Upcoming Racial Balance Changes for Update 21

Finedaible

I like most of these changes, especially the new flexibility of Khajiit passives, though I would ask that you take Khajiiti's health recovery away and add it to the stamina and magicka recovery you gave them. 75 Recovery is just too low to make a difference.

I don't know all the math behind it, but Redguard still seems a tad overloaded though. If they use a stamina glyph on their infused weapon, it seems like it would be high stamina returns along with that 8% cost reduction.

Question, Does Imperial's Red Diamond have a cooldown?

Crixus8000

JobooAGS wrote: »

Crixus8000 wrote: »

I feel like wood elf is lacking. First 2 passives are nice but then extra stealth detection radius and 20% move speed after dodge rolling seems a little off. Stealth detection is only used in cyro and still useles imo since there is many ways of revealing in stealth already and the 20% move speed bonus is nothing special.

In a snare meta, more movement speed is king, but the stealth detection is a bit lack luster

Movement speed doesn't really counter snares though, immunity does. It would help getting away after you use immunity sure but even at speed cap it's pretty much impossible to escape a group chasing you spamming snares with rapids. I mean I see it's uses, it just seems quite weak and situational, when compared with other races 3rd passive.

Rittings

I do like the challenge the changes to these passives will bring - I am a little concerned most of the percentile changes are more than halving the bonuses that would have been brought forward. So it's hard to contemplate this not being a big nerf on pretty much ALL classes.

I can also see why it seems like a bit of a cash cow for racial change requirements for end game players too. I have 15 toons on my main account alone, and definitely going to largely affect the way all of my characters will now play - and I can already see a few of them getting axed for re-rolls (as I refuse to sink any extra money into a game that needs fixing, no matter how much I enjoy playing it - especially since I'm migrating countries next month and simply have no expendable income for silly things like racial changes)...

I look forward to seeing how these numbers compare to the final numbers we see.

technohic

So as I am chewing on this a while, I guess it feels like all races were adjusted somewhat close for the most part with just Red guard and Altmer as they seem to be more dedicated one way or another. Whatever there, as I will let the math people go over this crap.

What bothers me is; I wanted a nord, so I took my templar a nord. I gave up meta and in stead built to use its health recovery, health, and stam. The damage reduction percent really was not great but helped with bleeds which do not care about armor. I feel like a sledgehammer was taken to it, decreasing the health and stam and vaporizing the health recovery. Probably most people could care less about that but for me, it made the character different. Ultimate generation can be nice but 10 seconds is an incredibly long time in combat to just get 5 ultimate. Even if it would be decent, it seems the race is now better suited for a different character I have (*cough* Dunmer DK) and less for what I was doing already that might actually synergise better with Khajiit at a bit weaker version, which is all well and good, but that already is more than 1 race change. I have a few characters that will be stuck.

I guess I feel like we could adjust to clearly less exaggerated strength of races, but it feels like the deck has been shuffled and we are stuck with either a race that no longer matches what we are trying to do; or we have to purchase tokens if we have more than 1 character.

WIZZARD2K

So the 'improvement' to wood elf is only useful in certain pvp situations? Please consider the class balance OUTSIDE of pvp, as some people just don't have a taste for it. Being able to sneak was useful to those of us who don't pvp, too! Roll Dodge is useless since you still can't roll dodge out of red in time, as the game still thinks you're where you were until you're done.

karthrag_inak

buff redguard? khajiit with health recovery over stam? do you guys play this game? I think not.

amir412

lassitershawn wrote: »

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

If you had a race with 10% max stamina or magicka, and your final build was around 40k magicka or stamina, then these changes are nerfing you by HALF. You will lose effectively 2000 of the 4000 resources in your max pool (39600/1.1) = 36,000 + 2000 = 38,000

• If you ran a Breton or High Elf Magicka build with 40k magicka, you now have 38k magicka. I guess Magnus is an indian giver.
• If you ran a Redguard Stamina damage build with 40k stamina, you now have lost effectively 200 weapon damage.
• If you ran a 50k health imperial tank, you now have 46.6k Health

This isn't "Balance" this is nerfing the top damage dealing builds in the game. This is the price of power creep.

This isn't the case, the 2k magicka should be affected by % magicka increases and I saw somewhere that the final difference is only around 1k on a fairly high magicka build.

The final result is 1k. ure right.

