Upcoming Racial Balance Changes for Update 21

technohic

Raudgrani wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

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.

I can't see this "It's Minor Heroism all the time dude! Amazing!", no? It's like this, you get 5 Ultimate, for taking damage, and that's every TEN seconds. That's maximum 30 ultimate/minute, given that you TAKE damage at least every ten seconds. ten seconds is a long time in combat, at least in PVP.
And I don't know how they mean Nords should take that damage now, health recovery is no more, max helth messed up, max stamina messed up, the old damage reduction made worse - no recoveries at all, on any stat. How are you supposed to intentionally take damage as to build up that ultimate? And what ultimate are you supposed to use? Warhorn? Remembrance? If you build your character to walk around and soak up damage all the time, your Dawnbreakers or whatever really won't do any silly damage; especially not now since you get lower max stamina and everything.

It's just stupid, I can't see how people get so excited about this new passive. Can't people read?

I think people who did not play Nord, or at least to make use of its strengths probably like it and maybe where they got the feedback from and it was probably "everything nord is terrible and it's the worst race" I probably would have agreed until I went nord to use the increase in health and stam because I wanted a nord. But then after complaining about the passives, I built around it. Ran the steed mundy and troll king. Made everything about the race work for me.


The new armor might be a slight general improvement but weaker on bleeds along with losing the health recovery that helps as well so it's a nerf from hell in the current meta, but we shall see the POTEs Monday.

I mean, I can run Bloodspawn and it will match with the armor increase and medium armor suddenly becomes close to cap and ultigen of the new passives will match but that will fit my warden or DK better now. Warden would become an ulti-machine and DK could be flying all over the place recovering resources while doing it and both are tankier classes than my templar to make use. The frustrating part is they all are now the wrong race.

BlackLabel

Orcs are very underwhelming.
Need more raw stats increase for first passive, and seconds passive cut to 2 seconds or so and raise the regen numbers.

Koronach

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Sun7dance wrote: »

Wood Elves are no longer immune to the status effect of disease damage.
That's a huge nerf, especially for medium armour in pvp.
I don't understand ZOS kind of view here!

Argonians are traditionally resistant or immune to poisons, and even use poisons in their rituals that would kill other races. Bosmer are traditionally resistant or immune to diseases, and culturally use rotting meat in ways that makes other races deathly sick. It was only in Skyrim where these resistances were combined into one.

The information in the character creation screen reflects these traditional immunities. I think that when they separated the poison and disease resistance passive which Argonians and Wood Elves shared into two passives they goofed and flipped which one went where.

Actually Argonians are highly immune to poisons and disease. Remember they were immune to the knahaten flu. I'm pretty sure the only disease they can be inflicted with are lycanthropy and vampirism because those are magical diseases made by daedric princes.

silver1surfer69

"Some races provided far more mathematical combat power than others". Took you 5 years to see that! gz on that

Cagro

I was really hoping for racial morphs because there is still no racial diversity and no racial balance. Some races are still far superior than others for a particular role. ZOS just keep changing stuff around that at least for me does not make sense. I also does not understand why not organizing racial passives better, i.e. Khajiit's increased weapon and spell critical chance should not be together with the reduced detection.

Wildberryjack

Destructive Ancestry: 7% Flame damage and 2% Frost/Shock Damage → Ruination: Increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 258.

No. Leave Dunmer their flame damage bonus. Keep Destructive Ancestry as it is and add a Stam buff with weapon damage. That way Stam builds get a buff without taking away the unique flame affinity from the race or ruining Mag builds.

Anoregon

Cagro wrote: »

I was really hoping for racial morphs because there is still no racial diversity and no racial balance. Some races are still far superior than others for a particular role. ZOS just keep changing stuff around that at least for me does not make sense. I also does not understand why not organizing racial passives better, i.e. Khajiit's increased weapon and spell critical chance should not be together with the reduced detection.

Yeah I really dislike how morphs appear to be off the table despite that the fact that it actually would be totally lore acceptable to do so, as well going a long way towards making every race viable at every role. Even a race that generally favors warriors in lore still has some skilled magic users and vice versa. It's 2019, the genre has largely moved past the idea of "this race is good/bad at this class" and it's frustrating that ESO is still lagging behind on that front, even with these changes.

