PTS Update 22 - Feedback Thread for Class Balance

The Uninvited · April 2019

Class balance means nothing if you don't fix the game!

Prutton · April 2019

Excaltic wrote: »

I posted this somewhere else, but this is a more suitable area for this:

Nightblade - Assassination passive (Hemorrhage)

Because of the recent nerfs, please remove the requirement of having an Assassination skill on your bar for this passive to be active. Assassination skills are really useless now (all of them), that's ok, that's why you nerf the game.

Just don't demand that players equip useless skills so they get a passive.

Not equipping Merciless resolve after the patch will result in:
- No Minor Berserk (8% Damage nerf)
- No 10% crit damage bonus (10% Damage nerf)

Total nerf: 18% less damage <-- That's way to high for a nerf

So again, please remove the assassination skill slot requirement for this passive!!

Killer's Blade, Incapacitating Strike...

Xarc · April 2019

StamDK will be suffering after this update.

Has to use weapon skills to do some dmg in pvp, because all skills are only dots.

Why not to make a stam morph of whip ? 1 nice direct dmg+spammable would be really great.
Why not to make a stam morph of stantard ? Without dmg but which slow down +minor defile to all ennemis in 8m (or more) perimeter
why not to switch "ash cloud" skill and morphs into a defensive pet for DK or something usefull ? I imagine a pet catching projectiles... because you nerfed OUR wings. With this change, the DK would have to use the pet on the main & back bar.

Because about the wings's nerf....
To leave a difficult situation, sorcs may TP+stun
to leave a difficult situation, templar may spam purge/heal
to leave a difficult situation, NB may spam invibility cloak
to leave a difficult situation, dk ... will lose their identity.

I don't understand.

casparian · April 2019

usmcjdking wrote: »

casparian wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

For Templar:
New Radiant Ward is super good. Perhaps increase the AOE check for targets to 8m for PVP's sake.

@usmcjdking did Radiant Ward actually get buffed or is it just ignoring Battle Spirit now? I genuinely can't tell.

The % amp you get for hitting opponents is a flat value of your HP, not your shield. Hitting 3 players with Radiant Ward in PVP is providing you an additional 13.5% of your Max HP as shield value. So instead of increasing your miserably pathetic 3.5k shield to 3.9k, it's actually buffing it to like 6k.

This actually works tremendously well in favor of a Stamplar when used in conjunction with Emp Sweeps major protection. Oh wait...

So close....Sun Shield becoming viable on stamplar was my big hope for the patch.

usmcjdking · April 2019

casparian wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

casparian wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

For Templar:
New Radiant Ward is super good. Perhaps increase the AOE check for targets to 8m for PVP's sake.

@usmcjdking did Radiant Ward actually get buffed or is it just ignoring Battle Spirit now? I genuinely can't tell.

The % amp you get for hitting opponents is a flat value of your HP, not your shield. Hitting 3 players with Radiant Ward in PVP is providing you an additional 13.5% of your Max HP as shield value. So instead of increasing your miserably pathetic 3.5k shield to 3.9k, it's actually buffing it to like 6k.

This actually works tremendously well in favor of a Stamplar when used in conjunction with Emp Sweeps major protection. Oh wait...

So close....Sun Shield becoming viable on stamplar was my big hope for the patch.

Stamplar literally cannot get a single bone thrown it's way. The second we get a skill working, we get some other skill nerfed that synergizes with it.

casparian · April 2019

usmcjdking wrote: »

casparian wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

casparian wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

For Templar:
New Radiant Ward is super good. Perhaps increase the AOE check for targets to 8m for PVP's sake.

@usmcjdking did Radiant Ward actually get buffed or is it just ignoring Battle Spirit now? I genuinely can't tell.

The % amp you get for hitting opponents is a flat value of your HP, not your shield. Hitting 3 players with Radiant Ward in PVP is providing you an additional 13.5% of your Max HP as shield value. So instead of increasing your miserably pathetic 3.5k shield to 3.9k, it's actually buffing it to like 6k.

This actually works tremendously well in favor of a Stamplar when used in conjunction with Emp Sweeps major protection. Oh wait...

So close....Sun Shield becoming viable on stamplar was my big hope for the patch.

Stamplar literally cannot get a single bone thrown it's way. The second we get a skill working, we get some other skill nerfed that synergizes with it.

Didn't you read the patch notes though? This is intended to give stamplar more "offensive moments", and we don't need defense because we get that from Nova and Remembrance. I know the team is trying, but this change really doesn't inspire confidence that they understand their game.

Strider__Roshin · April 2019

Prutton wrote: »

Excaltic wrote: »

I posted this somewhere else, but this is a more suitable area for this:

Nightblade - Assassination passive (Hemorrhage)

Because of the recent nerfs, please remove the requirement of having an Assassination skill on your bar for this passive to be active. Assassination skills are really useless now (all of them), that's ok, that's why you nerf the game.

Just don't demand that players equip useless skills so they get a passive.

Not equipping Merciless resolve after the patch will result in:
- No Minor Berserk (8% Damage nerf)
- No 10% crit damage bonus (10% Damage nerf)

Total nerf: 18% less damage <-- That's way to high for a nerf

So again, please remove the assassination skill slot requirement for this passive!!

Killer's Blade, Incapacitating Strike...

Only killer's blade is worth slotting now, and only in PvE.

Teleport Strike is now worth using now though so there's that.

GrumpyDuckling · April 2019

I'm surprised that Eternal Guardian (magicka morph of Warden bear) got passed over in this update. The morph says that the bear respawns when it gets killed. That is useless in PVE now that pets can't die. I propose the following:

Step 1 - Move the minor berserk passive to both morphs of the bear ultimate. If you are going to force us to double-slot an ultimate, then at least give us a little more value there.

Step 2 - Move the sustain from netch to falcon's swiftness. Tanks would love to have the utility of extra speed while maintaining the sustain that they currently get from netch (without the need to slot two skills).

Step 3 - Replace netch with a permanent wolf summon that provides Major Brutality/Major Sorcery for being slotted. This move makes the skill line feel more like the player actually has animal companions, and offers a stamina option for those who like using pets.

Thanks.

Ragnarock41 · April 2019

katorga wrote: »

kaithuzar wrote: »

Class balance for Elsweyr PVP:
Stam necro > mag necro > stam warden > stam dk > mag dk > stam templar > mag sorc > stam nb > mag templar > stam sorc > mag warden > mag nb

I’m calling it now.

Explanation for Stam DK location on the list?

Its just general magblade psychology. StamDk OP cause they can survive the cookie cutter magblade combo, and ''muh reflect.'', which is gone next patch.

usmcjdking wrote: »

Corrosive Armor needs to be reworked for the sake of PVP and PVE.

Suggestion (only Corrosive Armor):
Reduce ultimate cost to 100.
Reduce duration to 6 seconds.

The skill is quite honestly the biggest cheese skill in dueling, sometimes accounting for a damage gain of over 30% for 11 seconds while crippling incoming damage. An increase to 12 seconds is absolutely ridiculous for a skill that already overperforms massively in PVP. The only answer to a corrosive'd DK is to simply run away for 12 seconds.

In PVE this skill is potent but too expensive. DK DPS is already hampered by the fact that it's source of Major Ward/Resolve is generally trash, and Stam DK is hit exceptionally hard by this. Much like Stamplar, Stam DK needs staying power, the ability to otherwise ignore mechanics and maintain damage on target through tough mechanics designed to force melee to disengage.

For Templar:
New Radiant Ward is super good. Perhaps increase the AOE check for targets to 8m for PVP's sake.

lol a nerf call to corrosive armor cause stamDK being good in 1v1 is apparently unacceptable. Corrosive armor costs A LOT, and if you can't see it coming and prepare a CC or counter ultimate the fault is on you.

Its very obvious when a sDK does not use ultimate for a long time he is saving for corrosive. While corrosive is up you can still block and dodge attacks, purge them, streak away, spam cloak, put mines throw other types of snares, roots, CC. Your major-minor protection and other sources of % mitigation will still work against corrosive.

At worst you can just pop a defensive ultimate that probably costs less than corrosive and survive it. Either way this game is NOT designed around dueling, so lets stop acting like it.

MJallday · April 2019

100k parses on necros? There goes any form of game balance

Ragnarock41 · April 2019

MJallday wrote: »

100k parses on necros? There goes any form of game balance

I'm pretty sure it will eat some nerfs before going live. Necro at the moment is overperforming heavily and they are aware of it.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2019

Xvorg wrote: »

Ok, I don't like the change to wings. The skill will be useless compared to RAT. DKs can still block projectiles and any smart player seeing a DK spamming wings now will use a channel or go melee. Projectiles are just a small potion of dmg skill and if there's still people who wants to use projectiles against a DK, is just because after 5 years they have never learnt to play the game (including all those who supported the change based on their immutable builds, except mageblaes who were *** from day 1 after Nerfmire). No more comments on that change, it is what it is and it is bad and useless.

On the other hand, stamDK needs some love, and the best thing you can do is to get rid of poison dmg skills. They don't add anything to the playing style of a class that relies on weapon skills to do dmg. As @Ragnarock41 mentioned, a rework of passives oriented to enchants (which also include posion dmg) would be much better than this poison crap.

