Update 22 Combat Direction

Suddwrath

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Passives will be addressed in a future update. We wanted to hit the Actives this patch and are looking at applying these standards/audit to more Actives in the future. It's a lot to go through but we'll get there

ESO_Nightingale

will any of this effect arctic blast's abysmal performance in pvp?

DarkerDreams

*Huge Sigh* Wonder who else feels its so disheartening to have to redo builds , abilites, rotations, ect.. every few months. One update I'd like the patch notes to read we didn't change or nerf anything for your characters (or make them completely lore unfriendly in the case of bosmers) , you can use the same build this time, instead we went and fixed all those annoying bugs that have been piling up for years such as random crashes, broken bg queues, the group finder which is so broken you can't even do events with it now, ect, ect, ect

Minno

chris211 wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler can we expect some tlc for templar?

Most likely I think. Here's what I think might happen:
- snare off jabs/ritual/vamps bane looked into. My guess, vamps bane keeps its snare, jabs/ritual both loose snares.
- hasty prayer/bol looked into as they are basically the same burst heal. BOL/honor the dead become self buff heal, hasty prayer becomes burst heal aoe.
- jav/toppling/total dark are conflicting cc effects. javelin could become main cc now that wings is nerfed. toppling could get a dmg boost/off balance buff. and total dark could be a self buff mechanic like wings.

that's what comes to mind with templar abilities that have conflicting effects. Cant wait to see what the team came up with!

Bfish22090

***. where are the snare nerfs

Lord_Zele

The Cleave Buff?!
THE BLIND WARRIOR SHALL RISE
CLEAVE, CLEAVE EVERYTHING!

This is sounding very promising so far.

Ajax_22

Bfish22090 wrote: »

***. where are the snare nerfs

In the PTS notes.

Rehdaun

Somehow I'm not feeling overly excited about these so-called balance changes. I'm envisioning a lot of nerfs with little not no buffs.

Quick pole. Who doesn't think that major fracture is going to be ripped from surprise attack, a very useful skill for pve dps and kept in mark target, a niche skill that is in nearly no one's rotation?

Anyone? Anyone?

That doesn't mean that mark target will become any more useful and people will magically start using it. It means that the rotation will remain the same and the class will become weaker.

I sure hope I'm wrong

John_Falstaff

@Rehdaun , we're talking ZOS here, of course they'll nerf SA into the ground. And useless magicka-only Mark Target (for which NB doesn't even have bar space) will stay in NB skill line as a dead weight.

StamDK was feeling too well in PvE, I see, and now we won't even have cheap spammable - it was at least some way to cope with abysmal sustain of the class. I'm not looking forward to the update as things stand now.

code65536

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In terms of quality of life changes, we’ve heard your feedback about cast times being difficult to incorporate into fluid combat/rotation, and have made adjustments to many abilities with cast times to make them easier to weave and be more reliable. In most of these cases, we have adjusted the damage as well in coordination with cast time adjustments to retain the DPS you’re used to in U21.

That's great to hear. Could I ask that the cast time for sorc frags be removed? Instead of having an unproced frag be a cast-time ability that locks your character into an awkward and potentially dangerous casting animation, why not just further reduce the damage of an unproced frag? Unintentionally getting caught in that animation and having to cancel it is a particularly annoying QoL pain point for sorcs, as it's currently the only ability in the game (at least, that I can think of off the top of my head) that switches back and forth between cast time and instant cast.

(No changes have to be made for proced frags. Just unproced ones.)

And it would finally give new sorcs who are starting out a non-cast-time class spammable--something that all the other classes have.

glavius

I foresee a triple nerf tearing stam NB a new one
Surprise Attack loosing major fracture.
Relentless loosing minor berserk.
Incap loosing something important.

Could be time to dust off the sorc!

FrancisCrawford

chris211 wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler can we expect some tlc for templar?

If Blazing Spear is nerfed I will be very, very sad. It's a huge part of what makes templar dungeon healing fun.

FrancisCrawford

For the record -- it's OK to have class skills that are individually "overpowered". Overall power of great active skills plus any passives just has to be considered in combination when judging a class or spec.

Pyr0xyrecuprotite

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

With that being said, let’s dive into how we are approaching the Elsweyr update. First off, we are getting the Necromancer ready for prime time! This class was created with three major tenants of play:

I do not think this word means what you think it means, @ZOS_BrianWheeler . Perhaps you meant to use "tenets"?

Tasear

In terms of quality of life changes, we’ve heard your feedback about cast times being difficult to incorporate into fluid combat/rotation

Will overload feel better to use?

Will dark dark exchange be worthwhile channel like mediate with major protection and free costed tied to it?

Will negate finnally have functionally in PvE to make me feel uniqueness of my class and role?

Side note: please consider fixing pet issue on final boss in vhof.

technohic

My takeaway from this is just enjoy whatever it is you enjoy now, but don't get attached. I will be ready to redo my builds when the updates come in.