GoonyGoat

I was genuinely expecting a lot worse! will be interested to see how its tweaked and what eventually makes it to live

P.S thanks @Masel for sharing your docs

RedTalon

Thankfully I will have to change nothing, the changes to orcs and imperials already suit my builds for each

grizzly375

Well, let's see.

Magicka DPS - Altmer cemented as THE magicka DPS race; Dunmer magicka DPS nerfed significantly; changes to other races as Magicka options minimal or non-existant.

Tank - Argonian nerfed a litte. Nords gutted. Nothing in any other races to make them more viable as tanks, so still Argonian meta.

Stam DPS - Redguards (already the meta and overperforming) got buffed. Imperial got changed, pretty neutral overall. Nords still worthless. Dunmer got a slight buff.

Heals - meh all the way around.

So, the "balance" does NOTHING to make racials more "balanced." Wanna guess what the ZOS development team members play? I'll give you a hint, Altmer Magicka DPS, Redguard Stamina DPS, and Argonian Tanks...

Now, let see. My main, an Dunmer Magplar Vampire, needs a race change. Same with my Dunmer Magblade. Luckily, my Imperial Stamplar should be as OK now as he was before. My DK Tank is already a lizard, no change needed, same with my Healplar. And, my Redguard Stamblade is still meta.

This pretty much scaps my plans for a Nord Stamina DPS toon (was leaning towards Warden), a dunmer MagDK, and another tank that's NOT a freakin' lizard.

So, I get ONE race change token? gee thanks. Frankly, I'm just about done with this game.

katorga

technohic wrote: »

Raudgrani wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

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.

I can't see this "It's Minor Heroism all the time dude! Amazing!", no? It's like this, you get 5 Ultimate, for taking damage, and that's every TEN seconds. That's maximum 30 ultimate/minute, given that you TAKE damage at least every ten seconds. ten seconds is a long time in combat, at least in PVP.
And I don't know how they mean Nords should take that damage now, health recovery is no more, max helth messed up, max stamina messed up, the old damage reduction made worse - no recoveries at all, on any stat. How are you supposed to intentionally take damage as to build up that ultimate? And what ultimate are you supposed to use? Warhorn? Remembrance? If you build your character to walk around and soak up damage all the time, your Dawnbreakers or whatever really won't do any silly damage; especially not now since you get lower max stamina and everything.

It's just stupid, I can't see how people get so excited about this new passive. Can't people read?

I think people who did not play Nord, or at least to make use of its strengths probably like it and maybe where they got the feedback from and it was probably "everything nord is terrible and it's the worst race" I probably would have agreed until I went nord to use the increase in health and stam because I wanted a nord. But then after complaining about the passives, I built around it. Ran the steed mundy and troll king. Made everything about the race work for me.

Same with me. There were specific reasons and build designs I used Nord for...health regen or raw damage mitigation. Don't really care about the regen builds that much; they are fun to play around with but that's about it, but I build my stam warden and mag templar, totally non-meta, around Rugged for that little extra extreme reduction oomph. I just knew it would wrecked when I heard they were balancing races.

That said, the changes are fine by me. Rugged got hit hard with diminishing returns when I stacked lots of % damage reductions, and raw resistances open up medium or light armor options. My templar will likely use the free race change to go to Altmer, but my warden will stay Nord because it still has synergy with the class.

TheBonesXXX

Now give CP the same treatment and condense the games code.

@ZOS_Gilliam, great changes.

John_Falstaff

@grizzly375 , I think you got a lot of things the other way around. Sure, many things are... not nice, but stamina DPS got a bit more diverse - bosmer challenges redguard for sustain, and dunmer together with orc have most raw stamina damage (and if you can sustain your build without extra sustain, dunmer will beat redguard to the punch). Khajiits were added to the cohort of magicka races (though they're really not shining anywhere now). Nord is going to be new tank meta because of ultimate generation.