Molten whip looks cool on a hybrid build by the way, the only problem is that, as all the Ardent Flame skills passives, it requires an ardent flame skill to make it usable, which is plainly wrong. Why DKs is the only class whose dmg passives benefit only skils in one line instead of the whole class skill? (I'm not counting WiR, which is really bad)

Why DKs is the only class whose dmg passives benefit only skils in one line instead of the whole class skill?

bruh animal companions and advanced species?

SippingPotions · April 2019

The change to merciless really hurts my mag nb, and in its current PTS state it is not worth using for PVP. Lotus fan and shade need some serious work with line of sight and elevation issues making both skills clunky, hard to use and not even worth slotting. I do like the change to fear and might actually slot in now in place of grim focus. That's like a sorc dropping frags off their bar for encase. Just sad.

Cinbri · April 2019

Here is some Templar feedback:

Overall it seems zos didn't done at all audited pass on templar skills to "bring them back in line" or standardize them. Another problem is that it seems combat team don't even have vision of how templar skills suppose to perform.
Prepare for bad English:

1. Breath of Life: Fixed an issue where the secondary heal granted from this ability was able to ignore the caster’s line of sight and target players behind them.
According to patchnotes bug that showed up I think in murkmire update should be finally fixed and small heal no longer ignore LoS but in addition zos "fixed" feature that small heal had 360 degree.
However on pts it messed hard:

^^ bug that supposed to be fixed of smaller heal ignoring LoS is still here!
However:

Instead of fixing LoS bug you actually "fixed", i.e. bugged intended mechanic of smaller heal to have 360°. So now small heal work same as main heal - only in 180°. Which is huge nerf to pve healers.
Incase combat team dont know - degree change was made in 3.0.5 and it wasn't bug, it was intended mechanic:

Dont try to claim that it is bug, especially since conal treatment in 3.0.5 small heal was nerfed for 33% in later patch, validating this 360 degree mechanic.
It also ignoring that when it goes to "cost-heal" Twilight Matriarch overperform BoL.

2. Rune Focus: revert change that you done to visual effect of major armor buffs provided by this skill - reverse it brightness. With new brightless effect it literally impossible to determine in combat if effect still on you without addon or looking back on your ground rune when there is lot of buffs and debuffs on your character. Overlap with character face is not important at all, if you want to update visual effects of it than just renew visual effects of ground rune, like those:

3. Reflective Light: there is still hole in identity conception of what this skill is, nearly same like previously Barrage had, prevent from achieve max effectiveness of skill: initial hit considered as AoE damage, but DoT part of skill considered as single target effect. And thus Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff buff initial hit of skill but don't buff dot part, while passive with fire staff don't buff initial hit but buff dot part:

^^ this bring problem that with this morph cant be fully buffed by either of staff types (Vampire Bane don't have this problem as it count as single target skill).
You cant make dot to count as AoE because it attached to target while not being ground-based and will break concept of how dots works.
In PvP game ignores that skill being "fake AoEs" and inherit it's effects like being dodgeable/cloackable/etc. and bring problem that initial hit counts as aoe by Evasion buff while in fact it being projectile that applied in 5m area.
Since you introduced "rulebreakers" how about make both components of skill to be counted as AoE so this morph will reliably being affected by Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff, while Vampire Bane is morphfully buffed by fire staff, but also take into account of it being "fake AoE" and exclude from Evasion.

4. Backlash: bug and concept hole:
A. First of all its bug of double mitigations is not fixed so let me describe it again:
Released damage is just % of all stored damage. Release damage should not be affected by any buffs/debuffs, to (according to 2.7.5 dev com patchnotes)"ensures that Backlash is not double penalized...since some of the damage it copies will likely be blocked or avoided by enemies seeking to minimize Backlash's final attack" It means that released damage should work as literally oblivion damage that have no counter because counter to Backlash burst damage is (according to same 2.7.5 patchnotes) "actively mitigate or avoid damage".
But it not work this way and all "damage taken" effects (protection buff/mistform) affect released damage and on CP PvP Ironclad+Hardy/Elem. Defender affect released damage and thus double mitigate Backlash damage:

^^^In combat against major protection buff it means all your stored damage will be already reduced by protection, and then final released damage will be reduced by protection again. Imagine get 10k backlash that will get 30% reduction...
On CP PvP it goes same by default of Red CP - all your stored damage will be affected by your Blue CP and enemy Red CP and then burst released damage wont be affected by your Blue CP but will be affected by enemy Red CP( that can easily being pushed to over 30+% reduction), i.e. CP will double-mitigate backlash damage.
On CP PvP against major protection it means that final released damage will get 30+% reduction from CP system alone and in addition 30% from major protection and even additional 8% of minor protection. Also skills like Mistform allowing to mitigate released damage too.
Fix this overkilling bug or just make damage into Oblivion type since it already supposed to be unmitigatable damage, i.e. inherit mechanic of oblivion damage. Only problem will be that thus it will ignore damage shields that is not desirable.

B. Backlash wasn't changed to store damage only caster. Because of it skill keeping small % on amount of stored damage, and damage cap that prevent it from being effective for pve/pvp dps. As damage cap and low store damage are all result of skill being capable to stacking its store damage and store damage from other sources beside caster.
This goes against main design of this skill because current implementation is being fully group-oriented skill as its store damage have lowest damage store when used solo but highest when used in group in addition to morphs effects already promoting group play by its morphs effects that affect either survivability or dps of allies.
And it completely goes against main design of this skill according to dev com of 2.7.5 patchnotes : "We want to see Backlash as a burst damage ability that you can use in solo PvE or PvP content"
^^ So if you want to solidify skills to what it suppose to be - change Backlash to store only damage of caster, without damage cap and increased store damage %, as it was pre-2.3.5 patch.

5. Jabs:
1. Inconsistence of its snare remained:
A. it wasn't treated to become undodgeable even despite Burning Light that works same was addressed (even here comment operate with erroneous basis - you cant dodge Jabs/Shards DoT/Explosive Charge/Sun Shield because its AoEs nor you can block Shards DoT because ground dots are unblockable). It also contradict rules of AoE - if you was hitted by AoE you got additional effects of this AoE.
B. This snare on last hit is wrong because it lead to loop: you need to apply snare that helps to beat jabs weaknesses of landing it but to land snare you need to beat jabs weaknesses to land.. This snare should be either removed or swaped to proc on 1st hit to break this futile loop.

2. Speed: As we know from devs: "All cast time and channeled abilities have 0.2 seconds after their cast is complete where you cannot cast another ability while the animations complete. This change makes Dark Exchange consistent with them. Adding an additional 0.2 seconds to the cast time of these abilities reduces the amount of resources they can generate when cast quickly in succession, and grants enemies more time to interrupt them."
So with removal of 0.2s post cooldown and reducing channel time for 0.1s jabs should save at least 0.3s time and able to land in 1s instead of current 1.3s.
However on pts it messed:

^^ when jabs used with weaving - it operate almost exactly same on pts as it was on live. So where is this promised improvement "to make them easier to weave"?

When used with light attacks skill seems retain 0.3 cooldown. However if use this skill in "rapid succession", i.e. spammed:

^^Skill acting like it should - to work within 1second without having 0.2+0.1s.
However it result of animation cutting its swing part of animation when skill is spammed:
That how it look on live:

And that how it works on pts:

^^So either zos messed with change or it was made to affect gameplay when you don't use light attacks. I.e get 0.3s faster jabs aoe damage but loosing damage of light attacks and Empower buff..
Default animation should work same as it look on pts when you spam skill - only 4 ticks of jab without swing animation in the beginning to make skill perform in 1.0s not just like 1.1s with slightly speeded animation.

3. Wasn't addressed again that Jabs is "fake AoE": it single target potion is inherit abilities of fake aoes that previously were excluded from being affected by Evasion buff. However just exclude it from evasion is harder to do for jabs because it's single target portion is just % of channel which is dealing proper aoe damage. Excluding single target portion from being counted as aoe will create problem that Reflective Light has now - Ancient Knowledge will no longer provide full buff to skill.
However this update brought solution - Given that Jabs is unique combination of single target spammable skill attached to aoe portion and given that this aoe portion is very low hitting DoT - it could be made into being templar "rulebreaker ability" to be counted as AoE but no longer being affected by aoe mitigation sets or Evasion buffs.

6. Dark Flare: "Reduced the cast time from this ability and the Dark Flare morph to 1 second from 1.1 seconds. Increased the travel speed to match other projectiles.Reduced the damage by approximately 37% to make up for the fact that it can be cast more frequently."
1. How it work on pts:

Where is this improved frequency of weaved casts that validate 37% damage nerf? It take same time to land skill with weaving.

2. Travel speed - so it supposed to be equalized with Snipe. However it not, and landing Flare on its max range will be slower than landing Snipe from its far superior range.

