Update 22 Combat Direction

Alucardo

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.

It was never intended to be a spammable, hence the 16k DoT tooltip and low initial damage.

gepe87

Streak/Ball of Lighting change? I hope so

WoppaBoem

Sounds promising and something that needed to be done. Getting much more clarity in how active skills perform will be very nice for theory crafting and then killing it. Thank you for the hard work. Looking forward to those Natch Potes

Morgul667

Cool

Thanks for the heads up

John_Falstaff

Alucardo wrote: »

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.

It was never intended to be a spammable, hence the 16k DoT tooltip and low initial damage.

What does it matter? The class has abysmal sustain (to the point of magDKs resorting to Spell Symmetry to sustain themselves in PvE) and not much going for it, especially stamDK spec. Using Claw as a spammable used to be one of the few crutches the spec could still lean on. If someone can't walk, the correct order is to first give that much-needed leg surgery, and then take away the crutches, not the other way around. Speaking of that, I'm pretty sure Rending Slashes was never intended to be used as a spammable either. Howdy there stamsorcs, guess who'll also be without a decent spammable this upcoming patch.

Frankly, I'm still playing stamDK out of stubbornness now, and I spend more time in tanking gear than wearing damage sets. Apparently, for a DK, being anything but a tank is a punishable offense.

glavius wrote: »

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!

More like time to look around for other games to be released this year. I'm frankly getting tired of nerfs, playing this game is becoming too much like walking on quicksand. There's only so much one can last before getting fed up of rolling with the punches.

Lokov

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang!

With Update 22 coming to the PTS in just a few weeks, we want to give you all an update on how we’re approaching combat adjustments this patch. We know there’s a lot of information out there already since the embargo lift and it’s great to see everyone excited about Elsweyr and the Necromancer! However, be aware unless it’s stated from us or included in official patch notes, it’s all subject to change until it’s on the PTS and Live.

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:

• Create a class that feels entirely unique and different than any other class in ESO
• Create a class that embodies Necromancy in Elder Scrolls lore/canon
• Add new gameplay elements via corpses, temporary pets and emphasize positional gameplay

The Necromancer is the first class to have multiple passes by our own players prior to it launching with the Class Reps and members of the community that recently visited the studio. Their feedback has greatly helped our development process, and we believe the Necromancer is setup nicely to fill both Magicka or Stamina roles for healing, tanking or DPS. Thanks again to the fine folks that visited us, and we’re looking forward to everyone trying out the Necromancer on the PTS! .

Over the years of development, there have been numerous changes to class abilities both in function and under the hood with code. These changes have shaped the face of combat in ESO over time, but as the game has evolved with each passing year, we have accrued many changes that have fallen out of vogue. With this update, we are making several adjustments to bring abilities back in line with the current state of the game and create a solid foundation of standards for the future.

In Update 22 we have done a pass on every Class ability looking for errant or missing data. We also made sure abilities follow a coherent pattern of Rank progression that is easy to identify. For example, if an ability morph does damage, the rank progression adds more damage. If an ability morph does healing, the rank progression does more healing.

Ability coefficients and costs have also been audited to ensure that healing or damage within the type of ability (such as a DD, DoT, HoT, Direct Heal) are more consistent. The duration of abilities and sub-effects have been normalized so they adhere to patterns that fall in line with the play-style of ESO, making their use in rotations easier to handle. For example:

• Single Target DoTs have been a long standing group of abilities that were not consistent in their application of damage. Looking at these types of abilities’ duration, tick frequencies, and delays, a consistent pattern of application was missing from ability to ability. Some of these abilities have even be used as "spammable" abilities (Searing Strike), despite that being against their design. In this pass, we've restructured them to follow a standard behavior:
  • If there is an initial hit upon casting one of these abilities, there will always be a delay between the initial hit and the first tick
  • If there no initial hit, there will be no delay
  • Delays (i.e. an ability that doesn’t hit immediately) will always be the same duration as the DoT's frequency in which it ticks.