Aerimes

I like the basic idea of these changes, but I don't really get for example why you would give the Dark Elves 1250 Max Stam and Max Mag and the Orcs only get 500 Max Health and Max Stam. I kinda get that Dark Elves could be more of a Hybrid-Race, but the Khajiit too? I am no lore expert or meta-gameplay expert, but it seems to me that they should stick to the rogue-style and I think that they become a bit less 'useful' without a focus, i mean you have them a small bonus to everything. I also don't really get some of the 'ressource management passives', they seem a bit unbalanced to me. Keep in mind that this is only the opinion of a non-guide-making and non-theory-crafting player.

doopt

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Gilliam

With changes as disruptive as these, the fact you’ve offered players a single race change token is either your greediest act yet (imagine putting vampirism cleanse tokens in the crown store), reflective of how out of touch you are with both your competitive raiding community and your RPers, or both.

You do realize players can have 15 characters, yes? Do the math — no, not that math — the math that still leaves you with an active player base until Ashes of Creation releases.

You still have time to make this right.

Cundu_Ertur

Koronach wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Sun7dance wrote: »

Wood Elves are no longer immune to the status effect of disease damage.
That's a huge nerf, especially for medium armour in pvp.
I don't understand ZOS kind of view here!

Argonians are traditionally resistant or immune to poisons, and even use poisons in their rituals that would kill other races. Bosmer are traditionally resistant or immune to diseases, and culturally use rotting meat in ways that makes other races deathly sick. It was only in Skyrim where these resistances were combined into one.

The information in the character creation screen reflects these traditional immunities. I think that when they separated the poison and disease resistance passive which Argonians and Wood Elves shared into two passives they goofed and flipped which one went where.

Actually Argonians are highly immune to poisons and disease. Remember they were immune to the knahaten flu. I'm pretty sure the only disease they can be inflicted with are lycanthropy and vampirism because those are magical diseases made by daedric princes.

They could also get Corprus in Morrowind (but everyone got that as they played thru, it was scripted pre-ordained).

But Argonians had perfect poison resistance in Morrowind and Oblivion while they only had a high resistance to disease. Argonians and Bosmer had the same resistance to both in Skyrim and currently here. It's still kind of an odd choice, but it's one of those toe-mah-toe or toe-may-toe coinflips in some ways, it's just inconsistent with the races as they had been previously established. I'm not especially fussed either way, just noting it as an oddity.

WhipSmartMcoy

I only play two characters in this game. Mag Sorc (pvp/pve) and Stamblade (pvp)

The change to racials, in my opinion, makes the choice between Breton and High elf an actual choice. Both gain max magic, but Breton is now clearly a better sustain choice. I think 258 extra spell damage is a bit much though. Thats a whole mundus stone. My Sorc is and always will be Breton, so these changes I look forward to.
As for my NB though, yeesh. It will always be a Khajiit, and the racial changes for Khajiit are totally lame. Why does wood elf get a mundus stone value for Stam recov, and Khajiit gets an invigorating level bonus? It gets health and mag recov sure, but added together is less than (by 8 points) what wood elves are gaining in recov. The movement speed passive Wood elves are getting feels like it should be on Khajiit, but I'm in all honesty biased lol
An extra 750 magic doesn't really justify the extra spell crit when high elves get Max magic, spell damage, and a recov passive.
I hope Khajiit will play better than it looks on paper, cause I honestly love the changes to other races too.

Moraeannah

Disease resistance is no reason to give Argonians half the health passive of every other race. It's so rare to actually take disease damage that it's a pretty irrelevant passive.

Hymzir

37 pages so far... Have not read through it all, but have been keeping an eye on this and skimming the posts on it.

Was not gonna comment more since I said most of what I had to say 20 pages ago - but one theme has been popping up enough time's that I wanted to voice my thoughts on it.

And that is the case of the Dunmer.

A lot of people are unhappy about the changes, mainly because the loss of the flame damage bonus and the impact of that change to builds that were leveraging it.

Altmer is now the obvious top choice for magicka DPS, and the dunmer alternative using lots of fire damage no longer works as well.