3. Flare was standardized with Snipe in term of mechanic, okay lets ignore that Snipe have far superior range that allowing it to be spammable casttime ability coz less risk, unlike Flare that has range equal to other abilities and thus it not effective spammable channel because of risk to be dead from enemy projectiles/gap-closers when your channel complete. Than now do 2nd level of audit and make it as instant cast ability. This update supposed to audit class abilities however it was left unnoticed that all class abilities that apply aoe major defile are instant cast abilities - Corrupted Pollen that is ground debuff with aoe heal and instant cast or Blighted Bones with large aoe damage, aoe defile but in return having delayed effect for 2.5sec.
Another reason is because this morph was treated differently than other morph - Barrage was made from cast time ability into instant cast ability with lower damage. Also Empower bonus is outdate for Flare coz no longer work to empower skill itself but only light attacks, however cast time skill is barely benefit from weaving light attacks even with changes of this update.
In addition only weapon skill that will have major defile now is Reverberating Bash which is also instant ability.
In addition its aoe major defile was made dodgeable in summerset and thus reliability of effect decreased drastically.
To make skill operate similarly to within morphs choice and through comparable skill Dark Flare should become instant cast ability. Reduce it damage to make it into low damage spammable ability with aoe major defile; or remove Empower remove damage and change it to dot to operate as offensive version of Sun Fire.
This channel don't have strength of Snipe - its range and thus it used for debuff not for damage mostly. And having channel spammable (Jabs)+casttime debuff is very clunky and leaving user without defense for too long period. Also it not possible to kill opponent by just spamming spammable ability without additional dots/burst attacks and templar arsenal very limited in offense aspect. Making Dark Flare as instant will help a lot as enemy wont be able to mitigate Jabs channel by single healing over time effect.

7. Eclipse: another skill that showed zos weird vision for templar because of inconsistence of changes.
A. It got straight 25% damage nerf out of nowhere, that is contradict goals that were announced in article: "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.". There is no change nerf in patchnotes that would be pure nerf. Every nerfed skill got compensation in other forms... beside Eclipse. Why was it Eclipse that treated differently than any of changes this patch?
B. Damage nerf wasn't announced by dev team for reason of it. But judging from patch theme of equalizing similar abilities and using bit of logic it seems the answer is: to equalize its damage with similar skills:

How it even possible to compare self-buffs to breakable single target CC?! Eclipse cost more, having 0.250 longer cooldown than scales and none of it was addressed by this standardization.
A. Either really address skill to comparable skills of other classes by reduce cooldown to 0.5 at least or making skill back to unbreakable/add root for duration of skill.
B. Or if you compare it to seĺf-buff - change it to be such: self-buff for 6sec with additional effects. It will be templar proactive anti-range defense. It is best choice because of how messed cc rule of current eclipse - it nor hard cc nor soft cc, but have weaknesses of both.
4. Eclipse as CC mechanic wasn't checked once again and keep inconsistent, so we have CC that not disable enemy and grant immunity on its duration, after expire, after cleanse. And it became even more inconsistent with new mechanic of Immobilizations- If purging this CC leading to same effect as waiting for its expire - CC immunity, than why does same rule don't apply for new mechanic of Immobilizations? - Waiting of root expire grant immunity to root but purging roots doesn't grant immunity. Either adjust new immobilization rule to grant immunity on purge or adjust eclipse rule to not grant immunity to cc by purging eclipse.

5. Another example of Eclipse disfunction is fixing interaction with Spiked Armor. Like BoL its again treat intended mechanic as bug only reason of doing it is because whine of dks that they uncapable to completely ignore eclipse by waiting for it to expire just like rest classes. So this "fix" literally to keep it in line of being easily counterable mechanic that enemy don't even need to break..
6. Both morphs problems weren't addressed:
A. Total Dark - after sķill got cooldown on proc its damage was adjusted for 67% to compensate however feature of morph is making its heal attached to same cooldown but potency of heal wasn't addressed, that was huger oversight.
B. Unstable Core - interaction of magnetic bomb with passive wasn't adjusted for some reason:

Even tho other skills got huge damage buffs/nerf with changing durations for 0.200sec. Keeping same damage with adding 2sec delay is overkill and like 40% damage reduction to damage. It should either work as Sun Fire - each second buff damage; or swap damage for other aggressive effect. Such effect suppose to have base duration effect of 4sec, such offensive debuff is Defile. Also taking into account that such effect can be achieved only per 7-13sec, i.e. less than 40% uptime and fact that Dark Flare already have major defile effect it could become Heal Absorption with visual effect from Malatar.

8. Charge:
A. Finally good change to Toppling Charge that have to be done long ago but it mostly pointless because of minimal range restriction. I.e. we have to use gap-closer to go into melee range and then being punished for going to melee range <--- some inconsistence here.
Also currently Templar Charge goes against both mechanics of class charges and weapon line charges: all class charges are act like teleports and thus don't have minimal range and can be casted when rooted in additional effects of each unique charge. While weapon charges have minimal range also have effects that benefit on distance travaled to enemy and thus having minimal range ensures that those effects will be applied. <--- Templar Charge don't have any of specifics of those as it don't act like teleport, cant be casted when rooted and also don't have travel bonus.
Couple ideas of fixing it:
1. Grant this skill to apply minor speedbuff on you when this skill is on bar. This would have to increase gap between you and enemy to cast charge.
2. There is visual bug with Dragonleap now where it skip jump animation and look like teleportation:

So, implement it to templar charge by taking solar jump of npc and cut animations to be shiny teleport too. because unlike nb gap-closer templar charge is not "thematically satisfying".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wql81mo8hk

There is also another gap-closer that don't have minimal range, works as teleport and can be recolored to yellow colors:

Just change so when you activate charge weapon in your hand transform into aedric spear like Jabs/Shards doing.

B. Explosive Charge: this skill still don't work against Cloak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvkqUsZOu3Y
In addition now it have visual artifact of desynced vertical glow effect of spear after cast is completed:

9. Ritual of Retribution - fixing bug is good but how about remove dot from it. Name of skill tree - Restoring Light imply that it fully based on "holy" restoring effect whether healing, purging, restoring resources, protecting. Ritual of Retribution ruining this theme by removing its sacred meaning. It was said by zos that splitting skill lines on DD/Tank/Healing is working, and even tho Templars don't fully follow this split they already can follow this new effective split of skill lines as at least one of lines - Restoring Light, is focused on healing role. We already have 2 skill lines that are fully offensive with defensive capability and simply don't need another damage skill that ruining formula of splitting skill lines for different stuff.
That's why RoR should loose this aoe dot and gain some other effect in exchange.
Here is some ideas:
1. Instead of dot it grant 2sec of root immunity - this morph will become less overall healing as it have twice less hot duration, less tankabiltiy as it have 2 less purges but it will grant mobility.
2. Old idea that sadly was implemented into necro skill

- Cut duration of HoT twice (from 12 to 6sec) but increase strength of HoT for 2-3 times - with such change morph will be more "front-loaded" version and grant strong but short HoT. It will make skill more mobile and will fit with requrement to spam purge more often coz less purged effects.
3. Make it same as previous but more caster-oriented like other morph by granting effect that was previously removed from Ritual of Rebirth - make HoT to heal caster 3 times more.

10. Rite of Passage - this ultimate wasn't adjusted since 2015 year(without counting 2017 year and Morrowind update that forced Remembrance to be nerfed coz it old mechanic of granting major buff in 20m area). Not adjusting it in this update going against main goal of this update "to bring abilities back in line with the current state of the game and create a solid foundation of standards for the future."
In patch 1.2.3, i.e. in 2014 year ult changed to grant CC immunity while channel because everyone is bashing it and cancel channeled healing but in exchange it was stated to grant root on caster.
in 2015 year was attempt to adjust ult to changed pace of combat - in patch 1.6.5: radius of this ability increased to 20 meters from 12 meters because battles became more mobile but root was remained.
Much later - In 2016 in patch 2.6.4, happened audit of channel ultimate - "Soul Strike: This ability can no longer can be purged or interrupted, but can now be blocked. You will now be immune to CC while channeling this ability."
Soul Assault was treated to grant cc immunity to caster simply because CC enemy means cancelling ult and according to new rules ultimates should "feel strong" (like Meteor being no longer reflectable), so you should be capable to cancel channeled ult so easy. It means that it was made as rule that channel ultimate should grant immunity to CC to be capable of effectively channel its effect just by per se. It means that old Rite of Passage mechanic of being immune to CC while channel but being rooted in exchange is no longer consistent to new game rules. Yet this oversight was ignored.
In patch 3.3.0 it was stated that according to renewed again rules it still "Ultimate abilities (Soul Strike, Rite of Passage, etc.), and Heavy Attacks are still exceptions to this rule and cannot be interrupted." Yet it wasn't addressed again that RoP have root that originally validated by granting CC immunity during channel.
Later this formula was applied to new ult Rapid Fire in 4.0.5 patch - "Rapid Fire: This ability and the Toxic Barrage morph now grant you crowd control immunity while you are channeling them.
Developer Comments: This puts these abilities more in line with the Soul Strike ability, which provides similar protections. We don’t want players to activate an Ultimate and have it easily and immediately negated."
"All other ults already received treatment of fast pace of combat": 1. in patch 4.0.5: "Bolstering Darkness: This morph now causes the Major Protection buff to remain on you even after leaving the area. The buff will persist for the duration of the ability." making it into ground ult with mobile buff 2. In same patch "Soul Siphon: Increased the radius of the heal applied by this morph to 28 meters from 15 seconds." making it while being mobile ult also have larger radius of heal than Rite of Passage. 3. in patch 3.2.5: "Shifting Standard: This morph now increases the duration of the standard to 25 seconds, and the standard can be shifted an unlimited amount of times." making it into semi-portable ultimate.
^^^ According to all this history lesson Rite of Passage should be finally audited as other ults already were and current mechanic of rooting by Rite of Passage is not consistent and thus should be removed. Inexchange of granted mobility radius of healing should be standardized back to 1.6.5 where it was 12 meters and then to current standard - 10 meters for Rite of Passage and Practiced Incantation. so it will look smth like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPCu2PI-ZUM