JumpmanLane

I run DW Destro on my MagDk in PvP. Gotta run the numbers but I’m liking the idea of a flat 200+ spell (and weapon damage) over 6% max magicka. Might be more effective spell power.

I weave light attacks with swords on every whip just to get crusher and berserker off, may as well get a lil damage boost. The best DK I know (who taught me MagDk) used to laugh and say “did I teach you that?” Then he’d say it’s very small amount of damage lol. I killed someone with riposte once lol. Every little bit helps.

Twohothardware

JobooAGS wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

On the Stamina side the Redguard changes definitely need to be looked at again and this time put your glasses on.

The meta for builds in both PvE and PvP is running high damage and a lower Recovery stat. Redguard has been the #1 choice by far for PvE Stamina builds for forever now because of the strong passive sustain from Adrenaline that doesn't require you to have any Recovery stat at all to benefit. That allows you to stack more damage for higher DPS and requires fewer heavy attacks in your rotation to sustain.

And your fix for this is to now change Redguards 9% Recovery bonus to 8% cost reduction which further ignores any need for a Recovery stat and then buff Adrenaline on top of it? This will be even more imbalanced in PvE and be the new replacement for where Argonian is now for OP in PvP.

If Redguard is going to have noticeably better sustain than the other Races then at least drop the max stamina to 1000, especially considering you dropped Orc max stamina to only 500 when you gave them passive sustain.

The 8% cost reduction is only to weapon abilities. Orcs also have a weapon damage passive which is already better than 2k stam. If you look at bosmer, the 258 regen is better than adrenline rush due to regen multipliers while still having the same stam as redguard, having movement speed after dodging and poison resists.

The 3 races are overall balanced

A small damage advantage from Orc doesn't translate to higher DPS if Redguard has superior sustain and that's the point that ZOS keeps missing. Argonian and Redguard aren't OP right now because of 3% Magicka or 10% Stamina, they are OP because of the Resourceful passive and the Adrenaline passive giving at least twice the effective sustain as other Races because low Stam Recovery builds are the Meta. It doesn't matter how much damage you deal, if you don't have any Stamina you can't cast a skill.

Imperial and Nord still have no Stam Recovery or Cost reduction bonuses outside of Imperials measly 5% block cost reduction and Khajiit's Recovery is even weaker now than it was before because they're splitting it between Stamina and Magicka.

Rykmaar

Hi ZoS, interesting changes.

Clarifying questions on the Dunmer changes:

1) What was the impetus for the mag and stam numbers for the second passive? The number seems a little low if the intent was strengthening their multi-role ability. Is there a table or mechanism you guys use for numbers?

2) The 600 health from the third passive seems arbitrary. Why was that number chosen as a replacement for % mag?




Also, this isn't a question, but with these changes, you are ENSURING that Altmer are the best magicka class. Period. No ifs ands or buts. Why?

Thanks!

Playnice

High Elf will be an only choice of magicka users next patch.

- Dark Elf is not great and any one thing which kills the hardcore players. No good reason to choose this one over High Elf.

- Argonian does not offer any meaningful advantages over other classes so total RIP there. High Elf is better here.

- Breton can sustain like a mother but will never compete in damage. The change is actually a damage nerf if you do the math. High Elf is still better here.

PardusMelas

so what is best for healer moe breton or argonian?

KatySpirit

Can we please have black hair for altmer? Because now that dunmer is dead for magic DPS I will have to change my dunmer to an altmer, and he just won't look very good without black hair. PLEASE consider, it cannot be that hard to replace one of their blonds with black.

AlienatedGoat

IronWooshu wrote: »

Inig0 wrote: »

ZoS we’ve gone so far past the time where you can reasonable make changes to the races like you have. I’ve personally leveled 14 characters with the intention of playing a specific race on that character to sever specific needs. Setting aside the clear in balance and lack of freedom you’re giving people you’re also costing us hundreds of dollars to re adjust ourselves to something we’ve made decisions on that costed us hundreds of hours in leveling alone.

You are directly costing your player base money and time.

The only solution I see is making races a cosmetic choice with no combat influence. Perhaps add a system where you choose the passives because frankly you’re just forcing people who genuinely care about performance to buy tokens and race change. This is unacceptable.

Honestly you, the min/maxers that tell is what is BiS take the fun out of end game so I feel no sorrow for any of the min/maxers on these changes who have the shell out money.

