Can We Address The Issue With Tanks and The Enchantment Nerf?

Sinolai

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Sinolai wrote: »

They could add a passive that doubles your weapon enchant effect in 1h+shield skill tree.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

The nerf is fine. Wear an ice staff and run wall. Or have a healer run crusher. Though I do believe that with so many people being up in arms about it, they will cave and somehow give back the full enchant value to s/b. Then again, @Liofa said he brought it up an objection in a class representative meeting and they still put it on PTS. So we will see.

I really wish we dont have to see they day when tanks throw their shields into a ditch and run with double ice staves… what kind of RPG has tanks that run without shields becouse it is holding them back? Could as well just delete shields from the game.

What are you on about? No tank is going to need to be double ice staff. Unless they want to. If you drop s/b, you lose Pierce armor, the best taunt in the game, you lose a full off hand armor trait and enchantment. You lose faster movement while blocking
You lose 15% more damage mitigation from range attacks. Tanks just have to have a back bar bow or most likely, ice staff, just like a Stam DPS is front bar dual wield back bar bow.

The back bar ice staff has actally become quite popular already after 2h weapons started to count as 2 set pieces. Back bar bow on the other hand is a joke. It deals *** damage and doesn't give any useful status effects like staves and leaves you with even less resistances than ice staff. Only thing tank might use is endless hail for enchant procs but blockade does that much better.
if the crusher enchant effect with sword and shield drops by 50% there is no place for shields in score runs, since tanking is possible with double ice staff (you get fracture from stamblade and breach from healer. only thing you really miss is heroism and some resistances, which tanks usually scarifice for better group buffs [that is why Alkosh is worn by a tank and not a dd]) and the group demands maximium penetration on boss. Since most bosses also have mechanics that hit the group occasionally it is also better to have strong weakening on them so 50% reduced weakening effect is not advised either. Weaker weakening is also indirect nerf to shield using tank as the damage reduction with shield is smaller now and encourages ice staff usage.

Kesstryl

Liofa wrote: »

There are few things some of you are completely ignoring. Tanks who depend on blockade to proc Crusher uses Weakening on SnB. With this change, it's a nerf for those. There are people who do the exact opposite, nerf to those. People who run double SnB, nerf to those. People who run low sustain classes that use Absorb Stamina enchant, nerf to those. I use Crusher on both bars but barely slot Blockade. I use Staff for other utilities. Now I don't have a choice but to run Blockade. Whatever perspective you look from, it's a nerf. A big one that is.

It's not only a support/utility nerf but also a sustain one. Many people used Absorb Stamina and Crusher. Now they have to choose which one will be lower. Of course they will choose Crusher on Staff and Absorb Stamina on SnB, resulting in less sustain. Now that we have to spend extra resources on Blockade (or Endless Hail), there is another sustain hit.

My point is, it doesn't matter who uses what. As long as you use SnB on your tank, it's a nerf. Someone already mentioned, this affects high ping tanks more than others. Constantly having to bar swap makes you more vulnerable to attacks since it drops your block.

There are different side effects to this change as well. It's about gameplay and diversity in tanking builds. Firstly, let's talk about gameplay. On live, I use SnB skills to proc my enchants. I like to time them and this type of gameplay creates a minigame where I try to keep my enchants up with proper timing while doing normal tank stuff. It creates this small multi tasking challenge. Next patch, it's gonna be "drop blockade/hail and that's it". It's not fun really. I've been playing like this on live server for the past week for getting myself ready to next patch but I must say, it took all the enjoyment of tanking for me. Not because it's different, because it's not fun to do the same thing over and over again. There is no tactical gameplay. It's boring. Anyway, let's talk about diversity. Double SnB builds. They are dead. No such thing anymore. On live, you can see pretty successful tanks running double SnB and do perfectly well. Next patch, you don't have this choice anymore. This kills diversity. This change does not encourage you into running Staff/Bow back bar, it forces you into it. It just kills diversity. Poisons are not even a choice due to SnB not having a DoT skill to proc them reliably and light/heavy attacks are not as easy to do as they would be on a healer or DD. In the end, in my opinion, this is not a change that's been properly thought out and needs a change.

This ^^

To add to previous insightful comment by Liofa - this change will only widen the gap between end/exp'ed tanks and starting ones. Gap which imo is very big already. For experienced tanks using bow or ice wont be a problem, most already do, or if they don't due to prioritizing other skills, it not much an issue (ignoring the fact that they are too now loosing build diversity).
But for beginner tanks, it's very common to go double SnB, because it is safer and double crusher. So in this case either their group suffers DPS loss and we get even more DPS gap, or beginner is pushed to use Ice/Bow which means you drop even more weight on their shoulders. Ib4 someone says "oh but if you need ice/bow for end game anyway, why not learn it already", few people find playing tank enjoyable already, there will be even less if you kill diversity and make entry level harder.