Remembrance cant get same treatment coz in patch 3.0.5 it was changed to loose its pure group utility and become more self-oriented but problem is that it retained it pure group-oriented functionality, and result it self-survivability tool - major protection negatively interfere with group utility of skill - channeling heal; and as result making Practiced Incantation more beneficial morph.
^^Taking this into account in addition that magplars (and this update stamplars too) don't have self-survivability ult - Remembrance could become as ult that no longer destroy mobility of caster by channeled heal but: (A: able to heal only 1 target and no longer get cc immunity and get 10sec of major protection only for caster); (B: no longer grant major protection but grant cc immunity for 5sec). Literally what Light Champion was once. (you know it is Templars who are Champions of Light, not sneaky nightblades). Making morphs of this ult as different as Honor the dead/Breath of Life, Sollar Barrage/DArk Flare, etc. with fully different functionality.
(^^Incase of standardize Practiced Incanation to how Remembrance could work - it could be instead of being mobile channel it could be same non-channel single-target heal but as morph change it would heal 2 targets at a time to keep it as group utility skill.)

techprince · April 2019

Surprise Attack should not debuff the target at all. Move that debuff to Grim Focus.

Strider__Roshin · April 2019

techprince wrote: »

Surprise Attack should not debuff the target at all. Move that debuff to Grim Focus.

It's already pretty useless and you want to make it more so? Yeah something tells me you don't care about class balance.

Nerftheforums · April 2019

Cinbri wrote: »

Here is some Templar feedback:
Overall it seems zos didn't done at all audited pass on templar skills to "bring them back in line" or standardize them. Another problem is that it seems combat team don't even have vision of how templar skills suppose to perform.
Prepare for bad English:

1. Breath of Life: Fixed an issue where the secondary heal granted from this ability was able to ignore the caster’s line of sight and target players behind them.
According to patchnotes bug that showed up I think in murkmire update should be finally fixed and small heal no longer ignore LoS but in addition zos "fixed" feature that small heal had 360 degree.
However on pts it messed hard:

^^ bug that supposed to be fixed of smaller heal ignoring LoS is still here!
However:

Instead of fixing LoS bug you actually "fixed", i.e. bugged intended mechanic of smaller heal to have 360°. So now small heal work same as main heal - only in 180°. Which is huge nerf to pve healers.
Incase combat team dont know - degree change was made in 3.0.5 and it wasn't bug, it was intended mechanic:

Dont try to claim that it is bug, especially since conal treatment in 3.0.5 small heal was nerfed for 33% in later patch, validating this 360 degree mechanic.
It also ignoring that when it goes to "cost-heal" Twilight Matriarch overperform BoL.

2. Rune Focus: revert change that you done to visual effect of major armor buffs provided by this skill - reverse it brightness. With new brightless effect it literally impossible to determine in combat if effect still on you without addon or looking back on your ground rune when there is lot of buffs and debuffs on your character. Overlap with character face is not important at all, if you want to update visual effects of it than just renew visual effects of ground rune, like those:

3. Reflective Light: there is still hole in identity conception of what this skill is, nearly same like previously Barrage had, prevent from achieve max effectiveness of skill: initial hit considered as AoE damage, but DoT part of skill considered as single target effect. And thus Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff buff initial hit of skill but don't buff dot part, while passive with fire staff don't buff initial hit but buff dot part:

^^ this bring problem that with this morph cant be fully buffed by either of staff types (Vampire Bane don't have this problem as it count as single target skill).
You cant make dot to count as AoE because it attached to target while not being ground-based and will break concept of how dots works.
In PvP game ignores that skill being "fake AoEs" and inherit it's effects like being dodgeable/cloackable/etc. and bring problem that initial hit counts as aoe by Evasion buff while in fact it being projectile that applied in 5m area.
Since you introduced "rulebreakers" how about make both components of skill to be counted as AoE so this morph will reliably being affected by Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff, while Vampire Bane is morphfully buffed by fire staff, but also take into account of it being "fake AoE" and exclude from Evasion.

4. Backlash: bug and concept hole:
A. First of all its bug of double mitigations is not fixed so let me describe it again:
Released damage is just % of all stored damage. Release damage should not be affected by any buffs/debuffs, to (according to 2.7.5 dev com patchnotes)"ensures that Backlash is not double penalized...since some of the damage it copies will likely be blocked or avoided by enemies seeking to minimize Backlash's final attack" It means that released damage should work as literally oblivion damage that have no counter because counter to Backlash burst damage is (according to same 2.7.5 patchnotes) "actively mitigate or avoid damage".
But it not work this way and all "damage taken" effects (protection buff/mistform) affect released damage and on CP PvP Ironclad+Hardy/Elem. Defender affect released damage and thus double mitigate Backlash damage:
^^^In combat against major protection buff it means all your stored damage will be already reduced by protection, and then final released damage will be reduced by protection again. Imagine get 10k backlash that will get 30% reduction...
On CP PvP it goes same by default of Red CP - all your stored damage will be affected by your Blue CP and enemy Red CP and then burst released damage wont be affected by your Blue CP but will be affected by enemy Red CP( that can easily being pushed to over 30+% reduction), i.e. CP will double-mitigate backlash damage.
On CP PvP against major protection it means that final released damage will get 30+% reduction from CP system alone and in addition 30% from major protection and even additional 8% of minor protection. Also skills like Mistform allowing to mitigate released damage too.
Fix this overkilling bug or just make damage into Oblivion type since it already supposed to be unmitigatable damage, i.e. inherit mechanic of oblivion damage. Only problem will be that thus it will ignore damage shields that is not desirable.

B. Backlash wasn't changed to store damage only caster. Because of it skill keeping small % on amount of stored damage, and damage cap that prevent it from being effective for pve/pvp dps. As damage cap and low store damage are all result of skill being capable to stacking its store damage and store damage from other sources beside caster.
This goes against main design of this skill because current implementation is being fully group-oriented skill as its store damage have lowest damage store when used solo but highest when used in group in addition to morphs effects already promoting group play by its morphs effects that affect either survivability or dps of allies.
And it completely goes against main design of this skill according to dev com of 2.7.5 patchnotes : "We want to see Backlash as a burst damage ability that you can use in solo PvE or PvP content"
^^ So if you want to solidify skills to what it suppose to be - change Backlash to store only damage of caster, without damage cap and increased store damage %, as it was pre-2.3.5 patch.

5. Jabs:
1. Inconsistence of its snare remained:
A. it wasn't treated to become undodgeable even despite Burning Light that works same was addressed (even here comment operate with erroneous basis - you cant dodge Jabs/Shards DoT/Explosive Charge/Sun Shield because its AoEs nor you can block Shards DoT because ground dots are unblockable). It also contradict rules of AoE - if you was hitted by AoE you got additional effects of this AoE.
B. This snare on last hit is wrong because it lead to loop: you need to apply snare that helps to beat jabs weaknesses of landing it but to land snare you need to beat jabs weaknesses to land.. This snare should be either removed or swaped to proc on 1st hit to break this futile loop.

2. Speed: As we know from devs: "All cast time and channeled abilities have 0.2 seconds after their cast is complete where you cannot cast another ability while the animations complete. This change makes Dark Exchange consistent with them. Adding an additional 0.2 seconds to the cast time of these abilities reduces the amount of resources they can generate when cast quickly in succession, and grants enemies more time to interrupt them."
So with removal of 0.2s post cooldown and reducing channel time for 0.1s jabs should save at least 0.3s time and able to land in 1s instead of current 1.3s.
However on pts it messed:

^^ when jabs used with weaving - it operate almost exactly same on pts as it was on live. So where is this promised improvement "to make them easier to weave"?

When used with light attacks skill seems retain 0.3 cooldown. However if use this skill in "rapid succession", i.e. spammed:

^^Skill acting like it should - to work within 1second without having 0.2+0.1s.
However it result of animation cutting its swing part of animation when skill is spammed:
That how it look on live:

And that how it works on pts:

^^So either zos messed with change or it was made to affect gameplay when you don't use light attacks. I.e get 0.3s faster jabs aoe damage but loosing damage of light attacks and Empower buff..
Default animation should work same as it look on pts when you spam skill - only 4 ticks of jab without swing animation in the beginning to make skill perform in 1.0s not just like 1.1s with slightly speeded animation.

3. Wasn't addressed again that Jabs is "fake AoE": it single target potion is inherit abilities of fake aoes that previously were excluded from being affected by Evasion buff. However just exclude it from evasion is harder to do for jabs because it's single target portion is just % of channel which is dealing proper aoe damage. Excluding single target portion from being counted as aoe will create problem that Reflective Light has now - Ancient Knowledge will no longer provide full buff to skill.
However this update brought solution - Given that Jabs is unique combination of single target spammable skill attached to aoe portion and given that this aoe portion is very low hitting DoT - it could be made into being templar "rulebreaker ability" to be counted as AoE but no longer being affected by aoe mitigation sets or Evasion buffs.