That's BS. There would always be a race seen as better than the others, it's not min/maxers' or endgame players' faults.

This is a blatant cash grab and nothing else. The only people at fault here are ZOS.

Twohothardware

Playnice wrote: »

High Elf will be an only choice of magicka users next patch.

- Dark Elf is not great and any one thing which kills the hardcore players. No good reason to choose this one over High Elf.

- Argonian does not offer any meaningful advantages over other classes so total RIP there. High Elf is better here.

- Breton can sustain like a mother but will never compete in damage. The change is actually a damage nerf if you do the math. High Elf is still better here.

High Elf and Redguard are the baseline they need to bring the other Races to now. High Elf looks like a lot of fun now so I hope they don't just nerf High Elf if they decide to make any adjustments and instead bring more damage or sustain buffs to the rest.

Zypheran

Why not separate combat boosters from racial passives entirely?!
Let every race come with a lore applicable perk that doesn't affect combat performance, then let any race pick a "blessing" that does affect combat.
Blessing options give 3 combat perks e.g.
Mag + rec + sp dmg = mag dps blessing
Mag + rec + healing = healing blessing
Health + resistance + stam/mag
Etc, etc. Give people 6 or 8 choices of blessings.
The unique racial (non-combat) passives could be things like;
Faster resurecting
Increased speed
Pickpicketing
Cheaper temper costs for orcs
Cheaper resin costs for woodelves
Slower equipment damage rate

I don't see how the currently proposed changes will truly open up peoples options to play other races. This can only be achieved by separating combat perks from racial passives
That's my toupence worth anyway!

JobooAGS

Twohothardware wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

On the Stamina side the Redguard changes definitely need to be looked at again and this time put your glasses on.

The meta for builds in both PvE and PvP is running high damage and a lower Recovery stat. Redguard has been the #1 choice by far for PvE Stamina builds for forever now because of the strong passive sustain from Adrenaline that doesn't require you to have any Recovery stat at all to benefit. That allows you to stack more damage for higher DPS and requires fewer heavy attacks in your rotation to sustain.

And your fix for this is to now change Redguards 9% Recovery bonus to 8% cost reduction which further ignores any need for a Recovery stat and then buff Adrenaline on top of it? This will be even more imbalanced in PvE and be the new replacement for where Argonian is now for OP in PvP.

If Redguard is going to have noticeably better sustain than the other Races then at least drop the max stamina to 1000, especially considering you dropped Orc max stamina to only 500 when you gave them passive sustain.

The 8% cost reduction is only to weapon abilities. Orcs also have a weapon damage passive which is already better than 2k stam. If you look at bosmer, the 258 regen is better than adrenline rush due to regen multipliers while still having the same stam as redguard, having movement speed after dodging and poison resists.

The 3 races are overall balanced

A VERY marginal damage advantage from Orc doesn't translate to higher DPS if Redguard has superior sustain and that's the point that ZOS keeps missing. Argonian and Redguard aren't OP right now because of 3% Magicka or 10% Stamina, they are OP because of the Resourceful passive and the Adrenaline passive giving at least twice the effective sustain as other Races because low Stam Recovery builds are the Meta. It doesn't matter how much damage you deal, if you don't have any Stamina you can't cast a skill.

Imperial and Nord still have no Stam Recovery or Cost reduction bonuses outside of Imperials measly 5% block cost reduction and Khajiit's Recovery is even weaker now than it was before because they're splitting it between Stamina and Magicka.

75 regen on a low regen build is actually a buff. Dont forget that 75 regen also benefits from cp, medium armor, class passives, etc.

Here are some numbers:

512 base regen * (1 + .14 cp + .28 med armor + .1 old khajiit +.2 potion) = 881 regen

(512 base regen + 75 khajiit) * (1 + .14 cp + .28 med armor +.2 potion) = 951 regen

With dubious

(512 base regen + 312) * (1 + .14 cp + .28 med armor + .1 old khajiit +.2 potion) = 1417 regen

(512 base regen + 75 khajiit + 312 dubious) * (1 + .14 cp + .28 med armor +.2 potion) = 1456 regen

You can adjust these numbers for cp, pieces of med armor and add in class passives.


Bosmer's stam regen flat value translates to signficiantly greater values than redguard adreniline rush under the same conditions.