I've been playing since Beta and only in this past year have I tried tanking. It is unarguably the hardest role in ESO. It requires more concentration, thought, and bar swapping than other roles, and now it's going to be an even steeper learning curve. I like tanking in general, but in ESO it is a lot of pressure. You are not just a meatbag, you are also a debuffer and crowd controller. You aren't just atomic bombing from a distance or behind, you are right there multi-tasking in ways you never dreamed of. I know every role has bar swapping and skills that make them better at their roles, but it is a lot of pressure to be a tank. I liked double S&B, and this week using a back bar staff has been a learning curve, and has slowed my response times on my skills. Yes I will get better at it, but I'm definitely enjoying it less.

Lapin_Logic

SaucyMcSauceface wrote: »

Tyrobag wrote: »

For those who missed it:

Enchants on one handed weapons will now be half the potency of those placed on two handed weapons. This will apply to the damage and effectiveness of enchants, but will not affect the cooldown.

• This means an enchant that would normally have a 4 second cooldown and deal 4000 damage on a two handed weapon will deal 2000 Damage, but still have a 4 second cooldown.

For dual wield this means that you now get 1 glyph's worth of power, same as the 2h weapon types. For stam dps using dual wield (like 80% of stam builds) this sucks, but may (or may not) simply serve to even out the weapon choice for stamina dps.

1h & Shield only gets 1 enchantment, but its still going to get cut in half. This means that where all other weapon types get 1 glyph worth of power, 1h & Shield only gets .5 worth. Typically tanks run an infused crusher glyph, giving 2108 penetration for the group. Now that will be reduced to 1054, a massive nerf on something that didn't need to be nerfed. Not to mention that this makes Torug's worthless for tanks too.

Since this was just collateral damage from the attempt to make 2h viable by nerfing dual wield I hope that ZoS will consider fixing the issue rather than just leaving it.

My recommendation would be to change the Sword and Board Passive to include a 100% buff to weapon enchantments, thus leaving 1h and Shield where it is and still getting the nerf to dual wield.

But it doesn't give dual wield "1 glyph's worth of power, same as the 2h weapn types" because enchants don't stack. It gives them two half enchants. The best solution as far as I can see for both DW and SnB is for only the main hand to accept a weapon enchant, and for that enchant to be full value. This is an attempt to 'balance' DW against under-performing 2h rather than actually addressing the serious issues with the 2h skills and passives, and it is hurting SnB in the process.

another way to balance weapon enchants is
2h = 1 full enchant
snb = 1 full enchant
dual wield main hand = 1 full enchant (off hand weapon enchant disabled) is this how poisons currently work anyway?

CaffeinatedMayhem

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

another way to balance weapon enchants is
2h = 1 full enchant
snb = 1 full enchant
dual wield main hand = 1 full enchant (off hand weapon enchant disabled) is this how poisons currently work anyway?

No, poisons don't work this way currently, but it would make far more sense than forcing tanks into backbar ice staff. I really wish ZOS would give up ice-staff tanking. It's a nice idea, but Pierce Armor is a better taunt, and I'm so tired of players attempting to DPS with ice then taunting stuff away, often wiping the group. Many players still don't realize that if you want to use ice staves for damage Tri Focus should be off.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Sinolai wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Sinolai wrote: »

They could add a passive that doubles your weapon enchant effect in 1h+shield skill tree.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

The nerf is fine. Wear an ice staff and run wall. Or have a healer run crusher. Though I do believe that with so many people being up in arms about it, they will cave and somehow give back the full enchant value to s/b. Then again, @Liofa said he brought it up an objection in a class representative meeting and they still put it on PTS. So we will see.

I really wish we dont have to see they day when tanks throw their shields into a ditch and run with double ice staves… what kind of RPG has tanks that run without shields becouse it is holding them back? Could as well just delete shields from the game.

What are you on about? No tank is going to need to be double ice staff. Unless they want to. If you drop s/b, you lose Pierce armor, the best taunt in the game, you lose a full off hand armor trait and enchantment. You lose faster movement while blocking
You lose 15% more damage mitigation from range attacks. Tanks just have to have a back bar bow or most likely, ice staff, just like a Stam DPS is front bar dual wield back bar bow.