6. Dark Flare: "Reduced the cast time from this ability and the Dark Flare morph to 1 second from 1.1 seconds. Increased the travel speed to match other projectiles.Reduced the damage by approximately 37% to make up for the fact that it can be cast more frequently."
1. How it work on pts:

Where is this improved frequency of weaved casts that validate 37% damage nerf? It take same time to land skill with weaving.

2. Travel speed - so it supposed to be equalized with Snipe. However it not, and landing Flare on its max range will be slower than landing Snipe from its far superior range.

3. Flare was standardized with Snipe in term of mechanic, okay lets ignore that Snipe have far superior range that allowing it to be spammable casttime ability coz less risk, unlike Flare that has range equal to other abilities and thus it not effective spammable channel because of risk to be dead from enemy projectiles/gap-closers when your channel complete. Than now do 2nd level of audit and make it as instant cast ability. This update supposed to audit class abilities however it was left unnoticed that all class abilities that apply aoe major defile are instant cast abilities - Corrupted Pollen that is ground debuff with aoe heal and instant cast or Blighted Bones with large aoe damage, aoe defile but in return having delayed effect for 2.5sec.
Another reason is because this morph was treated differently than other morph - Barrage was made from cast time ability into instant cast ability with lower damage. Also Empower bonus is outdate for Flare coz no longer work to empower skill itself but only light attacks, however cast time skill is barely benefit from weaving light attacks even with changes of this update.
In addition only weapon skill that will have major defile now is Reverberating Bash which is also instant ability.
In addition its aoe major defile was made dodgeable in summerset and thus reliability of effect decreased drastically.
To make skill operate similarly to within morphs choice and through comparable skill Dark Flare should become instant cast ability. Reduce it damage to make it into low damage spammable ability with aoe major defile; or remove Empower remove damage and change it to dot to operate as offensive version of Sun Fire.
This channel don't have strength of Snipe - its range and thus it used for debuff not for damage mostly. And having channel spammable (Jabs)+casttime debuff is very clunky and leaving user without defense for too long period. Also it not possible to kill opponent by just spamming spammable ability without additional dots/burst attacks and templar arsenal very limited in offense aspect. Making Dark Flare as instant will help a lot as enemy wont be able to mitigate Jabs channel by single healing over time effect.

7. Eclipse: another skill that showed zos weird vision for templar because of inconsistence of changes.
A. It got straight 25% damage nerf out of nowhere, that is contradict goals that were announced in article: "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.". There is no change nerf in patchnotes that would be pure nerf. Every nerfed skill got compensation in other forms... beside Eclipse. Why was it Eclipse that treated differently than any of changes this patch?
B. Damage nerf wasn't announced by dev team for reason of it. But judging from patch theme of equalizing similar abilities and using bit of logic it seems the answer is: to equalize its damage with similar skills:

How it even possible to compare self-buffs to breakable single target CC?! Eclipse cost more, having 0.250 longer cooldown than scales and none of it was addressed by this standardization.
A. Either really address skill to comparable skills of other classes by reduce cooldown to 0.5 at least or making skill back to unbreakable/add root for duration of skill.
B. Or if you compare it to seĺf-buff - change it to be such: self-buff for 6sec with additional effects. It will be templar proactive anti-range defense. It is best choice because of how messed cc rule of current eclipse - it nor hard cc nor soft cc, but have weaknesses of both.
4. Eclipse as CC mechanic wasn't checked once again and keep inconsistent, so we have CC that not disable enemy and grant immunity on its duration, after expire, after cleanse. And it became even more inconsistent with new mechanic of Immobilizations- If purging this CC leading to same effect as waiting for its expire - CC immunity, than why does same rule don't apply for new mechanic of Immobilizations? - Waiting of root expire grant immunity to root but purging roots doesn't grant immunity. Either adjust new immobilization rule to grant immunity on purge or adjust eclipse rule to not grant immunity to cc by purging eclipse.

5. Another example of Eclipse disfunction is fixing interaction with Spiked Armor. Like BoL its again treat intended mechanic as bug only reason of doing it is because whine of dks that they uncapable to completely ignore eclipse by waiting for it to expire just like rest classes. So this "fix" literally to keep it in line of being easily counterable mechanic that enemy don't even need to break..
6. Both morphs problems weren't addressed:
A. Total Dark - after sķill got cooldown on proc its damage was adjusted for 67% to compensate however feature of morph is making its heal attached to same cooldown but potency of heal wasn't addressed, that was huger oversight.
B. Unstable Core - interaction of magnetic bomb with passive wasn't adjusted for some reason:

Even tho other skills got huge damage buffs/nerf with changing durations for 0.200sec. Keeping same damage with adding 2sec delay is overkill and like 40% damage reduction to damage. It should either work as Sun Fire - each second buff damage; or swap damage for other aggressive effect. Such effect suppose to have base duration effect of 4sec, such offensive debuff is Defile. Also taking into account that such effect can be achieved only per 7-13sec, i.e. less than 40% uptime and fact that Dark Flare already have major defile effect it could become Heal Absorption with visual effect from Malatar.

8. Charge:
A. Finally good change to Toppling Charge that have to be done long ago but it mostly pointless because of minimal range restriction. I.e. we have to use gap-closer to go into melee range and then being punished for going to melee range <--- some inconsistence here.
Also currently Templar Charge goes against both mechanics of class charges and weapon line charges: all class charges are act like teleports and thus don't have minimal range and can be casted when rooted in additional effects of each unique charge. While weapon charges have minimal range also have effects that benefit on distance travaled to enemy and thus having minimal range ensures that those effects will be applied. <--- Templar Charge don't have any of specifics of those as it don't act like teleport, cant be casted when rooted and also don't have travel bonus.
Couple ideas of fixing it:
1. Grant this skill to apply minor speedbuff on you when this skill is on bar. This would have to increase gap between you and enemy to cast charge.
2. There is visual bug with Dragonleap now where it skip jump animation and look like teleportation:

So, implement it to templar charge by taking solar jump of npc and cut animations to be shiny teleport too. because unlike nb gap-closer templar charge is not "thematically satisfying".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wql81mo8hk
There is also another gap-closer that don't have minimal range, works as teleport and can be recolored to yellow colors:

Just change so when you activate charge weapon in your hand transform into aedric spear like Jabs/Shards doing.

B. Explosive Charge: this skill still don't work against Cloak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvkqUsZOu3Y
In addition now it have visual artifact of desynced vertical glow effect of spear after cast is completed:

9. Ritual of Retribution - fixing bug is good but how about remove dot from it. Name of skill tree - Restoring Light imply that it fully based on "holy" restoring effect whether healing, purging, restoring resources, protecting. Ritual of Retribution ruining this theme by removing its sacred meaning. It was said by zos that splitting skill lines on DD/Tank/Healing is working, and even tho Templars don't fully follow this split they already can follow this new effective split of skill lines as at least one of lines - Restoring Light, is focused on healing role. We already have 2 skill lines that are fully offensive with defensive capability and simply don't need another damage skill that ruining formula of splitting skill lines for different stuff.
That's why RoR should loose this aoe dot and gain some other effect in exchange.
Here is some ideas:
1. Instead of dot it grant 2sec of root immunity - this morph will become less overall healing as it have twice less hot duration, less tankabiltiy as it have 2 less purges but it will grant mobility.
2. Old idea that sadly was implemented into necro skill - Cut duration of HoT twice (from 12 to 6sec) but increase strength of HoT for 2-3 times - with such change morph will be more "front-loaded" version and grant strong but short HoT. It will make skill more mobile and will fit with requrement to spam purge more often coz less purged effects.
3. Make it same as previous but more caster-oriented like other morph by granting effect that was previously removed from Ritual of Rebirth - make HoT to heal caster 3 times more.