Next were abilities that were considered out of standards based on the audit pass noted above. Some abilities contained a LOT of functionality (Incapacitating Strike), and others not as much (Teleport Strike) when looking at abilities across the board. Moving forward, abilities within the same “Category” should have a base level of performance but also have something that makes it unique. In doing this pass, we found abilities that had components which were above or below base functionality and made adjustments to bring them in line. In some cases, base damage/healing has been increased make up for the removal of additional functions. In other cases, base damage/healing has been reduced to make up for adding in additional functions.

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.

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.

There will be a bunch of patch notes coming for PTS soon, so stay tuned! Thanks for reading gang, and if you’ve gotten this far, here’s a little sneak peek:

• Cleave: (Reworked this ability and its morphs) Damage increased by 50%, but removed the bleed from this base ability completely.
  • Carve: Retains the bleed; bleed damage increased by 25%. No longer grants Minor Heroism.
  • Brawler: Removed the bleed from this ability. Increased the Shield granted from this morph by 100% at base, but reduced the bonus scaling per target hit from 100% to 50%. This means at base this ability will be 100% stronger than before, and will be ~14% stronger than previously if you get the maximum bonus.

Just fix the out of sync on the battleground. We will be happy

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Can we stop quoting the whole op please? It makes reading the thread a pain on mobile.

MaxJrFTW

Cleave: (Reworked this ability and its morphs) Damage increased by 50%, but removed the bleed from this base ability completely.
Carve: Retains the bleed; bleed damage increased by 25%. No longer grants Minor Heroism.
Brawler: Removed the bleed from this ability. Increased the Shield granted from this morph by 100% at base, but reduced the bonus scaling per target hit from 100% to 50%. This means at base this ability will be 100% stronger than before, and will be ~14% stronger than previously if you get the maximum bonus.

Good stuff. About time they start looking at under performing abilities, AND sets. Talking about sets, Earthgore is going from overpowered to useless. We don't need more useless sets, especially monster sets which are something you can tailor your play style around.

Anhedonie

This is huge. And it's a very good change. Can't wait to see them all.

Btw, it's DD, not DPS. DPS means damage per second, it's a stat, not a role. DD means damage dealer or damage dealing, a role. Would be cool if you could fix this typo in game.

Nicalas

Heres hoping that these changes positively affect StamSorc. It's nice to see Cleave get a rework. I often put together a build looking for something from the 2H line and find myself staring at Cleave. Then I remember how underwhelming it is.

This is something I am really looking forward too. I just passed my 1 year anniversary in ESO and one thing that has really stood out to me is the lack of variety to class and weapon skills. Hopefully we can open up some new weapon skill lines soon. Spear seems ideal as a critical option for two hander(precise attacks through the gaps in armor IE dagger). Unarmed would be nice or something with knuckle based weapons. Offhand artifacts/Wands for magicka users.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Anhedonie wrote: »

This is huge. And it's a very good change. Can't wait to see them all.

Btw, it's DD, not DPS. DPS means damage per second, it's a stat, not a role. DD means damage dealer or damage dealing, a role. Would be cool if you could fix this typo in game.

Been playing ESO for a long time, been dps, not dd that is the most common short hand for that role the whole time, you might not agree with it and I can understand why but that is what it is.

TheGreatBlackBear

@ZOS_BrianWheeler I really hope you all take a look at Magdens and make them more competitive for Pve. They've been suffering for too long.

haelene

This makes me extremely nervous. Big sweeping changes with Zos always do.

That said I'm trying to be hopeful we don't get another Bosmer situation because I really don't want anything to taint the release of Elsewyr.

Vapirko

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

Yes! This is the kind of communication we’ve been wanting. At least whether a player is onboard with changes or not we know where the game is going and that’s important.

Also is incap getting balanced? Please god let it be so. This all sounds super promising and I’m psyched for the PTS notes/cant wait to get on PTS.