The back bar ice staff has actally become quite popular already after 2h weapons started to count as 2 set pieces. Back bar bow on the other hand is a joke. It deals *** damage and doesn't give any useful status effects like staves and leaves you with even less resistances than ice staff. Only thing tank might use is endless hail for enchant procs but blockade does that much better.
if the crusher enchant effect with sword and shield drops by 50% there is no place for shields in score runs, since tanking is possible with double ice staff (you get fracture from stamblade and breach from healer. only thing you really miss is heroism and some resistances, which tanks usually scarifice for better group buffs [that is why Alkosh is worn by a tank and not a dd]) and the group demands maximium penetration on boss. Since most bosses also have mechanics that hit the group occasionally it is also better to have strong weakening on them so 50% reduced weakening effect is not advised either. Weaker weakening is also indirect nerf to shield using tank as the damage reduction with shield is smaller now and encourages ice staff usage.

all those words and i said that ice staff would be more likely in my post. but since you are arguing against a point i never made, bow has the only non-class aoe immobilize, bombard. and it has a range interrupt, Venom Arrow. there are skills that tanks can use besides endless, especially NB and templar tanks.

there is no way double ice staff with meta just because of these changes. we are just talking about 1k pen, which can be made up so easily.

Wuuffyy

Agreed.

josiahva

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Sinolai wrote: »

They could add a passive that doubles your weapon enchant effect in 1h+shield skill tree.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

The nerf is fine. Wear an ice staff and run wall. Or have a healer run crusher. Though I do believe that with so many people being up in arms about it, they will cave and somehow give back the full enchant value to s/b. Then again, @Liofa said he brought it up an objection in a class representative meeting and they still put it on PTS. So we will see.

I really wish we dont have to see they day when tanks throw their shields into a ditch and run with double ice staves… what kind of RPG has tanks that run without shields becouse it is holding them back? Could as well just delete shields from the game.

What are you on about? No tank is going to need to be double ice staff. Unless they want to. If you drop s/b, you lose Pierce armor, the best taunt in the game, you lose a full off hand armor trait and enchantment. You lose faster movement while blocking
You lose 15% more damage mitigation from range attacks. Tanks just have to have a back bar bow or most likely, ice staff, just like a Stam DPS is front bar dual wield back bar bow.

And here is the problem with that approach: I may light attack while tanking to do little bit more DPS, but my pure tank has abysmal DPS anyway, so when attacking, I am more often than not HEAVY attacking to regain resources...usually stamina since I have faster magicka regen...now all of a sudden to keep crusher up to the same degree with a frost stave back bar(which I do use) I lose the stamina recovery of a S&B heavy attack...not to mention the stave heavy attack is also slower than the S&B version...so however you look at it, it is a nerf.

nsmurfer

Hamrb wrote: »

another solution is to make your main hand enchant work at 100% and your back hand enchant unable to proc

That will affect non-DW users most.

Moloch1514

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler I think this issue deserves a comment from your end to explain why the concerns of the Tank rep were ignored. Surely there is a reason to go forward with such a large nerf to SnB via a nerf intended for dual wield?

Strider__Roshin

Stroggnonimus wrote: »

To add to previous insightful comment by Liofa - this change will only widen the gap between end/exp'ed tanks and starting ones. Gap which imo is very big already. For experienced tanks using bow or ice wont be a problem, most already do, or if they don't due to prioritizing other skills, it not much an issue (ignoring the fact that they are too now loosing build diversity).
But for beginner tanks, it's very common to go double SnB, because it is safer and double crusher. So in this case either their group suffers DPS loss and we get even more DPS gap, or beginner is pushed to use Ice/Bow which means you drop even more weight on their shoulders. Ib4 someone says "oh but if you need ice/bow for end game anyway, why not learn it already", few people find playing tank enjoyable already, there will be even less if you kill diversity and make entry level harder.

Sounds like a good change then. I wasn't inspired to make a tank until I did vDSA way back in the day. Even now I won't tank unless the content is quite challenging. I'm already able to adapt to these changes, and quite frankly the more challenging it is to perform a particular role the better. Catering to bad players has done nothing, but harm this game.

kojou

I used to tank a lot... Having to go back and get an Ice staff for all of the sets does not make me excited about tanking more.

I think an easier solution would have been to suppress the weapon enchant on the off hand for dual wield.

profundidob16_ESO

Agreed. This nerf hits my tank pretty bad

Tonturri

Anyone done the math yet? It's a penetration loss but I'm curious to see how much damage people actually lose, considering people may change their /build/CP to compensate and see a smaller loss than one might anticipate using napkin math.