10. Rite of Passage - this ultimate wasn't adjusted since 2015 year(without counting 2017 year and Morrowind update that forced Remembrance to be nerfed coz it old mechanic of granting major buff in 20m area). Not adjusting it in this update going against main goal of this update "to bring abilities back in line with the current state of the game and create a solid foundation of standards for the future."
In patch 1.2.3, i.e. in 2014 year ult changed to grant CC immunity while channel because everyone is bashing it and cancel channeled healing but in exchange it was stated to grant root on caster.
in 2015 year was attempt to adjust ult to changed pace of combat - in patch 1.6.5: radius of this ability increased to 20 meters from 12 meters because battles became more mobile but root was remained.
Much later - In 2016 in patch 2.6.4, happened audit of channel ultimate - "Soul Strike: This ability can no longer can be purged or interrupted, but can now be blocked. You will now be immune to CC while channeling this ability."
Soul Assault was treated to grant cc immunity to caster simply because CC enemy means cancelling ult and according to new rules ultimates should "feel strong" (like Meteor being no longer reflectable), so you should be capable to cancel channeled ult so easy. It means that it was made as rule that channel ultimate should grant immunity to CC to be capable of effectively channel its effect just by per se. It means that old Rite of Passage mechanic of being immune to CC while channel but being rooted in exchange is no longer consistent to new game rules. Yet this oversight was ignored.
In patch 3.3.0 it was stated that according to renewed again rules it still "Ultimate abilities (Soul Strike, Rite of Passage, etc.), and Heavy Attacks are still exceptions to this rule and cannot be interrupted." Yet it wasn't addressed again that RoP have root that originally validated by granting CC immunity during channel.
Later this formula was applied to new ult Rapid Fire in 4.0.5 patch - "Rapid Fire: This ability and the Toxic Barrage morph now grant you crowd control immunity while you are channeling them.
Developer Comments: This puts these abilities more in line with the Soul Strike ability, which provides similar protections. We don’t want players to activate an Ultimate and have it easily and immediately negated."
"All other ults already received treatment of fast pace of combat": 1. in patch 4.0.5: "Bolstering Darkness: This morph now causes the Major Protection buff to remain on you even after leaving the area. The buff will persist for the duration of the ability." making it into ground ult with mobile buff 2. In same patch "Soul Siphon: Increased the radius of the heal applied by this morph to 28 meters from 15 seconds." making it while being mobile ult also have larger radius of heal than Rite of Passage. 3. in patch 3.2.5: "Shifting Standard: This morph now increases the duration of the standard to 25 seconds, and the standard can be shifted an unlimited amount of times." making it into semi-portable ultimate.
^^^ According to all this history lesson Rite of Passage should be finally audited as other ults already were and current mechanic of rooting by Rite of Passage is not consistent and thus should be removed. Inexchange of granted mobility radius of healing should be standardized back to 1.6.5 where it was 12 meters and then to current standard - 10 meters for Rite of Passage and Practiced Incantation. so it will look smth like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPCu2PI-ZUM
Remembrance cant get same treatment coz in patch 3.0.5 it was changed to loose its pure group utility and become more self-oriented but problem is that it retained it pure group-oriented functionality, and result it self-survivability tool - major protection negatively interfere with group utility of skill - channeling heal; and as result making Practiced Incantation more beneficial morph.
^^Taking this into account in addition that magplars (and this update stamplars too) don't have self-survivability ult - Remembrance could become as ult that no longer destroy mobility of caster by channeled heal but: (A: able to heal only 1 target and no longer get cc immunity and get 10sec of major protection only for caster); (B: no longer grant major protection but grant cc immunity for 5sec). Literally what Light Champion was once. (you know it is Templars who are Champions of Light, not sneaky nightblades). Making morphs of this ult as different as Honor the dead/Breath of Life, Sollar Barrage/DArk Flare, etc. with fully different functionality.
(^^Incase of standardize Practiced Incanation to how Remembrance could work - it could be instead of being mobile channel it could be same non-channel single-target heal but as morph change it would heal 2 targets at a time to keep it as group utility skill.)

This, is the best feedback I ever read on these forums since 3 years. Amazing, well done, it was a pleasure to read.

Don't feel bad when zos will totally ignore it and PLEASE open a thread of your own for this. At least to give it some more visibility to the community.

templesus · April 2019

Cinbri wrote: »

Here is some Templar feedback:
Overall it seems zos didn't done at all audited pass on templar skills to "bring them back in line" or standardize them. Another problem is that it seems combat team don't even have vision of how templar skills suppose to perform.
Prepare for bad English:

1. Breath of Life: Fixed an issue where the secondary heal granted from this ability was able to ignore the caster’s line of sight and target players behind them.
According to patchnotes bug that showed up I think in murkmire update should be finally fixed and small heal no longer ignore LoS but in addition zos "fixed" feature that small heal had 360 degree.
However on pts it messed hard:

^^ bug that supposed to be fixed of smaller heal ignoring LoS is still here!
However:

Instead of fixing LoS bug you actually "fixed", i.e. bugged intended mechanic of smaller heal to have 360°. So now small heal work same as main heal - only in 180°. Which is huge nerf to pve healers.
Incase combat team dont know - degree change was made in 3.0.5 and it wasn't bug, it was intended mechanic:

Dont try to claim that it is bug, especially since conal treatment in 3.0.5 small heal was nerfed for 33% in later patch, validating this 360 degree mechanic.
It also ignoring that when it goes to "cost-heal" Twilight Matriarch overperform BoL.

2. Rune Focus: revert change that you done to visual effect of major armor buffs provided by this skill - reverse it brightness. With new brightless effect it literally impossible to determine in combat if effect still on you without addon or looking back on your ground rune when there is lot of buffs and debuffs on your character. Overlap with character face is not important at all, if you want to update visual effects of it than just renew visual effects of ground rune, like those:

3. Reflective Light: there is still hole in identity conception of what this skill is, nearly same like previously Barrage had, prevent from achieve max effectiveness of skill: initial hit considered as AoE damage, but DoT part of skill considered as single target effect. And thus Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff buff initial hit of skill but don't buff dot part, while passive with fire staff don't buff initial hit but buff dot part:

^^ this bring problem that with this morph cant be fully buffed by either of staff types (Vampire Bane don't have this problem as it count as single target skill).
You cant make dot to count as AoE because it attached to target while not being ground-based and will break concept of how dots works.
In PvP game ignores that skill being "fake AoEs" and inherit it's effects like being dodgeable/cloackable/etc. and bring problem that initial hit counts as aoe by Evasion buff while in fact it being projectile that applied in 5m area.
Since you introduced "rulebreakers" how about make both components of skill to be counted as AoE so this morph will reliably being affected by Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff, while Vampire Bane is morphfully buffed by fire staff, but also take into account of it being "fake AoE" and exclude from Evasion.

4. Backlash: bug and concept hole:
A. First of all its bug of double mitigations is not fixed so let me describe it again:
Released damage is just % of all stored damage. Release damage should not be affected by any buffs/debuffs, to (according to 2.7.5 dev com patchnotes)"ensures that Backlash is not double penalized...since some of the damage it copies will likely be blocked or avoided by enemies seeking to minimize Backlash's final attack" It means that released damage should work as literally oblivion damage that have no counter because counter to Backlash burst damage is (according to same 2.7.5 patchnotes) "actively mitigate or avoid damage".
But it not work this way and all "damage taken" effects (protection buff/mistform) affect released damage and on CP PvP Ironclad+Hardy/Elem. Defender affect released damage and thus double mitigate Backlash damage:
^^^In combat against major protection buff it means all your stored damage will be already reduced by protection, and then final released damage will be reduced by protection again. Imagine get 10k backlash that will get 30% reduction...
On CP PvP it goes same by default of Red CP - all your stored damage will be affected by your Blue CP and enemy Red CP and then burst released damage wont be affected by your Blue CP but will be affected by enemy Red CP( that can easily being pushed to over 30+% reduction), i.e. CP will double-mitigate backlash damage.
On CP PvP against major protection it means that final released damage will get 30+% reduction from CP system alone and in addition 30% from major protection and even additional 8% of minor protection. Also skills like Mistform allowing to mitigate released damage too.
Fix this overkilling bug or just make damage into Oblivion type since it already supposed to be unmitigatable damage, i.e. inherit mechanic of oblivion damage. Only problem will be that thus it will ignore damage shields that is not desirable.

B. Backlash wasn't changed to store damage only caster. Because of it skill keeping small % on amount of stored damage, and damage cap that prevent it from being effective for pve/pvp dps. As damage cap and low store damage are all result of skill being capable to stacking its store damage and store damage from other sources beside caster.
This goes against main design of this skill because current implementation is being fully group-oriented skill as its store damage have lowest damage store when used solo but highest when used in group in addition to morphs effects already promoting group play by its morphs effects that affect either survivability or dps of allies.
And it completely goes against main design of this skill according to dev com of 2.7.5 patchnotes : "We want to see Backlash as a burst damage ability that you can use in solo PvE or PvP content"
^^ So if you want to solidify skills to what it suppose to be - change Backlash to store only damage of caster, without damage cap and increased store damage %, as it was pre-2.3.5 patch.

5. Jabs:
1. Inconsistence of its snare remained:
A. it wasn't treated to become undodgeable even despite Burning Light that works same was addressed (even here comment operate with erroneous basis - you cant dodge Jabs/Shards DoT/Explosive Charge/Sun Shield because its AoEs nor you can block Shards DoT because ground dots are unblockable). It also contradict rules of AoE - if you was hitted by AoE you got additional effects of this AoE.
B. This snare on last hit is wrong because it lead to loop: you need to apply snare that helps to beat jabs weaknesses of landing it but to land snare you need to beat jabs weaknesses to land.. This snare should be either removed or swaped to proc on 1st hit to break this futile loop.

2. Speed: As we know from devs: "All cast time and channeled abilities have 0.2 seconds after their cast is complete where you cannot cast another ability while the animations complete. This change makes Dark Exchange consistent with them. Adding an additional 0.2 seconds to the cast time of these abilities reduces the amount of resources they can generate when cast quickly in succession, and grants enemies more time to interrupt them."
So with removal of 0.2s post cooldown and reducing channel time for 0.1s jabs should save at least 0.3s time and able to land in 1s instead of current 1.3s.
However on pts it messed:

^^ when jabs used with weaving - it operate almost exactly same on pts as it was on live. So where is this promised improvement "to make them easier to weave"?