JadonSky

forumsmurf wrote: »

Why can't skills be dynamically balanced like Negate Magic? Negate Magic stuns ads but only silences players. It has a form of dual functionality depending on who it hits. Why can't other skills have this dual functionality? Instead of blanket nerfing DK wings because of pvp, why can't make it so wings can only reflect ad projectiles? There's more stuff that should seriously be balanced this way but obviously this comes to mind because it's an upcoming change.

Also can there be QoL changes to how certain non-resource dependent healing sources scale with your highest source of crit, rather than just defaulting to spell crit? An example would be Animal Companions' Bond With Nature that specifically scales with spell crit even though it's a class passive that should scale similarly to that of an ulti (highest source of crit), and Repentance that has no cost, but also defaults to scaling with spell crit.

Some things to me just don't make sense either, why does Critical Surge cost magicka rather than stamina when it gives Major Brutality? Why does Green Lotus cost magicka rather than stamina when it gives Major Savagery? Can these be changed so the healing from these skils actually scale with weapon crit, instead of the measley 10-20% spell crit that most Stamsorcs/Stamdens have?

Iv said this for many years now and always here "We don't want skills to work differently vs player". But yet I always provide the same example as you with negate. Like its been done already why can't we just keep that trend or if your not going to do it that way then allow negate to stun players too and not be biased.

Galarthor

Thank you for the insights.

Though I am affraid they made me want to see the patch notes only more!
I hope this will revitalize combat!

Varana

Rehdaun wrote: »

Somehow I'm not feeling overly excited about these so-called balance changes. I'm envisioning a lot of nerfs with little not no buffs.

Quick poll. Who doesn't think that major fracture is going to be ripped from surprise attack, a very useful skill for pve dps and kept in mark target, a niche skill that is in nearly no one's rotation?

Anyone? Anyone?

That doesn't mean that mark target will become any more useful and people will magically start using it. It means that the rotation will remain the same and the class will become weaker.

I sure hope I'm wrong

I mean, I don't even understand the reasoning behind that change. It's bad to have the same effect twice on a class' skills? Why?
One is a stamina skill for DDs and PvP. The other is a magicka debuff/healing skill. How is it a bad thing if you can apply the same thing via two vastly different skills?

And yes, of course it's Surprise Attack that will lose Major Fracture. I mean, Mark Target has stealth detection, and we all know how much ZOS loves stealth detection.

sneakymitchell

Lord_Zele wrote: »

The Cleave Buff?!
THE BLIND WARRIOR SHALL RISE
CLEAVE, CLEAVE EVERYTHING!

This is sounding very promising so far.

Who knows if it’s going be good with zergs increased to 50% is big. It might out damage wrecking blow @ZOS_BrianWheeler I hope you guys look at wrecking blow/dizzying swing if not cleave will be the new spamable which shouldn’t be as intended like flurry and throwing dagger. Since the buff to light attacks a lot of channeled spamable are being mostly out parred by instant cast. Sure those channel times are good but they need an update since it’s been a year or two since it’s been updated.

Gederic

Trying to balance all action skills in one massive patch?

This can't go horribly wrong.

Sandman929

Love the big changes, looking forward to next week!

Marteene

For nightblade last I’d love to see Minor Berserk based off of Assassin’s Will procs and not on activation of Grim Focus. If each Assassin’s Will were to proc say 8.5 seconds of Minor Berserk, the skill would keep its identity but would not reward players who don’t play the class efficiently and leave the good NBs unharmed.

BaylorCorvette

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We also took a high level pass at Class abilities, specifically looking for similar/redundant functions within each class's entire tool kit (like Mark Target granting Fracture and Surprise Attack granting Fracture). While we want there to be different abilities that operate similarly in functionality between your class, weapon, guild, and other skill lines, we want to avoid abilities within the same class to provide multiple sources of the same effect(s). This is an on-going effort for future skill lines, and we are not opposed to revisiting the structure of abilities that have already received this audit. Also note these passes were done in conjunction with the changes noted above regarding coefficient/cost/Rank progression, etc.

#MakeStamSorcGreatAgain

Thanks for the update Brian, things are sounding really nice! Fingers crossed for more useful StamSorc abilities!

md3788

Any thoughts on passive affects of active abilities? Is the combat team content with people barring a skill solely for it's passive affect. The obvious example being inner light

templesus

@ZOS_GinaBruno any updates on the selection of more class reps?

Ragnaroek93

I'm gonna uninstall and cancel subscription if you nerf Surprise Attack to make Mark Target more attractive.

Ragnarock41

John_Falstaff wrote: »

> Some of these abilities have even be used as "spammable" abilities (Searing Strike), despite that being against their design.

Hm-m. Sounds like we can say good bye to sDK's cheap spammable. Another indirect nerf.

Apparently we can't have nice things.

usmcjdking

I'm going to take a leap of faith here and hope that both Stamplar and Stamsorc get some meaningful class skills. Stamplar gets some awesome stam-oriented utility morphs while Stamsorc just gets some meaningful source of damage lol.

Zer0oo

Can we also look at on how the abilities "aim"?
Some abilities are really hard to hit on the enemy while other work quite nice in a pvp setting. Especial if it is laggy some abilities are really awful to use.(jabs, brawler,...)