Argonians losing their resistance to poison (an open letter)

Cundu_Ertur

Bosmer's disease resistance (which they have always had) is a direct consequence of their diet, which includes drinking the juices of rotted meat. As it stands now, every Bosmer who drinks Bosmer drinks should drop dead.

The Silvenar, as with the Green Lady, is a quasi-mystical super Bosmer. You can't extrapolate an average Bosmer from the Silvenar (though, arguably, you can judge the state of the whole Bosmer people from him, due to the unique connection he has with the whole population).

Jungles are full of disease, not just poisons; swamps are full of poisons, not just disease. I'm aware of the post-hoc justifications the devs put out with these changes, the problem is that they are full of holes and are contradicted not just by lore in other games but also the lore in this current game.

SpringEternal

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Bosmer's disease resistance (which they have always had) is a direct consequence of their diet, which includes drinking the juices of rotted meat. As it stands now, every Bosmer who drinks Bosmer drinks should drop dead.

The Silvenar, as with the Green Lady, is a quasi-mystical super Bosmer. You can't extrapolate an average Bosmer from the Silvenar (though, arguably, you can judge the state of the whole Bosmer people from him, due to the unique connection he has with the whole population).

Jungles are full of disease, not just poisons; swamps are full of poisons, not just disease. I'm aware of the post-hoc justifications the devs put out with these changes, the problem is that they are full of holes and are contradicted not just by lore in other games but also the lore in this current game.

Bosmer disease resistance isn't mentioned in the game outside their passives. (Though I'd happy to be proven wrong in this regard.) Your supposition makes sense, but where's the direct evidence that it's a direct consequence? Assuming for a moment your assumption is correct, the Meat Mandate is subsidiary to the Green Pact. Without their intense relationship to the local plant life, there would be no meat mandate. It makes more sense to place the emphasis on their divine given connection to nature in their passives.

The Silvenar and the Green Lady are the living embodiments of the Bosmer people's strength and spirituality, yes. Their traits are derived from Bosmer as a whole. If the Silvenar has poison resistance, the Bosmer people do too. "He's the representative of the People, legally, physically, and emotionally [...] When they're healthy, so is he. When they're mostly female, so is he. When they cry for food or trade or an absence of foreign interference, he feels it too, and makes laws accordingly. In a way, he's a despot, but he's the people's despot." — A Dance in Fire

There are in-game books that reference the Black Marsh being full of diseases and other races fear Argonians because of it. There's nothing comparable for the Valenwood.

Both Argonians and Bosmers have claims to both resistances. But, I definitely believe the lore more strongly supports Argonians having disease immunity and poison resistance with Bosmer having the reverse.

Iccotak

Koronach

They should have just left this passive alone on both races. Now they got a lore mess and they better fix it. Don't stand on stage and say you pay attention to the lore and ignore it.

StormeReigns

Amphibian
Increase experience gain with Restoration Staff by 15%
Increase swim speed by 50%


Life Mender
Increase Healing Done and Health Recovery by 4%


Argonian Resistance
Increase Max Health by 1000
Increase Max Magicka by 1000
Increase Poison and Disease Resistance by 1155
You are immune to Poison & Disease Status Effect


Resourcefulness
When using a Potion restores 2310 Health, Stam and Mag
Potion Cooldowns are reduced by 7%
Increase all Damage over Time (DoT) effects by 577

Koronach

Iccotak wrote: »

So you are ok with them saying how lore is important and wanting to preserve it, then breaking it? They've built in game ESO lore around both Poison and Disease resistance for Argonians. Removing it now is removing a part of the races lore and identity within ESO not to mention immersion. This might have been ok while the game was still in Beta before building lore around these passives. It's been 5 years, a change like this with lore behind it now is unacceptable.

Swergdach

Iccotak wrote: »

Don't flatter yourself with Michael. You're more like this, fatso. (¬‿¬)

Tommy_The_Gun

Tbh. ZOS may have said that they were "mathematically" stronger, but that might have been correct BEFORE racial rebalance, as (almost) all other races got a pretty nice buff.

However what ZOS had done wrong imho is they did not considered "practical" Application of Argonian passives.

"On paper":
The resourceful passive gives 12000 recurses in total.
In Practise:
The huge disadvantage of this passive is that resources are slitted over 3 attributes (aside from the obvious ones, like not beeing able to use potions when stunned or need ANY consumables at all to trigger passive).
This means, you will almost never utilize its full potential. Most often you will only use 33% of this passive (restoring one type or resources, stam, mag or health) or sometimes 66% - restoring 2 types of resources (for example health & magicka). The situations where you will use its 100% potential are more rare than Buoyant Armiger motif pages drop rate.