When used with light attacks skill seems retain 0.3 cooldown. However if use this skill in "rapid succession", i.e. spammed:

^^Skill acting like it should - to work within 1second without having 0.2+0.1s.
However it result of animation cutting its swing part of animation when skill is spammed:
That how it look on live:

And that how it works on pts:

^^So either zos messed with change or it was made to affect gameplay when you don't use light attacks. I.e get 0.3s faster jabs aoe damage but loosing damage of light attacks and Empower buff..
Default animation should work same as it look on pts when you spam skill - only 4 ticks of jab without swing animation in the beginning to make skill perform in 1.0s not just like 1.1s with slightly speeded animation.

3. Wasn't addressed again that Jabs is "fake AoE": it single target potion is inherit abilities of fake aoes that previously were excluded from being affected by Evasion buff. However just exclude it from evasion is harder to do for jabs because it's single target portion is just % of channel which is dealing proper aoe damage. Excluding single target portion from being counted as aoe will create problem that Reflective Light has now - Ancient Knowledge will no longer provide full buff to skill.
However this update brought solution - Given that Jabs is unique combination of single target spammable skill attached to aoe portion and given that this aoe portion is very low hitting DoT - it could be made into being templar "rulebreaker ability" to be counted as AoE but no longer being affected by aoe mitigation sets or Evasion buffs.

6. Dark Flare: "Reduced the cast time from this ability and the Dark Flare morph to 1 second from 1.1 seconds. Increased the travel speed to match other projectiles.Reduced the damage by approximately 37% to make up for the fact that it can be cast more frequently."
1. How it work on pts:

Where is this improved frequency of weaved casts that validate 37% damage nerf? It take same time to land skill with weaving.

2. Travel speed - so it supposed to be equalized with Snipe. However it not, and landing Flare on its max range will be slower than landing Snipe from its far superior range.

3. Flare was standardized with Snipe in term of mechanic, okay lets ignore that Snipe have far superior range that allowing it to be spammable casttime ability coz less risk, unlike Flare that has range equal to other abilities and thus it not effective spammable channel because of risk to be dead from enemy projectiles/gap-closers when your channel complete. Than now do 2nd level of audit and make it as instant cast ability. This update supposed to audit class abilities however it was left unnoticed that all class abilities that apply aoe major defile are instant cast abilities - Corrupted Pollen that is ground debuff with aoe heal and instant cast or Blighted Bones with large aoe damage, aoe defile but in return having delayed effect for 2.5sec.
Another reason is because this morph was treated differently than other morph - Barrage was made from cast time ability into instant cast ability with lower damage. Also Empower bonus is outdate for Flare coz no longer work to empower skill itself but only light attacks, however cast time skill is barely benefit from weaving light attacks even with changes of this update.
In addition only weapon skill that will have major defile now is Reverberating Bash which is also instant ability.
In addition its aoe major defile was made dodgeable in summerset and thus reliability of effect decreased drastically.
To make skill operate similarly to within morphs choice and through comparable skill Dark Flare should become instant cast ability. Reduce it damage to make it into low damage spammable ability with aoe major defile; or remove Empower remove damage and change it to dot to operate as offensive version of Sun Fire.
This channel don't have strength of Snipe - its range and thus it used for debuff not for damage mostly. And having channel spammable (Jabs)+casttime debuff is very clunky and leaving user without defense for too long period. Also it not possible to kill opponent by just spamming spammable ability without additional dots/burst attacks and templar arsenal very limited in offense aspect. Making Dark Flare as instant will help a lot as enemy wont be able to mitigate Jabs channel by single healing over time effect.

7. Eclipse: another skill that showed zos weird vision for templar because of inconsistence of changes.
A. It got straight 25% damage nerf out of nowhere, that is contradict goals that were announced in article: "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.". There is no change nerf in patchnotes that would be pure nerf. Every nerfed skill got compensation in other forms... beside Eclipse. Why was it Eclipse that treated differently than any of changes this patch?
B. Damage nerf wasn't announced by dev team for reason of it. But judging from patch theme of equalizing similar abilities and using bit of logic it seems the answer is: to equalize its damage with similar skills:

How it even possible to compare self-buffs to breakable single target CC?! Eclipse cost more, having 0.250 longer cooldown than scales and none of it was addressed by this standardization.
A. Either really address skill to comparable skills of other classes by reduce cooldown to 0.5 at least or making skill back to unbreakable/add root for duration of skill.
B. Or if you compare it to seĺf-buff - change it to be such: self-buff for 6sec with additional effects. It will be templar proactive anti-range defense. It is best choice because of how messed cc rule of current eclipse - it nor hard cc nor soft cc, but have weaknesses of both.
4. Eclipse as CC mechanic wasn't checked once again and keep inconsistent, so we have CC that not disable enemy and grant immunity on its duration, after expire, after cleanse. And it became even more inconsistent with new mechanic of Immobilizations- If purging this CC leading to same effect as waiting for its expire - CC immunity, than why does same rule don't apply for new mechanic of Immobilizations? - Waiting of root expire grant immunity to root but purging roots doesn't grant immunity. Either adjust new immobilization rule to grant immunity on purge or adjust eclipse rule to not grant immunity to cc by purging eclipse.

5. Another example of Eclipse disfunction is fixing interaction with Spiked Armor. Like BoL its again treat intended mechanic as bug only reason of doing it is because whine of dks that they uncapable to completely ignore eclipse by waiting for it to expire just like rest classes. So this "fix" literally to keep it in line of being easily counterable mechanic that enemy don't even need to break..
6. Both morphs problems weren't addressed:
A. Total Dark - after sķill got cooldown on proc its damage was adjusted for 67% to compensate however feature of morph is making its heal attached to same cooldown but potency of heal wasn't addressed, that was huger oversight.
B. Unstable Core - interaction of magnetic bomb with passive wasn't adjusted for some reason:

Even tho other skills got huge damage buffs/nerf with changing durations for 0.200sec. Keeping same damage with adding 2sec delay is overkill and like 40% damage reduction to damage. It should either work as Sun Fire - each second buff damage; or swap damage for other aggressive effect. Such effect suppose to have base duration effect of 4sec, such offensive debuff is Defile. Also taking into account that such effect can be achieved only per 7-13sec, i.e. less than 40% uptime and fact that Dark Flare already have major defile effect it could become Heal Absorption with visual effect from Malatar.

8. Charge:
A. Finally good change to Toppling Charge that have to be done long ago but it mostly pointless because of minimal range restriction. I.e. we have to use gap-closer to go into melee range and then being punished for going to melee range <--- some inconsistence here.
Also currently Templar Charge goes against both mechanics of class charges and weapon line charges: all class charges are act like teleports and thus don't have minimal range and can be casted when rooted in additional effects of each unique charge. While weapon charges have minimal range also have effects that benefit on distance travaled to enemy and thus having minimal range ensures that those effects will be applied. <--- Templar Charge don't have any of specifics of those as it don't act like teleport, cant be casted when rooted and also don't have travel bonus.
Couple ideas of fixing it:
1. Grant this skill to apply minor speedbuff on you when this skill is on bar. This would have to increase gap between you and enemy to cast charge.
2. There is visual bug with Dragonleap now where it skip jump animation and look like teleportation:

So, implement it to templar charge by taking solar jump of npc and cut animations to be shiny teleport too. because unlike nb gap-closer templar charge is not "thematically satisfying".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wql81mo8hk
There is also another gap-closer that don't have minimal range, works as teleport and can be recolored to yellow colors:

Just change so when you activate charge weapon in your hand transform into aedric spear like Jabs/Shards doing.

B. Explosive Charge: this skill still don't work against Cloak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvkqUsZOu3Y
In addition now it have visual artifact of desynced vertical glow effect of spear after cast is completed:

9. Ritual of Retribution - fixing bug is good but how about remove dot from it. Name of skill tree - Restoring Light imply that it fully based on "holy" restoring effect whether healing, purging, restoring resources, protecting. Ritual of Retribution ruining this theme by removing its sacred meaning. It was said by zos that splitting skill lines on DD/Tank/Healing is working, and even tho Templars don't fully follow this split they already can follow this new effective split of skill lines as at least one of lines - Restoring Light, is focused on healing role. We already have 2 skill lines that are fully offensive with defensive capability and simply don't need another damage skill that ruining formula of splitting skill lines for different stuff.
That's why RoR should loose this aoe dot and gain some other effect in exchange.
Here is some ideas:
1. Instead of dot it grant 2sec of root immunity - this morph will become less overall healing as it have twice less hot duration, less tankabiltiy as it have 2 less purges but it will grant mobility.
2. Old idea that sadly was implemented into necro skill - Cut duration of HoT twice (from 12 to 6sec) but increase strength of HoT for 2-3 times - with such change morph will be more "front-loaded" version and grant strong but short HoT. It will make skill more mobile and will fit with requrement to spam purge more often coz less purged effects.
3. Make it same as previous but more caster-oriented like other morph by granting effect that was previously removed from Ritual of Rebirth - make HoT to heal caster 3 times more.

