Upcoming Racial Balance Changes for Update 21

Red_Feather

I am concerned what this will do to Alliance Battle population.

gplumblingnrb18_ESO

WeerW3ir wrote: »

gplumblingnrb18_ESO wrote: »

WeerW3ir wrote: »

Since when 9% percent is 1k. (argonian, nord) and 10% is 2k? (altmer)

They are not changing the exact percentage to digits. They are just changing the current stats to what they think is a reasonable/stable number, regardless of what the current percentage is. Just be happy they didn't completely remove the max health buff.

Argonian needed a nerf was slightly overpowered.

I think the changes are great, I'm gonna really enjoy testing and creating new builds.

They wasnt. At least not as tank. As healer more likely. But that does not change the truth. 6 NOT EQUAL TO 9

Ye, but the change has nothing do to with current stats, the current stats are redundant.

Example:

It could have been 6% changed to 5000 and 9% to 1..
It could have been 6% changed to 1 and 9% to 5000..

The % of the current stats does not matter. They are not changing the current % to = digits.. They are nerfing or buffing the stats to what they think is stable and then using digits instead of percentages.

With my Argonian Magplar tanky/healer, I could with stand 6-10 players in pvp with ease, while taking the full brunt of the attack.. (non CP) - It really needed a nerf, it's completely overpowered. Same goes for the Dark Elf Flame dmg in pve.

WeerW3ir

*** bosmers. Love lizards

InvitationNotFound

Oh man. Completely unnecessary.

I mean it is fine to adjust a few things when something is way off.

But this here is just another joke. Races aren't an issue. If you want to improve combat, focus on fixing Cyrodiil.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

...

To summarize, we decided to focus more on racial balance this update because racial choice was one of the larger outliers to our core mantra of the game - freedom. We wanted to expand the horizon for choice and present players with a self-reflecting question of “What is my playstyle or ideal build?”, providing options to help reach that individual answer. Now, instead of having a single race that focuses almost exclusively on a specific playstyle, you can pick based on a personal level.

...

Can't we get rid of this "play as you want" thing already? It is nothing new. You had this in previous games and will always have it. You can play as you want. Yet, just don't complain when you perform like ***. If you want to make everything equal you'd have to get rid of races and classes anyway. You will always have a best class / race for a certain task, you can't and shouldn't get rid of that. You're just focusing on something that isn't really relevant for the game. Fix the broken things instead of messing up something else.

Furthermore, using fixed values instead of % is a massiv nerf. E.g. if i want (you know, it is freedom and "play as you want" things, right?) massiv stam recovery, then 21% of my stam recovery just became 258 stam recovery. Wtf, are your developers insane?

martijnlv40

I can see how quite a few people have problems with the changes so far, and foremost I would say, give at least 1 race change per 2 lv 50 characters, and (temporary) all races, all factions (or however it is named).
That said, I think a problem in this game as a whole is power creep. And what the devs have achieved that every race except Khajiit has gotten a flat damage nerf. The sustain was buffed, which is great for quite a few setups, and increases the damage output of course, but the sustain problems could almost always be negated by the best trial groups out there, so it was dividing the best and the trying to be the best. This will bring the game a bit closer, lower the ceiling but highering the floor.
And keep in mind that they might change a lot of values!
I do think that buffing redguard further without clearly buffing another stam option, might be a mistake. And poor dunmer magDK (and in general). I think the breton and altmer are pretty balanced, closer than they were previously, and the argonian nerf seems to be in order as well. It seems they wanted to buff the nords, but I think they didn't do a good job at that and it might need more attention.

WeerW3ir

gplumblingnrb18_ESO wrote: »

WeerW3ir wrote: »

gplumblingnrb18_ESO wrote: »

WeerW3ir wrote: »

Since when 9% percent is 1k. (argonian, nord) and 10% is 2k? (altmer)

They are not changing the exact percentage to digits. They are just changing the current stats to what they think is a reasonable/stable number, regardless of what the current percentage is. Just be happy they didn't completely remove the max health buff.

Argonian needed a nerf was slightly overpowered.

I think the changes are great, I'm gonna really enjoy testing and creating new builds.

They wasnt. At least not as tank. As healer more likely. But that does not change the truth. 6 NOT EQUAL TO 9

Ye, but the change has nothing do to with current stats, the current stats are redundant.

Example:

It could have been 6% changed to 5000 and 9% to 1..
It could have been 6% changed to 1 and 9% to 5000..