Morgul667

Please dont forget to bring some positive change to stamsorc xD

Looks good for communication

Kuratius

Please, please let.us repent the corpses of summoned pets again.
You can still repent e.g. storm atro, but you can't use it on monster sets, which is really annoying.

DarkPicture

We will see any changes about races in Elsweyr patch yet? Yes or No? @ZOS_BrianWheeler

jeedrzej

Browart wrote: »

We will see any changes about races yet in Elsweyr patch? Yes or No? @ZOS_BrianWheeler

They already have said "No" @Browart

HeroOfNone

If you're updating weapon abilities are you also updating arena weapons as well? Removing bleed damage on the base skill and on brawler means a master 2 hander's ability to increase bleed damage would be worthless except on a single morph.

Bladerunner1

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Delays (i.e. an ability that doesn’t hit immediately) will always be the same duration as the DoT's frequency in which it ticks.

I know it's listed under a section called single target DOTs and this patch is more focused on class skills, but it would be nice if something could be done about endless hail. It seems like we have to hold on to the maelstrom bow almost two seconds before damage starts ticking and the buff is applied.

jeedrzej

HeroOfNone wrote: »

If you're updating weapon abilities are you also updating arena weapons as well? Removing bleed damage on the base skill and on brawler means a master 2 hander's ability to increase bleed damage would be worthless except on a single morph.

Master two hand increases direct damage. not bleed.

(2 items) Increases the direct damage Cleave deals by 1500 for each enemy in its cone, up to maximum 9000 increased damage.

Koolio

jeedrzej wrote: »

HeroOfNone wrote: »

If you're updating weapon abilities are you also updating arena weapons as well? Removing bleed damage on the base skill and on brawler means a master 2 hander's ability to increase bleed damage would be worthless except on a single morph.

Master two hand increases direct damage. not bleed.

(2 items) Increases the direct damage Cleave deals by 1500 for each enemy in its cone, up to maximum 9000 increased damage.

Nerf incoming

Azyle1

jeedrzej wrote: »

Browart wrote: »

We will see any changes about races yet in Elsweyr patch? Yes or No? @ZOS_BrianWheeler

They already have said "No" @Browart

where?

Dalsinthus

First of all I appreciate the communication. This is a helpful post and I hope ZOS gives us more of this in the future.

Second, and I know that I am pi$$ing in the wind here, I fundamentally disagree with the approach proposed. This sounds like concurrent changes to dozens of skills with much more to come. The game is very complex and no person or team can make changes at this level without making all kinds of mistakes. I say that with great respect to the design team. They are good at what they do, and are smart and well intentioned, but this is a recipe for disaster. There will be all kinds of unintended repercussions for changes at this scale. You can't change so many systems at once without causing all kinds of problems. A better and more scientific approach would be to make smaller iterative changes to very few skills at a time, evaluate the consequences, and work forward from there.

Thirdly, I know I am not alone in finding the constant changes to all elements of the game exhausting. Having to redo nearly all my builds every patch is a huge distraction and not something I enjoy at all. I get that this is part of playing an MMO, but I wish the team would take the philosophy of minimizing changes in order to provide a more consistent gameplay experience for players. Change of course will be necessary, but the volume of changes is not something I welcome. I feel like every time I get my builds to a place I am happy with them, I have to basically start over. At some point I will just burn out.

Finally, I also found the highlighting of night blade skills to be discouraging. I'll reserve judgement until I see the patch notes, but it sure sounds like stam NB will be seeing the loss of fracture on SA, loss of minor berserk on relentless, and further nerfs to Incap which has been heavily nerfed already. Although I am sure the intention is class balance, this is a pretty discouraging experience for the player that relies on those skills. I imagine some people will say they had it coming; the stamblade performance in very high level pve justifies some changes. I'd prefer much buffs to underperforming classes. I just hope that the result is still a good gameplay experience. It's hard to be excited about a game when you're starring down huge nerfs to your favorite character.

Edits: typos

Jabbs_Giggity

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang!