I get that people are annoyed about this, but the point of these changes is to reign in stat values. Thus a move away from % based bonuses.

The thing to note about dunmer is, that they've always been a hybrid race. They have always had both magicka and stamina buffs. If you wanna retain racial aptitude buffs, then keep in mind, that altmer are supposed to be better at magic and the new bonuses do reflect that. Not that dunmer will be all that far behind, and stamina has always it's uses. Even on a magicka build.

But there are people, me included, who play a dunmer character with a stamina build. And I for one am really happy about these changes. At least as far as dunmer goes.

I don't really care whether dunmer retain their flame damage bonus in some form or not, but I do not support the notion of turning dunmer into another magicka race. I like the fact that they have both stamina and magicka bonuses and they support stamsorc play really well. And the new bonuses will make things even better.

So no to any idea of stripping dunmer stamina buffs and converting them into magicka buffs.

Also, it is painfully obvious, that most of the tweaks presented here, are aimed at improving the posters personal build and not formulated with the bigger picture in mind. I suppose I'm as guilty of that as the next bloke. I mean, I really like what I see for the dunmer. It is gonna be a straight up buff for my personal playstyle - a style that was already quite well supported by the current set of bonuses. However, taken as a whole, these new buffs are decent and only really need some minor tweaks.

Khajit resources could use a few hundred points more each, or maybe 25% increase in the recovery stats. Bosmer stealth detection is still too weak and situational, buff it a bit more. And Imperials are getting shafted. According to the number crunchers, these changes are gonna make Imperials the bottom race for any playstyle and class. So... buff them a bit more, okay?

susmitds

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@Colecovision , regarding khajiits and stamina, the information was appearing earlier in this thread. Thing is, up until certain regen value, flat value of 75 (the new passive) is better after percentage buffs than 10% (the old passive). So, counting in CP, medium armor passives and Major Endurance, the equilibrium point lies somewhere around 1270 unbuffed stamina regen - if your base regen (514) plus all flat value buffs - Dubious, glyphs, set bonuses - are below this value, then you have more regen after the update than you had before; if your flat base regen is above - then you've gotten a nerf.

Just as an example, assuming you run 15% from CP, 20% from Endurance and 28% from medium armor. Suppose you had recovery of 514 (base) + 169 (glyph) + (129 + 150) (bone pirate) + 319 (dubious) = 1281. Now...

• Currently on live: (1281) * (1 + 0.15 + 0.2 + 0.28 + 0.1 (current khajiit passive)) = 2216 regen.
• After the update: (1281 + 75 (new khajiit passive)) * (1 + 0.15 + 0.2 + 0.28) = 2210 regen.

So yes, you'll have lost 6 regen after the update.

6 Stam?

How is he supposed to complete vMA and solo group dungeons with 6 less regen.

Every other stamina race (bosmer, orc, redguard, even altmer) gained at least 100 stam regen. Khajiit did not. That's a relative nerf.

nsmurfer

susmitds wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@Colecovision , regarding khajiits and stamina, the information was appearing earlier in this thread. Thing is, up until certain regen value, flat value of 75 (the new passive) is better after percentage buffs than 10% (the old passive). So, counting in CP, medium armor passives and Major Endurance, the equilibrium point lies somewhere around 1270 unbuffed stamina regen - if your base regen (514) plus all flat value buffs - Dubious, glyphs, set bonuses - are below this value, then you have more regen after the update than you had before; if your flat base regen is above - then you've gotten a nerf.

Just as an example, assuming you run 15% from CP, 20% from Endurance and 28% from medium armor. Suppose you had recovery of 514 (base) + 169 (glyph) + (129 + 150) (bone pirate) + 319 (dubious) = 1281. Now...

• Currently on live: (1281) * (1 + 0.15 + 0.2 + 0.28 + 0.1 (current khajiit passive)) = 2216 regen.
• After the update: (1281 + 75 (new khajiit passive)) * (1 + 0.15 + 0.2 + 0.28) = 2210 regen.

So yes, you'll have lost 6 regen after the update.

6 Stam?

How is he supposed to complete vMA and solo group dungeons with 6 less regen.