The % of the current stats does not matter. They are not changing the current % to = digits.. They are nerfing or buffing the stats to what they think is stable and then using digits instead of percentages.

With my Argonian Magplar tanky/healer, I could with stand 6-10 players in pvp with ease, while taking the full brunt of the attack.. (non CP) - It really needed a nerf, it's completely overpowered. Same goes for the Dark Elf Flame dmg in pve.

That dosent mean they need 1k from 9 percent. While other Races getting more from less percent. Its dosent make any sense. Make atleast the numbers equal. So you get this much from this percent. And not like now.


These changes are the Morrowind changes category. And you remember how many player we losed with that. 😒

Zippy81

@ZOS_Gilliam
THIS IS NOT BALANCING. THIS IS NOT LORE FRIENDLY. THIS IS NOT AN OVERHAUL. It ruins versatility.

No freedom at all. Why the hell can't you let people choose what they want to do with their characters? Give them 10 points which they can invest in either a stat pool, a stat recovery, weapon/spell dmg, weapon/spell crit, or resistances?

Why not put them in 3 morphable tiers, like:

Tier 1: Lore bonus (swimming, fall dmg, resistance to lava etc.), always unlocked. These are fine nowadays.

Tier 2: Stats (can be morphed to health/magicka/stamina), invest up to 10 pts. This is where all the discussion starts.

Tier 3: Special buffs like Elemental Talent, Stealthy, Red Diamond, Rugged (and let us again choose out of 3 for tanky, stam, mag based on the lore). You need 9 specific but useful buffs that you can shuffle. Orcs, Imperials, Nords, even Bretons can be rugged, for example.

No offense. Your attempts look like a kid trying to fit a rectangular shape into a circular hole.

Grrrrrr. Not to mention the money grab.

I hate it when you keep narrow down the choice to meta. Let us choose! FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Peekachu99

@ZOS_Gilliam Changes are fine, but you’ve only shifted the meta, you haven’t added “build diversity” at all.

A bolder approach would be having 1-2 fixed racial passives and then allowing players to pick from a pool of the others. That’s what some of us were expecting—but should have known better I suppose.

gplumblingnrb18_ESO

xaraan wrote: »

Argonian was slightly overpowered for tanking - slightly. What about for DPS? So now they are "ok" for tanking and horrible for DPS role? How is that balance?

Argonian passives made the dd role quite redundant, ye sure u could pull out some dmg but no where compared to other races. All they did was nerf the tankyness of argonian, that wouldn't change the *** dmg it had previously anyway.

DeathStalker

Mr_Wolfe wrote: »

The values seem to have been based around an assumed total of 20k, ie a 10% bonus becomes a flat +2,000 increase, but most characters have at least 30-40k in their primary stat.

This ^^

Radinyn

Trying to make it uniqie you basically slaughtered khajiit unique regen, on of the most fun features. And you took away ~2k regen from my build nice.

SilverWF

Well... I dunno... was there any reasons for this, but "we just need to change something"?

Poor Lizards and Cannibals - such huge nerf...

Hail to Cats and Reds - such buff, omg

Zekka

heavier wrote: »

breh ur 64 stam imperials now have 15% proc on healing that also heals for more HP and can be done from range
calm yourself

Are you seriously claiming that a sh!tty chance (15%) of receiving a sh!tty heal (2k hp in pve, Im sure that will save you on your tank against Rakkhat lol, 1k in pve) is any good? Lmao you are clueless.
Red Diamond has always be a meme and will keep being a meme, the percentages to flat amounts changes will hurt imperials the most because they are nerfs and imperials have 2 max% bonii, and what do they get in exchange? A slightly less bad version of Red Diamond and a little bit of block cost reduction you will probably not even feel, meanwhile the sustain gap between them and redguards just got bigger.

WoppaBoem

Good job guys, well done. Would love to see some more unique skills like the ulit gen from nord and the major expidition with wood elf with all races but overall well done.

Jamdarius

Lord_Dexter wrote: »

Dunmer the true hybrids if you you can sustain.

Dunmers are not gonna be hybrids as long as Armor passives do not allow such play, u must decide either way to be max mag spec max stam spec or tank, besides we do not rly have many good hybrid sets beside shacklebreaker

Jamdarius

casparian wrote: »

Big thanks to Gilliam and Gina for working hard to get us this info so quickly!