Live Mander - Increase your healing done by 6% - looks Ok, until you will do some math and see how healing is calculated in eso. Narrowing it down to set bonus, t3hasiangod has done pretty god job on that.

Basically 2% healing done, that you get as a set bonus is only really better than 129 Spell Damage bonus, only when you have.... "at least 5000 Spell Damage in order for that 2 percent Healing Done to be better than 129 Spell Damage"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRFMFgIaiSk

I hope this gives you some idea on how Argonian 6% bonus is useful for a healer role compared to spell dmg bonus Altmers or Dunmers (Dark Elfs) have.

The thing is even if "math" is done correctly, the equation must also be done correctly, based on correct assumptions. ZOS may have done the math correctly here, but what for if their variables and equation was flawed.

Jhalin

Bringing this back because even in the damn Elsweyr chapter after the racial changes it says argonians have stronger resistance to poison

Nemesis7884

more so even than the poison resist i think they should turn the healing done into a healing done and healing received as healing done is rather eh for a tank but good for a healer but they are kinda mutually exclusive in many scenarios so it wouldnt really be a big buff

max_only

Color me unsurprised

Koronach

Wow that is just pathetic, do the dev teams even communicate with each other? What is the purpose of the loremaster again?

Jaraal

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Preview of patch 4.4:
Altmer are now 2H wielding melee barbarians
Orcs are pretty mages
Dunmer get ice resistance and weakness to fire
Nords get fire resistance, weakness to ice, and can no longer benefit at all from any drinks, any form of mead kills them
Redguards are pacifists
Khajiit are remodeled to be dog people instead of cat people
Bretons are ugly warriors

/sarc

Don't laugh. You never know where the darts will land next time.

AshTal

I know there are a lot of poison attacks - is there a single disease one? Disease appears to just be a naff resistance.

StormeReigns

AshTal wrote: »

I know there are a lot of poison attacks - is there a single disease one? Disease appears to just be a naff resistance.

Blastbones. Stamina morph.

Cundu_Ertur

There are some NB morphs that do disease damage. Zombie attacks and a werewolf skill morph also do disease damage, as will any weapon with a diseased enchant.

Koronach

@ZOS_LeamonTuttle @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler If the games lore states Argonians have both Disease AND Poison resistances and you are going to continue adding new lore to the game backing that. Then how about fixing our passives to reflect that, thank you.

Swergdach

Jhalin wrote: »

Bringing this back because even in the damn Elsweyr chapter after the racial changes it says argonians have stronger resistance to poison

I'm a little confused by the situation. If they, aware of the problem, continue to fail at connecting their game lore and game design, then there are two options here.
In the first case, they put it on hold because of Elsweyr and its support, but then it turns out that: 1) the Integrity of the game lore worries them, but not significantly. 2) Their communication skill with the community sucks, as it was possible to say two words about the fact that they are aware of the problem and plan to fix it in the future.
In the second case, they do not care about the integrity of their game universe, and they perceive players as brainless monkeys: "Hey, look, DRAGONS! Hey, what is it? The NECROMANCER! New crown crates - buy!"
And honestly, I don't know what's worse.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Tommy_The_Gun

I still dont get it. How can Zenimax do a global racial rebalance, even stating that one of their goals is to keep racial passives to be in accordance with lore, and yet they managed not to do it...
...Also dont forget that the other passive that argonians had that made them usefull (healing done / healing received) is now totally useless. Argonians only have +5% healing done, while a basic gear set bonus gives 4%. It was 2% and it was doubled, yet Argonians still get 5%... Talk about inconsistency.

The only passives that makes argonian playable (barely) is the potion passive. But compared to other races, it is medicore at best. I mean they say that Argonians have best sustain right ? Well it could have been the case before racial rebalance, but now ? Just try to do a DPS test on a target dummy without heavy attacking often. Now do the same test on other race. You will notice that it will be much easiet to do, because of how CP works...

Tbh. Idk what to say. Argonians went from good tanks, good at PvP, ok-ish healers and terrible mag / stam DPS to:
- 5th or 6th race for a tank (literaly the last tanky race to be considered a candidade for a tank).
- Medicore at PvP
- Worst magicka "healer" race
- Worst DPS race overall (both mag & stam).

So what are they good at ? Pretty much the only aspect of the game where Argonians can be used are those where racial passive dont matter - crafting & housing.
Even doing overland content they are far behind others. Similar to woodelves, argonians basically dont have a use-case.
In short those 2 races, in current state of the game are useless when it comes to racial passives.

Uryel

moses1763 wrote: »

the game must change...