Every other stamina race (bosmer, orc, redguard, even altmer) gained at least 100 stam regen. Khajiit did not. That's a relative nerf.

this is exactly the reason. Every stamina race got a boost in terms of sustain, given how sustain was the primary factor keeping every non-redguard race unviable for endgame PvE. Except for khajiit, leaving a good number of stamina pvEs in the dust.

Koronach

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Koronach wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Sun7dance wrote: »

Wood Elves are no longer immune to the status effect of disease damage.
That's a huge nerf, especially for medium armour in pvp.
I don't understand ZOS kind of view here!

Argonians are traditionally resistant or immune to poisons, and even use poisons in their rituals that would kill other races. Bosmer are traditionally resistant or immune to diseases, and culturally use rotting meat in ways that makes other races deathly sick. It was only in Skyrim where these resistances were combined into one.

The information in the character creation screen reflects these traditional immunities. I think that when they separated the poison and disease resistance passive which Argonians and Wood Elves shared into two passives they goofed and flipped which one went where.

Actually Argonians are highly immune to poisons and disease. Remember they were immune to the knahaten flu. I'm pretty sure the only disease they can be inflicted with are lycanthropy and vampirism because those are magical diseases made by daedric princes.

They could also get Corprus in Morrowind (but everyone got that as they played thru, it was scripted pre-ordained).

But Argonians had perfect poison resistance in Morrowind and Oblivion while they only had a high resistance to disease. Argonians and Bosmer had the same resistance to both in Skyrim and currently here. It's still kind of an odd choice, but it's one of those toe-mah-toe or toe-may-toe coinflips in some ways, it's just inconsistent with the races as they had been previously established. I'm not especially fussed either way, just noting it as an oddity.

Haven't played TES III in a while but I'm sure Corprus was created by Dagoth Ur one of the mortals turned god like Vivec, Sotha, Almalexia. They are from what I understand on par or almost as powerful as the daedric princes. So I would assume that would be up there with a magic type disease as well.

Iarao

oh, and what about those who dont have any race any faction???? what if they are now stuck with a crappy toon they dont wanna play???? hmmm??? MONEY GRAB!

Iarao

and those of us who are eso plus should get to change ALL of our toons and names if we wish. maybe make it a min time of eso plus, like 1yr. and if new plus members pay for 1yr, they get it thrown in, too.

Jabbs_Giggity

starkerealm wrote: »

Only one I'm worried about is the Redguard. Given how hard that race is pushed as "The Choice for StamDPS," buffing Adrenaline Rush feels like a mistake.

It's a nerf to StamPlars considering the "Direct Damage" does not apply...and you get no cost reduction to class abilities...Even though Jabs is still broken.

But hey! Let's promote using Weapon Skill lines over Class Skill Lines even more since the Class Skills cannot get balanced correctly...

Iron_Blurr

The imperial passives are under powered.
The nord passives are over powered.
Other than that I like the changes.

SydneyGrey

That detection "bonus" for Wood Elf is worthless. Please replace that with something that's useful.

Banana

Good job Gill. My breton will pay you later

Virosh

Coming back to the game after a year and a half (or was it more?) and I see some strange things going on.

Honestly, dissatisfied with most of those changes. Altmers and Khajiit look very interesting now though, so credit where credit is due.

Dunmer - are you trying to bring back the hybrid builds? If you do - guess that's fine, though with the way the meta, sets, dungeons and player mindsets are now, I highly doubt that is possible.

Finally, Imperials sucked a bit, will suck a lot more now if the proposed passives go live for them. And the Red Diamond passive - please, either make it similar to the Redguards's one ( X amount of health every X amount of seconds ), or just change it to +2000 max magicka - that would benefit tanks, have no impact on StamDD's and motivate people to try out magicka imperial DD. Maybe even healer, though Bretons and Altmer would still be better. Or just rework their passives altogether. For being the premium race in ESO they suck in every possible way. I have about zero desire ever making an imperial toon. Seriously - can anyone explain to me what are the Imperials even good for?

Ash_In_My_Sujamma

Please rethink imperial before release, thank you!