Two main questions:

1. Why is there no race that both gets a stamina/weapon damage bonus and gets a bonus when using a class ability (a la High Elf)? This just reinforces the old, bad stereotype that class abilities are for magicka builds and weapon abilities are for stamina builds. Big oversight IMO.
2. Wasn't this supposed to introduce more racial diversity in individual roles? Isn't there just no reason to run anything but Altmer for mag DPS anymore (whereas before Dunmer and Altmer both had points in favor)? What am I missing here?

That said, racial diversity in PVP is looking a lot better than it used to be. That's nice to see.

True I also still do not see how for example Nord can be better as Mage in any aspect or even comparable to Altmer at this point, what I was hoping for was to see us picking 3 passives from pool to tailor our character as we want with a racial tweak for example Dunmers add fire dmg and max mag - nords add frost damage and max mag (if we wanted to spec Nords into mages) etc + 1 typical racial passive, now we have just shifted meta races into different directions so it is disappointing.

Nilarynpaw

I'm happy about these changes. I expected something worse, but this is awesome.
Especially the Khajiit changes! I'm so grateful for those.

For the rest of people who are complening now:
Let's wait and see how this is gonna work in live.

Jules

Raudgrani wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

Raudgrani wrote: »

Nice. So you nerf Nords *even* more, by changing the previous "all-round" 6% into resistance? Dunno about the ulti generation, might just be pessimistic - every 10 seconds? Well that's not much, certainly not in PVP. Sure it might be good for a TANK, but do we really want to push Nords into even more niche tanking role? They were not best at it to start with, so why force them to stay there?

And Redguard... Ffs., you *increase* what made these meta? Why do you want ever stamina DD to be Redguard? Why?

And... You *decreased* Khajiit stamina recovery to literally... NOTHING? Great. You just made Khajiit impossible to use for competitive damage dealing, really - this makes them good for nothing at all, they were already struggling with stamina recovery; 75 recovery? Really? What are they supposed to be used for? Pickpocketing alone? Redguard was already the "button masher handicapped" choice over Khajiit. Khajiit will now have the vigor of a 50 year old obese chain smoker.

With these changes - there's no such thing as a serious end game Khajiit DD anymore. Every stamina damage dealer HAS to be Redguard or gtfo. Khajiit is out, Bosmer is out - only remotely viable alternative is now Orc. I don't know, but I'm getting a weird feeling this some kind of "real world" political correctness thing? Everyone needs to be a Redguard. Seriously, it's ridiculous. Pathetic.

Ok.
Nords are literally OP buffed. 4k resistance of EACH? Almost STATIC minor heroism is a nerf to you - HUH?
Khajiit just got 8% spell and weapon crit - the most desirable stat in a PVE DPS kit and yet you say they have 0 chance of being competitive - HUH?

Hahaha.... Seriously...

You get your "heroism" when you take damage, every ten seconds at that. In PVP, that's pretty much useless, especially since they will now be even worse in PVP. Since they will have less health AND stamina, AND health recovery, nobody will use them anyway - because this was exactly why we used them in PVP, if we did. The old typical PVP Nord with +40k Stamina, high Health/Health recovery is now out the window, so tell me how we are supposed to make use of that "heroism" you speak of. We can't be the Fury/Seventh Legion wearing guys taking all the beating anymore, they will be as weak and useless as us modern day Swedes, a pale shadow of what once was, quite literally.

3960 = 6% reduction, this now doesn't apply to bleed or oblivion damage. So please keep telling me how wonderfully buffed they are.

Literally, maybe you just zerg in PvP. Which is fine, I don’t care. But maybe that’s why you don’t understand my POV.

The reason I say this is because “when you take damage” and “PvP” are nearly interchangeable terms to me, whereas you seem to feel the need to act like they’re so incredibly different. If I’m in PvP, I’m transporting or I’m taking damage, simple as that. People are attacking me and I am attacking people. The only scenario I can imagine someone wouldn’t see it this way is if they were the aggressor, larger group, zerging down a smaller group who literally can’t do damage to them because they’re being trampled.

“When you take damage” should very easily mean it procs on cooldown every time and synergize incredibly well with, oh idk- BATTLE ROAR. Bloodspawn. Decisive. Werewolf hide, fury, seventh legion, take your pick. These changes to nord will literally push it to not only good or great but literally best in slot. Atleast in regards to stam dk, it is going to be very hard to top.

You’re acting like nords damage mitigation got gutted so profoundly that they’re just going to be fairies who float around and die now. Meanwhile, in every discord and competitive PvP environment I look, everyone’s eyeballing that nord as their next ticket to OP ROFLSTOMP.