(258 bosmer) * (1 + .14 cp + .28 med armor +.2 potion) = 417 regen

(258 bosmer) * (1 + .14 cp + .28 med armor +.2 potion +.1 relentless + .15 nb +.1 vamp) = 508 regen

(312 dubious + 258 bosmer) * (1 + .14 cp + .28 med armor +.2 potion) = 923 regen


Orc has a stam/hp adrenline rush like passive, sprint cost reduction and sprint movement speed and damage & health.

Imperial and nord are under a different category however and seem like they are built for tanking with some stats used for dmg.

Clarkieson

Altmer changes are really gonna hit high elf mag sorcs. Yet another sorc nerf. Just remove them from the game it would be easier.

Ayble

Was really hoping for something that wouldn't keep us race locked to Mag or Stam. Still stuck with the same meta's with the exception of boots (Argonians) which seem are now designated to healers.

BringerOfOmens

Very thoughtful write up and approach. In all fairness to your customers you should really consider a race change per character for a limited time when these go live. The amount of good will you will build with your player base will be worth its weight in gold.

StarOfElyon

I play my Altmer Templar using primarily class skills knowing that I'll never be tops at anything but more or less well rounded. This is the way I want to play. So I don't understand people seeming to want to change race because they're not the tops at something anymore.

Sylvermynx

I'm not changing any of my girls - I have some of everything, and that won't change.

eso_nya

TL/DR: Epic Fail.

The wall of text below is only for (endgame) pve.

Imo the target audience caring for racial passives r minmaxers or progressive raiders. Changing racials the way u r planning to do, smells like a try to force those ppl into buying racechangers or rerolling their toons.
U said the idea was making more than one race viable for certain roles while sticking to lore. There is no "viable" on the leaderboards, theres just the meta.
There might be exceptions, but the majority of ppl caring for lore and immersion dont give a damn about combateffectiveness of racial passives and will happily continue to play their nord mage, bosmer healer and altmer warrior whatever the racials r or become.

with those changes:
Argonians will (still) be sustain beasts with potion speed glyphs and tripots in "hybrid" specs that benefit from magicka and stamina sustain equally (tanks). In that single setup, they r average double as good as any other race. However, they r not good for anything else. The nerf to the potion passive makes running 3 potion glyphs equally to running 3 regen glyphs when only one pool is needed. w/o potion glyphs, their sustain is not on par with what the topdogs get and they do not get any cool perks for other roles. Imperials and Nords get intresting perks for tanks aswell, but r so far behind in sustain that it's a nobrainer. U could say speed for dodge on bosmer is an op tanking perk (combined with hasty retreat), but while the perk would make for a great kiting spec, groups usually hate it when bosses move around.

As far as DDs go, pure dmg wise khajiit is the topdog for both magicka and stamina, given u get raidbuffs and high enough critical damage. w/o any investment into crit dmg and the need to bring your own penetration, altmer would be the one and only choice for magicka dd.
For selfbuffed stamina dds there is actually a spectrum for "slightly less dmg and slightly more sustain" going dunmer -> khajiit -> orc with a hard stop at redguard with a lot less dmg and comparable godlike sustain.

For healers its #1 altmer with a very lorefirendly not-as-good very close second place breton. surprisingly far off, but still place 3: khajiit, well fits the next chapter i guess.

True, there now is between 2 and 4 races that have good perks for a certain role. There is still a one-and-only meta race for every role. And theres still way to much good-for-nothing races with limiting perks getting outshined by other races in their one-trick-pony area.


Some races get "specials" that r adapted from 5 piece boni. Those r not in line. If u rate a 5pc being worth three 2-4pcs (assuming every 5 piece is equally good) u end up with:

Spellcharge: 5% dmg reduction while casting/channeling. That is 1/3 of Cyro Light 5pc -> 1 point.
Magicka Mastery: 7% cheaper magicka skills. That is 87,5% seducers -> 2,63 points.
Exhilaration: Weapon Abilities 8% cheaper. Closest 5pc would be eyes of mara -> 2 points.
Stallward: 5 ulti/10 secs -> 1/2 Werewolf hide -> 1.5 points.
Hunters Eye: Kinda puzzler: 70% hasty retreat, around 50% strength of VO but can stack with them. Would put it at 2, prolly an 8 in pvp for dodgemonkeys.
And at last: Red Diamond, ppl mentioned that health regen is useless right? if u break it down u get 258 health regen. the other part, closest set i could find would be alteration mastery at strength 83% -> 2.5 points.