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:

• Create a class that feels entirely unique like the Templar and different has a better toolkit with Warden abilities than any other class in ESO

I fixed it

Jabbs_Giggity

chris211 wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler can we expect some tlc for templar?

Probably not...The Necromancer is everything we wanted to fix with Templars, plus some Warden abilities (**cough **cough Shalks and Permafrost...)

HeroOfNone

jeedrzej wrote: »

HeroOfNone wrote: »

If you're updating weapon abilities are you also updating arena weapons as well? Removing bleed damage on the base skill and on brawler means a master 2 hander's ability to increase bleed damage would be worthless except on a single morph.

Master two hand increases direct damage. not bleed.

(2 items) Increases the direct damage Cleave deals by 1500 for each enemy in its cone, up to maximum 9000 increased damage.

Good catch, I was thinking it mirrored dual wield for some reason. Still hope they consider the other arena weapons with these changes though.

MashmalloMan

For StamDK's worried about losing claw as a cheap spammable, you may still be able to use it by swapping between Rending Slash and Claw. It depends on how bad the delay of the dot is.

Honestly. I have a feeling Stam DoT's may be updated to last 10 seconds long with the delay being 2 seconds after cast to prevent spamming. This would mean you would have to use use it every other ability instead.

What I think it could look like:
0.0 Light atk -> 0.1 Claw (2s delay to DoT)
1.1 Light atk -> 1.2 Rending (2s delay to DoT)
2.1 Claw DoT
2.2 light atk -> 2.3 Claw (Refresh DoT)
3.2 Rending DoT
3.3 light atk -> 3.4 Rending (Refresh DoT)

Doens't help Stam Sorc's, but I'm still holding out hope on them completely overhauling the way sorc's operate, if they don't, and there is a 2 second delay:
Rending -> Rearming Trap -> Rending -> Hurricane -> Rending -> Deadly Cloak -> Rending -> Bar swap.

This sucks because you would be recasting Hurricane and Deadly Cloak early at 12s instead of 15s.

So many skills needs revamps. Rune Prison, Bolt Escape, Mages Fury, Bound Armor, Negate Magic, Overload, Daedric Tomb (m), Charged Atro(m), Crystal Blast(m), and Lightning Flood(m).

Remove reliance on Bound Armor for passive DMG and let's get some active ability morphs for Mag Sorc's and Stam Sorc's to actually use for Dynamic rotations. There is so much opportunity here for lesser used morphs and abilities, but this crutch of an ability is holding us back.

We will need to wait for context before people freak out every little change. The whole kits work together, not individual skills.

code65536 wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Also, dot ticks of weapon abilities in general (e.g. Wall of Elements) need to be shortened to 0.5 seconds or even less. It is pretty much impossible to receive the full benefit of the Torug's Pact 5 pc bonus with 1 or 2 second ticks.

2s is probably too long, but 1s is just fine. And there's a reason why abilities shouldn't tick too frequently:

Adjusted several abilities to improve overall game performance. Affected abilities will now tick less frequently, but deal more damage such that overall damage should remain constant. The affected abilities include:

• Blazing Spear
• Consuming Darkness and its morphs
• Eruption
• Lightning Splash and its morphs
• Necrotic Orb and its morphs
• Path of Darkness and its morphs
• Radiant Destruction and its morphs

I understand their thought process at the time, but if you look at the Necromancer ability called Shock Siphon and the morphs on youtube, the DoT ticks every 0.5 seconds. You can easily tell based on the numbers appearing over enemies that pass in to the beam or over the ground DoT.

Maybe they will make the same pass on some abilities and it would make perfect sense for wall of elements, used for applying enchants from back bar.

Strider__Roshin

Sounds like Nightblades are being completely reworked. As a stamblade I'm obviously concerned about the final outcome however I'm going to wait for the final product before I start with the "woe is me" talk.

Strider__Roshin

I really hope they increase the heavy attack speed of Two handed weapons in order to match DW. This has been overdue since they nerfed the crap out of the 2H heavy and light attacks.