The damage mit % = resistance pound for pound. So the only thing we’re talking about here is bleeds. The mit % decreased them and new passive will not. But even with that, that current mit % passive is broken and it’s well known and accepted that it stacks improperly at the disadvantage of the nord.

And while bleeds are strong, an 8% damage mitigation to them being lost does not BY ANY MEANS gut this play style. If you think that a nord heavy armor stam dk in blood spawn/fury/7th with all those healing, tanking and constant ulti gain passives is going to be anything short of an absolute juggernaut, maybe refer to the very first sentence of this post as to why.

Aluneth

I'm happy that they didn't homogenize the racial changes, and instead chose to follow lore. Now when that is said...

What the hell happened to my imperial? It's still boring and average, now it's just worse than it was before from a number point of view.

MartiniDaniels

haakira wrote: »

I'm quite appalled at the amount of clueless comments floating around here.

Take a step back and think about the numbers presented to you. Most of these changes won't even warrant a race change whatsoever. If your race was doing something for your class, it will keep doing it just fine, and in a lot of cases, even better.

As long as you play a race that has the stats that boost your type of damage, you're all set. The difference will be in most cases of 1% or less for DPS.

Stop this ridiculous "THE WORLD IS GONNA END, I HAVE 258 SPELL DAMAGE INSTEAD OF 7% FIRE DAMAGE WAAAA!"

Good god.

Altmer will lose 2k max magicka, dunmer will lose 3k max magicka, redguard will lose 1.5k maxstamina, all meta-tanks will lose 2-4k HP. High HP tanks will lose even more. If this is not a nerf, what is it? (balance between "rebalanced races" is another question)

Yasha

The Khajit racials in particular are terrible, far to spread out to be useful.

WeerW3ir

And now do not forget.: In May they will also nerf the classes for necromancer.

This all is like.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaDHpf2Lcwc

killmove

Seems okay for me

killmove

Why not change all those passive that gives extra experience bonus for something more useful.

Add extra dmg with some weapons, get less dmg with some armors?

@ZOS_Gilliam

LittlePumpkin030

in regards of the Token, I think a fair and square Solution will be that you get as many Tokens as you have Characters, but they expire like within 30 days or so, that it is fair for everyone, even if you have 5 Chars or 15. and you cannot stock them in your account and save hundreds of dollars.

MakoRuu

As a StamDK Orc, I am happy now.

I made my character on launch day, and I've been sticking with him through everything. Even if I haven't played ESO every day since then, I always come back to it. It's good to be viable again.

Morg08

I don't know all the maths, but sure seems like Orcs are getting screwed over hard. They are usually 3rd or 4th in tank guides, off the list for DPS and you made them worse. If you don't want them in the game just say it and delete them.

I don't get why wood elves get poison resistance when they are immune. Was one of those supposed to be disease? Same with lizards but for diseases... I mist be missing something.

1 race change token is brutal. Just make race change tokens free for a couple weeks or something. Trying to profit on this is gross. Mostly you just solidified existing roles but less ‰'s and more flat values. You claim it is a buff for many races but just seems lateral and pointless for most with a few harsher than required nerfs and not enough tokens for affected players.

Yiko

Just wanted to give a few of my thoughts on the racial balancing changes.
So a stated problem is:
“Many racial bonuses do not have universal applicability.”
And your goals and processes include:
“Equalize the overall power that each race provides by using our set bonus efficiency system, which compares the total amount of power that a bonus provides under equal terms.”
“Retain and enhance the unique feeling and gameplay patterns that each race allows.”

I am going to focus on Redguard and Imperial passives mainly, since those are the Stamina classes that I play and am most familiar with. High Elf, Khajiit, Nord (most classes, generally speaking) have seen some good changes that promote “universal” applicability. When I say “universal”, I don’t mean that someone looking to play Stamina could roll a High Elf and expect to be competitively viable but that virtually ANY Magicka class/build can make use of all 3 of the High Elf racials. There’s also the universal applicability of the versatile Khajiit and Dark Elf racials, where the stats are different but useful for all classes and builds. However, this theme of 3 generally useful racials is not the case for all classes. I agree with the method of stat evaluation to bring the classes more in line with one another, but the distribution I have a pretty large problem with for some races, especially for Redguard and Imperial.