Thing is, the total "points per race" r somewhat balanced (5,23 ~ 7,98), but the "usefull points per role" r between 0 and 6,36. if u than sum those up to "usefull points over all roles" (tank, healer, sDD, mDD) u end up with a range from 7,27 (Orc) up to 16,46 (Altmer).
This doesnt look like balance anymore and even "viable" becomes a stretch. (rank 9 with 7,8 on p2wimperial, lol)
sidenote: max health boni on sets give more points than mag and stam, this is not factored in currently, thus max health passives result in lower "set-points".

While the base idea with the rating by setboni is a good approach: even tho they r all distributed as 2-4pcs: 129 health regen, 4% crit, 4% more healing taken/done and 1096 magicka r far from being equally powerfull or usefull.
If u r actually trying to increase viability for roles, first step would be to replace "1096 Magicka" and "1096 Stamina" with "1096 of higher pool". That way, every race would get atleast a stat stick thats useful for any role.

jeskah

Gilliam, there is a typo in the notes, the orc resource bonus should be 5000, not 500

And.of.course it has nothing to do with my orc characters enough to fill.a small hold...

Otherwise... Hm. Not bad at all for a first shot. By the look of these changes, we can expect more changes in this pts, am im right?

One note on the orc passives: The resource passives really feel small. Maybe the numbers after math make sense, still they simply look low. An increase of 800 would make orcs too OP?

Oh. And again, feeling side: Can you somehow strenghten the brutish, orcish close combat juggernaut feeling inthe passives (more)? Maybe at the expense of the healing taken passive?

rosendoichinoveb17_ESO

With those changes "1096 Magicka" and "1096 Stamina" set stats will be 10% worse due to the lack of the racial passive resources increase. Therefore people will always try to get sets that have either spell damage or crit. "1096 Magicka" and "1096 Stamina" were a bit worse than the other two offensive stats and with those racial changes they will be even 10% worser.

For example if you run necropotance that is roughly 6500 magicka unbuffed which previously got buffed afterwards by the 10% max magicka racial passive. Now it wont. Therefore people will loose around 650 magicka only from this set which is kind of a lot.

Currently on live game I have a pet sorc with 55 500 magicka. When I removed the 10% racial max magicka passive it went down to 50 700. I don't know how much magicka people will have if you add the new 2000 unbuffed magicka passive but it sure wont be the same amount as before.

If they don't make any adjustments the most optimal builds will be to have as low magicka as possible and as much spell damage or crit as possible to get the most out of the gear and passives.

Ragnarock41

I am honestly impressed, well done!

PS: good thing I have like 3 different Dks lol, but I am most happy with the way Orc got changed, though I feel like the health return needs to be doubled to account for battle spirit, and only 500 stam/hp is a tad too low compared to others.

LADYKiLLER

I get all the combat arguments. PvE, PvP, whatever. But as someone who really, really enjoys the gameplay of being a sticky-fingered rogue type, suddenly losing the reduced stealth detection on wood elves sucks. And I'm a role player so the race change token is meaningless to me. My character isn't just going to sprout ears and a tail.

Zahktar

@ZOS_Gilliam

Don't know if anyone has asked this yet, but will it be just a straight race change token, or will it be a race & name change token?

My Argonian tank Built-like-Brick will be very sad if she changes to a Nord, for example, and is stuck with such an ill-fitting name for her new race..

Any chance it will be race & name change tokens, or that y'all would be willing to consider doing that? I know a lot of people who care about lore-friendly names would greatly appreciate!

GDOFWR420

Dynamic: 6% Max Stamina and Magicka → Increases your Max Stamina and Magicka by 1250.


^^^^^^^^^^^^so just as we finally hit good sustain you're gonna nerf the entire magicka pool for dragonkights, you guys and the people coming up with these ideas are pure ***. Keep this kind of crap up and people are gonna find other games to play. I mean christ fallout 76 is a joke and you guys keep with the bad decisions. What gives? Do you even game?

SturgeHammer

Argonian changes were kind of what I expected, but I would have preferred the argonian resistance passive to be a little more interesting. If it has to be a damage type resist, then poison resist is probably more useful than disease. Personally, I think something unique like a small bleed damage % resist would be more exciting.