Furthermore, s/shield has always had quite a bit over frost staff - what with getting a full-power weapon enchant and an armor enchant.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Tonturri wrote: »

Anyone done the math yet? It's a penetration loss but I'm curious to see how much damage people actually lose, considering people may change their /build/CP to compensate and see a smaller loss than one might anticipate using napkin math.

Furthermore, s/shield has always had quite a bit over frost staff - what with getting a full-power weapon enchant and an armor enchant.

It is ~2%, 2100/2=1050/500=2.1

Tonturri

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Tonturri wrote: »

Anyone done the math yet? It's a penetration loss but I'm curious to see how much damage people actually lose, considering people may change their /build/CP to compensate and see a smaller loss than one might anticipate using napkin math.

Furthermore, s/shield has always had quite a bit over frost staff - what with getting a full-power weapon enchant and an armor enchant.

It is ~2%, 2100/2=1050/500=2.1

That's what I mean by napkin math. Normally that'd be fine, but it's a debuff on the target, not a direct buff ON the attacker, so everyone hitting the target gets the buff.

So the damage loss is going to be per-DPS in a trials group (or whatever content you're getting). Which means the boss isn't going to be 100% penetrated (snrrk), and I'm curious to see how people's builds will adjust to compensate for the loss. Will people adjust CP? Get a different armor set, change to sharpened, etc etc. There's a ton of options that might pop back in.

We might have less DPS loss than anticipated due to power creep. We might have MORE DPS loss due to other changes.

Lark82

There are already too few tanks in this game, nerfing them is just going to make the situation even worse.
Please Zos, take a look at some of the suggestions here for s&b and help to encourage tanking.
The changes as they stand are just going to make it even harder to find a tank for group content which is the whole point of a successful mmo.

kojou

Lark82 wrote: »

There are already too few tanks in this game, nerfing them is just going to make the situation even worse.
Please Zos, take a look at some of the suggestions here for s&b and help to encourage tanking.
The changes as they stand are just going to make it even harder to find a tank for group content which is the whole point of a successful mmo.

Nerfs to tank QoL is what makes me stick with DPS now... It seems like every year they figure out another way to make tanking more annoying.

Gnortranermara

DocFrost72 wrote: »

Tanks having a backbar staff to upkeep crusher through wall has been meta (iirc) since at least thieves guild. This doesn't affect tanks in any meaningful way.

Nah man. A few tanks have taken up an ice back bar (since Summerset made them count as 2 set items), but even so it's still an uncommon option. Destro backbar is not now and never has been "meta" (until next patch, maybe). Blockade is an awful way to keep up crusher since it can lose uptime when it procs on the wrong target.

BaylorCorvette

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

SaucyMcSauceface wrote: »

Tyrobag wrote: »

For those who missed it:

Enchants on one handed weapons will now be half the potency of those placed on two handed weapons. This will apply to the damage and effectiveness of enchants, but will not affect the cooldown.

• This means an enchant that would normally have a 4 second cooldown and deal 4000 damage on a two handed weapon will deal 2000 Damage, but still have a 4 second cooldown.

For dual wield this means that you now get 1 glyph's worth of power, same as the 2h weapon types. For stam dps using dual wield (like 80% of stam builds) this sucks, but may (or may not) simply serve to even out the weapon choice for stamina dps.

1h & Shield only gets 1 enchantment, but its still going to get cut in half. This means that where all other weapon types get 1 glyph worth of power, 1h & Shield only gets .5 worth. Typically tanks run an infused crusher glyph, giving 2108 penetration for the group. Now that will be reduced to 1054, a massive nerf on something that didn't need to be nerfed. Not to mention that this makes Torug's worthless for tanks too.

Since this was just collateral damage from the attempt to make 2h viable by nerfing dual wield I hope that ZoS will consider fixing the issue rather than just leaving it.

My recommendation would be to change the Sword and Board Passive to include a 100% buff to weapon enchantments, thus leaving 1h and Shield where it is and still getting the nerf to dual wield.

But it doesn't give dual wield "1 glyph's worth of power, same as the 2h weapn types" because enchants don't stack. It gives them two half enchants. The best solution as far as I can see for both DW and SnB is for only the main hand to accept a weapon enchant, and for that enchant to be full value. This is an attempt to 'balance' DW against under-performing 2h rather than actually addressing the serious issues with the 2h skills and passives, and it is hurting SnB in the process.

another way to balance weapon enchants is
2h = 1 full enchant
snb = 1 full enchant
dual wield main hand = 1 full enchant (off hand weapon enchant disabled) is this how poisons currently work anyway?

This seems solid to me.