Redguard Passive: Exhilaration: 9% Stamina Recovery → Martial Training: Reduces the cost of your Weapon abilities by 8%.
How is this universally applicable for classes that use more class abilities than others? This will specifically impact my Nightblade only through Rally, Executioner, and Poison Injection, none of which are really spammables. A change that would better satisfy your stated goals would be to give a flat bonus that applies to all Stamina playstyles, like a % cost reduction to Stamina abilities or a certain amount of Weapon Damage or maybe even the Stamina Regen that was there initially. It should basically be the Stamina mirror of High Elf, yeah? It basically was before, why change that up now? You could even tone down Adrenaline Rush to accommodate a more generally useful passive. Given these changes, Redguard does not retain its feeling and gameplay pattern.

Imperial Passive: Red Diamond: 10% Chance on Melee Attack to heal for 6% of Max Health → When you deal Direct Damage you have a 15% chance to heal for 1750. Reduces the cost of your Block and Bash abilities by 5%.
When doing your stat valuation, does it account for Battle Spirit? Also, again, the distribution into an area where only specific subroles can draw value from it is a problem. Going with the “stout and hardy” lore, instead of reduced cost for Block and Bash, why not give a passive amount of Physical/Spell Resist? That way, ALL Stamina subroles can make use of it, and it will further solve the problem of a lack of universal applicability. Red Diamond has been trash tier for years now, and it’s hard to believe this is the result of a balance rework.

I thought the balance changes were supposed to make race choice less impactful. The goal was to remove the notion that “X/Y is the best stamina/magicka class,” but it’s been removed and replaced with “X/Y is the best stamina/magicka class for this specific subrole/playstyle/task (whatever you want to call it),” meaning that race choice is now more important than before in many regards for some playstyles. I shouldn’t feel more compelled to race change my character immediately following a balance change. You’ve given a stat budget to every class to “balance” things, but there are some stat distributions that only make sense for certain subroles, specializations, or niches, which actually make your choices more restrictive. As things stand, I’m probably going to go Wood Elf for a 2h/bow build for the obvious roll dodge synergy, but what if I want a different playstyle on that character eventually? There needs to be LESS impactful flavor on the racials so that people do not feel pigeonholed into specific ones or at least not as severely punished for picking a sub-optimal one for a certain playstyle. In this case, balance requires homogenization or generally useful passives, and the ones I listed (Redguard and Imperial) are not generally useful passives. The stat budget is being spent too specifically/"nichely" to the point that you are not achieving the universal applicability that you were aiming for. These changes do not increase build diversity - they actually decrease it, inhibiting player freedom. I do like a lot of these changes, but some of them just don’t make sense to me.

Side notes:
Why is High Elf the only race with a “restore Magicka or Stamina based on whichever stat is higher” passive? It seems arbitrary and inconsistent.
Orc passive: Does the Orc Unflinching passive (“When you deal damage with a weapon ability you restore 380 Health and Stamina. This effect can occur once every 4 seconds.”) apply to DoTs like Poison Injection or Rending Slashes?

Colecovision

SilverWF wrote: »

Well... I dunno... was there any reasons for this, but "we just need to change something"?

Poor Lizards and Cannibals - such huge nerf...

Hail to Cats and Reds - such buff, omg

My Khajiit took a massive nerf. Not sure what you're talking a bout.

Dont_do_drugs

First of all... I do not care if Dunmer is Nr.1 or Nr.2 or Nr.3 as mag race, I also do not care if mag DK isnt equal to stamina builds, since its a melee playstyle, the mag DK has some bonuses which make him a more relieable melee-DD, so its okay to at least not be equal to stam melees.

What I do care for is, that mag DK isnt jsut a bit underperforming, but total trash since over a year. Whenever I want to join a raid, not a progress one, I gonna get the question "Can you come with your mag sorc?" or "dont you have a stamina melee?".

I never really mattered, wether Dunmer is in general as mag DD nr.1, nr.2 or nr.3 - but the dunmer always had a close bond to the mag DK with the flame bonus, since those two parts coplemented each other. Removing that part from the dunmer isnt only a nerf to the dunmer, but also a big nerf to the mag DK, which already is underperforming a lot. I am right now wondering, wether ZOS devs hate mag DK so much, or wether in their filter bubble never the info went through: Hey mag DK melees have a serious problem in PVE since approx over a year. and somehow also the info didnt went through: stop trying hybrid. its never been a thing and wont ever be a thing. just stop it pls. no hybrid. hybrid will never be a thing. stahp pls.

idk what to say.
rip dunmer mag dk.