Change for the sheer sake of change is meaningless. A meaningful change, I'm fine with. A whimsical change to please PvP whiners, such as the one Bosmers recieved, is not welcome.

Also, I've been playing MMOs for a long time now. Back way before WoW. I've seen my share of changes in those games. But I had never ever seen anywhere character-defining traits being entirely removed after years. people who created theircharacters for those traits got robbed, nothing else. "But you can race-change !". Yep, but that's not the same character, then. Every costume, skin, mount, house you bought / made for them are now moot. Also, i wouldn't roll oput of an argonian and into a bosmer solely for the poison resist. I would end up with a stupid passive to spot hidden things that don't even exist and the ability to roll on the floor for fast movement. Why would anyone want that ?

The problem is the same as with the Bosmers, really, albeit in my eyes not quite as bad, but I have a main Bosmer, so I'm not neutral on the matter. The problem is that characters created years ago have been force to change because of a stupid decision pertaining to PvP, that affects people who don't PvP at all. It breaks 25 years of established lore, but hey... Who cares ? Dragons ! Excitement ! Cats of sizes and shapes !

Jaraal

I started the Thieves Guild quest on my new necro today. Accepted the quest from my collections menu, it told me to meet Quen in any Outlaw's Refuge.

So I got to the Refuge in Davon's Watch, and as I'm walking up to Quen, I see she is engaged in conversation with an Argonian. I missed the first part of the conversation, but I heard Deerlus say to her, "I gave it to the dry-skin, it's poison to them."

Well, I sure hope he didn't give it to a Bosmer, as they (instead of Argonians) are now immune to poison.

Yet another in-game dialogue now rendered nonsensical by these short-sighted, hamfisted racial changes.

Tommy_The_Gun

Yep. Nerf is the one thing. But they literally did the opposite of their original goals...

...I would even dare to say that almost all racial rebalance is a total opposite of its original goals. Almost all races are actually more limited now and further shoehorned into one role, often without even being bis or even close to bis at that role.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/453551/upcoming-racial-balance-changes-for-update-21/p1

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Allow more effective options when picking a race for each role in tanking, healing, or damage dealing.

Well... how that worked out for Argonians ? They are bottom tier for every role in game now. Worst for Mag / Stam DPS, worst for healer (every Magicka race is significantly better), and also worst for a tank role (out of all "tanky" races). Hell, even races that are not supposed to be "tanky" (Breton & Redguard) are better for that role...

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

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.

* Looks at Orc for pretty much all Stamina builds and Breton for pretty much all magicka builds*
Well... yeah... that turned out pretty great, didn't it ?
I am not even going to mention that you buffed your "set bonuses" (2% healing done is now 4% healing done), but Argonians somehow still have their 6% healing done unchanged...

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Retain and enhance the unique feeling and gameplay patterns that each race allows.

In case of Argonians that means "pay for potions or spend X amount of time to farm ingredients & craft them, just to HAVE a passive". This is exactly what boils my ***. They somehow missed that out. A passive either should not require ANY consumables, to keep race playable, or if it does require CONSUMING AN ITEM, then it should be stronger than something you get for free.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Improve the sense of progression that the racial passives provide when leveling up.

In case of Argonians you just swap places the Passives. Because the top-one (+5% healing done & + 5% healing received) was sooooo powerful (again looks at Breton, Orc, Dark Elf)... I mean... no IDK what to even say so... *remains silent*

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Achieve the above goals while still obeying our rich and structured lore and storytelling.

By removing poison immunity / resistance completely... How is it even "ok" to do ? On a race that literally lives in a blight-town like Swamp, full of poisonous plants, poisonous animals, poisonous gas clouds and god knows what... And Wood elf suffered the same fate. Why ? You could simply remove the immunity, but keep the resistance...

Now look, I dont want to say anything bad or something that might be taken offensive. But IMHO it was NOT about a Racial rebalance. Not only that is. ZOS could not overnerf stuff without reason. And that reason I assume is simply... popularity. Apparently, they must have looked at some global internal data, what races are popular, what is most often pick, for what content, for what role etc.

So Argonians were simply nerfed super hard, just to make sure, that no one who want to stay competitive (both PvE & PvP) will use them. And those who want to stay competitive, will use race-change token & buy more from crown store.

When (some day) there will be next racial rebalance (I hope that is) ,ZOS, for the love of Azura, Sithis, Sheagorath, Cheese, Divines etc. - You must try to look at all 10 races separately and without any bias or favouring specific race, then again look at your original racial rebalance goals and try to place a " ✔ " check mark to all of your goals at each race. If you cant do this then it means that you still have job to do, until you actually can place that " ✔ " check mark.