the Class Rep Program has been running for just over half a year, we felt it was time to make some adjustments based on our needs and to better meet the goals of the program. The main goals include collecting consolidated and regular concise feedback from the community to present to the Dev Team, and aiding in increasing communication between everyone. Below are the current Class Reps involved in our program:
- Alcast
- Checkmath
- FearTurbo
- GandTheImpaler
- JoyDivison
- KenaPKK
- Liofa
- Masel92
- Quantum_V
It’s worth mentioning we do plan to add a few new members to the program early next year; we’ll let everyone know when that will be happening in the event you’d like to nominate yourself or another player.
We also met with the group late last week, with the meeting notes below for everyone to read. Our main focus were things that changed in Update 20 and doing a retrospective of sorts; what went well, what didn’t go well, and what we could improve upon for future updates. We also discussed some future changes coming in Update 21, and went over some updates for the program itself.
Update 20 Feedback
- We updated roll dodge timing to only work if a player is dodging while the attack hits them. How has this affected Medium armor builds and slower projectiles like Snipe and Dark Flare?
- Feels no different for most players (This meets our intended goal)
- Requires you to be rolling as projectiles would hit you
- We changed Evasion to AoE damage reduction from dodge chance. Feedback on this for both PvP and PvE?
- Major Evasion is too strong and counters Templars and Wardens more than other classes
- Minor Evasion feels too weak
- Both are 100% uptime buffs with no drawbacks, counter to the usual design for Major and Minor buffs
- Suggest making Shuffle Minor Evasion, buffing Minor Evasion to 15%, buffing Major Evasion to 30%, and placing Major Evasion on a low uptime, higher cost source
- ZOS note: Major buffs for some categories are rare, while for other categories minor buffs are rarer. For example, Major Berserk is rare while Minor Berserk is common. Major Fracture is common while Minor Fracture is rare. We can also evaluate power level of Evasion
- Templar Jabs is not cutting it with the changes to Evasion
- PvE – not a lot changed
- Discussed the survivability for Stamina vs Magicka Trial situations, and how the changes to Evasion has helped in Trials
- Doubled the effectiveness of class buffs, and removed Minor Toughness from War Horn
- Class buffs are noticeable, but are not fundamentally changing raid meta
- Inexperienced groups miss the Minor Toughness from Warhorn and have little control over whether they have a Warden performing proper heals to grant its passive to the group
- Recommending a support class, damage dealers won’t run this tree line
- PUGs and inexperienced players don’t always have a Warden in group
- Inexperienced groups therefore often miss out on the extra health, causing them to struggle
- ZOS: Does this affect Trial group compositions?
- Not as much as we had hoped
- ZOS: Generally speaking, what are your considerations when forming a Trial group?
- Ideal group compositions change more depending on the trial you’re attempting and less on class passive contributions
- Mainly whether ranged or melee DPS is preferable
- Stam classes still provide little individuality, especially since Sunderflame was nerfed
- ZOS: What classes are you looking for when composing a group?
- Whoever can bring the most damage
- Damage shields affected by armor, critical strikes, enchantment procs
- Shields feel strong in PvE
- Shields fall faster in PvP, but sustain via harness is the same as before
- Shields are still insufficient defense when you have no incoming Magicka damage to fuel harness sustain. Shields cost too much and do not stay up long enough versus stamina enemies
- Reduction to Swift jewelry and duration of Major Expedition abilities
- Swift needed a nerf, and the numbers feel right. Many people still use 1-2 swift, but it isn’t as prevalent as before
- Other Expedition nerfs are questionable and difficult to gauge because so many mobility nerfs were made simultaneously
- Speed pots are still used by a lot of people
- Durations of Major Expedition from class abilities are too short and were never recommended for nerfs. Boundless, Double Take, and Bird of Prey saw little use prior to this patch.
- Boundless is used now for the resistances buffs. Casting it for Expedition feels wasteful and expensive, yet must be done often to remain mobile.
- Double Take is still not worth its bar slot unless you’re in a large raid or dueling a templar or warden. Very niche
- Casting Bird of Prey now serves no purpose except to provide expedition because its Minor Berserk became passive. Highly inefficient.
- Added more Developer Comments in the patch notes between PTS and Live launch
- ZOS: Are these helpful?
- Yes. Increased dev interaction and communication are always valued
- However, what was really appreciated was the willingness to revert and rework PTS changes prior to live
- ZOS: Is there anything you’d like to see more or less of with these?
- Less blindsiding with changes not discussed prior to PTS (ie: Shield cast times, Soldier of Anguish, glyphs proccing on single target dots, and Healing Ward’s nerf)
- Players miss the monthly combat updates
- ZOS: We want to get back to a place where we can talk to the things we’re working on. We aren’t well prepared to deliver a regular cadence of what we’re doing right now, but we’re working on improving that.
- New Grace passive. How is this performing in BGs and Cyrodiil?
- Love it. Still doesn’t fully fix the issue of Magicka mobility and struggles against snares
- Magicka classes lack snare removal abilities
- Major/Minor snare system could solve a lot of concerns
- Idea: CPs that reduce snares?
- On the topic of BGs, and therefore non-CP, non-CP imbalance is still pretty harsh. Proc sets are still dominant (such as Sloads, Viper, Valkyn Skoria, Master DW), and Stamina is still dominant
- BG queues still upset people. MMR seems inconsistent, and premade versus solo queue players is too common
- Werewolf performance and the availability of counters
- Complaints that werewolf uptime is still too short
- Werewolf DPS is mostly light attacking and doesn’t take much effort or input. Is also heavily tied to Relequen and Blood Moon sets.
- ZOS: This makes the playstyle more accessible for newer players; Reps agreed and said it was a nice option for players who are still mastering attack weaving
- Werewolves want to use skins and get werebear, wearboar, werelizard, werecat, etc polymorphs
- Brutal Pounce still unused
- Salvation still a poor set
- Howl not often used in PvP apparently, and never used in DPS parsing
- Transformation is very expensive. Seems to be even worse in Cyrodiil, where you only have a small window of time to enjoy werewolf before you have to transform back to mount up, only to spend the next siege on a keep wall just building ultimate.
- Item sets, including the 12 new ones and rebalancing of some older sets
- ZOS: How desirable or undesirable have the new Item Sets been?
- Generally desirable. Bright-Throat’s is powerful but not meta-demanding. Dead-Water’s Guile strong in stam burst PvP groups. Spell Strategist gives Magicka a decent high spell damage option, although it seems to apply the debuff inconsistently
- Nothing glaringly op or gamebreaking
- Appreciate the near-miss with Soldier of Anguish
- Many old sets are no longer desirable
- Some BRP weapons aren’t worth the effort
- ZOS: Have any of the Item Sets had an impact on the overall PvE/PvP meta?
- Honestly difficult to tell. The sets are seeing use, but the real determining factors in new metas are the shield changes, namely Healing Ward’s nerf forcing Magicka Sorc and Shadowy Disguise mnb into new sources of healing (really rough for them), and the rise of BRP resto
Update 21 Feedback
While we aren’t able to go into detail about what we discussed for Update 21 at this time, we mainly focused on feedback about the incoming changes to racial passives and new item sets. We are planning to give everyone a preview of the racial passives prior to PTS going live.
Edited by ZOS_GinaBruno on December 12, 2018 2:53PM