10. Rite of Passage - this ultimate wasn't adjusted since 2015 year(without counting 2017 year and Morrowind update that forced Remembrance to be nerfed coz it old mechanic of granting major buff in 20m area). Not adjusting it in this update going against main goal of this update "to bring abilities back in line with the current state of the game and create a solid foundation of standards for the future."
In patch 1.2.3, i.e. in 2014 year ult changed to grant CC immunity while channel because everyone is bashing it and cancel channeled healing but in exchange it was stated to grant root on caster.
in 2015 year was attempt to adjust ult to changed pace of combat - in patch 1.6.5: radius of this ability increased to 20 meters from 12 meters because battles became more mobile but root was remained.
Much later - In 2016 in patch 2.6.4, happened audit of channel ultimate - "Soul Strike: This ability can no longer can be purged or interrupted, but can now be blocked. You will now be immune to CC while channeling this ability."
Soul Assault was treated to grant cc immunity to caster simply because CC enemy means cancelling ult and according to new rules ultimates should "feel strong" (like Meteor being no longer reflectable), so you should be capable to cancel channeled ult so easy. It means that it was made as rule that channel ultimate should grant immunity to CC to be capable of effectively channel its effect just by per se. It means that old Rite of Passage mechanic of being immune to CC while channel but being rooted in exchange is no longer consistent to new game rules. Yet this oversight was ignored.
In patch 3.3.0 it was stated that according to renewed again rules it still "Ultimate abilities (Soul Strike, Rite of Passage, etc.), and Heavy Attacks are still exceptions to this rule and cannot be interrupted." Yet it wasn't addressed again that RoP have root that originally validated by granting CC immunity during channel.
Later this formula was applied to new ult Rapid Fire in 4.0.5 patch - "Rapid Fire: This ability and the Toxic Barrage morph now grant you crowd control immunity while you are channeling them.
Developer Comments: This puts these abilities more in line with the Soul Strike ability, which provides similar protections. We don’t want players to activate an Ultimate and have it easily and immediately negated."
"All other ults already received treatment of fast pace of combat": 1. in patch 4.0.5: "Bolstering Darkness: This morph now causes the Major Protection buff to remain on you even after leaving the area. The buff will persist for the duration of the ability." making it into ground ult with mobile buff 2. In same patch "Soul Siphon: Increased the radius of the heal applied by this morph to 28 meters from 15 seconds." making it while being mobile ult also have larger radius of heal than Rite of Passage. 3. in patch 3.2.5: "Shifting Standard: This morph now increases the duration of the standard to 25 seconds, and the standard can be shifted an unlimited amount of times." making it into semi-portable ultimate.
^^^ According to all this history lesson Rite of Passage should be finally audited as other ults already were and current mechanic of rooting by Rite of Passage is not consistent and thus should be removed. Inexchange of granted mobility radius of healing should be standardized back to 1.6.5 where it was 12 meters and then to current standard - 10 meters for Rite of Passage and Practiced Incantation. so it will look smth like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPCu2PI-ZUM
Remembrance cant get same treatment coz in patch 3.0.5 it was changed to loose its pure group utility and become more self-oriented but problem is that it retained it pure group-oriented functionality, and result it self-survivability tool - major protection negatively interfere with group utility of skill - channeling heal; and as result making Practiced Incantation more beneficial morph.
^^Taking this into account in addition that magplars (and this update stamplars too) don't have self-survivability ult - Remembrance could become as ult that no longer destroy mobility of caster by channeled heal but: (A: able to heal only 1 target and no longer get cc immunity and get 10sec of major protection only for caster); (B: no longer grant major protection but grant cc immunity for 5sec). Literally what Light Champion was once. (you know it is Templars who are Champions of Light, not sneaky nightblades). Making morphs of this ult as different as Honor the dead/Breath of Life, Sollar Barrage/DArk Flare, etc. with fully different functionality.
(^^Incase of standardize Practiced Incanation to how Remembrance could work - it could be instead of being mobile channel it could be same non-channel single-target heal but as morph change it would heal 2 targets at a time to keep it as group utility skill.)

This. All Devs need to read this.

jbjondeaueb17_ESO · April 2019

Vapirko wrote: »

jbjondeaueb17_ESO wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

jbjondeaueb17_ESO wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

With respect to Stamina Templars, while the jabs change is small but welcome and helps combat to flow a bit better, Stamplars still lack a bit of survivability. The change to Ritual is of course welcome, but the heal on it is maybe 250-300 per second which doesn’t make much of a difference. Now this brings me to PotL. The extended duration of minor fracture is not all that useful because a good Stamplar will be reapplying after expiration for the most part. What if instead of an extended minor fracture PotL gave some sort of heal on expiration that related to copied damage? This would be in line with, and encourage, the highly offensive style of Stamplars.

That's already almost what's doing the magicka version, having a small (I mean radius mostly) healing dot around the target it was put on. It would be too close and the magicka version is "only" healing, which would make it vastly inferior.

That’s not correct. The magicka versions also copies damage. The magicka version features a multi target HoT, whereas the stamina version would be a single target burst on the caster. That’s not too similar, and would not make the magicka version irrelevant in any form.

I know about the copied damage, I was meaning there's no minor breach/fracture, so if you add healing to the already overused stamina version (even most of the time by healers if there is no stamplar in the group).
Btw the radius of the healing dot is so small that on a lot of the new bosses it's affecting only the tank and not always.

Overused stamina version? I don’t follow. Stamina Templars use the stamina morph lol. Is jabs overused too? Is curse overused on sorcs? Is poison claws overused on a DK? If all magicka Templars were also using PotL then you might say it’s overused but that’s just not the case. And the heal from purifying light is quite useful for PvP even if it’s more focused on the tank in PvE. Also purifying light provides minor sorcery via the passive for the caster and their group. Stamina Templar gets nothing from that. So adding a burst heal at the end would not put it out of balance. Actually it would be more balanced as then both morphs would provide a heal and a damage increase in conjunction with copied damage.

For years trials healers mostly used PotL if there was no Stamplar DD, because it also gives Minor Sorcery on top of minor breach/fracture, and Magplar DDs weren't very welcome since they are melee but weaker than Stamina DDs. Not forgetting it has been buggy for so long (still is ? don't know anymore) than even Stamplars were not always using it because it was lowering their dps.
So apart from PvP, Purifying Light wasn't much used. And in PvE most of the healers were using PotL for the reasons above.

Minno · April 2019

templesus wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

Here is some Templar feedback:
Overall it seems zos didn't done at all audited pass on templar skills to "bring them back in line" or standardize them. Another problem is that it seems combat team don't even have vision of how templar skills suppose to perform.
Prepare for bad English:

1. Breath of Life: Fixed an issue where the secondary heal granted from this ability was able to ignore the caster’s line of sight and target players behind them.
According to patchnotes bug that showed up I think in murkmire update should be finally fixed and small heal no longer ignore LoS but in addition zos "fixed" feature that small heal had 360 degree.
However on pts it messed hard:

^^ bug that supposed to be fixed of smaller heal ignoring LoS is still here!
However:

Instead of fixing LoS bug you actually "fixed", i.e. bugged intended mechanic of smaller heal to have 360°. So now small heal work same as main heal - only in 180°. Which is huge nerf to pve healers.
Incase combat team dont know - degree change was made in 3.0.5 and it wasn't bug, it was intended mechanic:

Dont try to claim that it is bug, especially since conal treatment in 3.0.5 small heal was nerfed for 33% in later patch, validating this 360 degree mechanic.
It also ignoring that when it goes to "cost-heal" Twilight Matriarch overperform BoL.

2. Rune Focus: revert change that you done to visual effect of major armor buffs provided by this skill - reverse it brightness. With new brightless effect it literally impossible to determine in combat if effect still on you without addon or looking back on your ground rune when there is lot of buffs and debuffs on your character. Overlap with character face is not important at all, if you want to update visual effects of it than just renew visual effects of ground rune, like those:

3. Reflective Light: there is still hole in identity conception of what this skill is, nearly same like previously Barrage had, prevent from achieve max effectiveness of skill: initial hit considered as AoE damage, but DoT part of skill considered as single target effect. And thus Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff buff initial hit of skill but don't buff dot part, while passive with fire staff don't buff initial hit but buff dot part:

^^ this bring problem that with this morph cant be fully buffed by either of staff types (Vampire Bane don't have this problem as it count as single target skill).
You cant make dot to count as AoE because it attached to target while not being ground-based and will break concept of how dots works.
In PvP game ignores that skill being "fake AoEs" and inherit it's effects like being dodgeable/cloackable/etc. and bring problem that initial hit counts as aoe by Evasion buff while in fact it being projectile that applied in 5m area.
Since you introduced "rulebreakers" how about make both components of skill to be counted as AoE so this morph will reliably being affected by Ancient Knowledge with lightning staff, while Vampire Bane is morphfully buffed by fire staff, but also take into account of it being "fake AoE" and exclude from Evasion.

4. Backlash: bug and concept hole:
A. First of all its bug of double mitigations is not fixed so let me describe it again:
Released damage is just % of all stored damage. Release damage should not be affected by any buffs/debuffs, to (according to 2.7.5 dev com patchnotes)"ensures that Backlash is not double penalized...since some of the damage it copies will likely be blocked or avoided by enemies seeking to minimize Backlash's final attack" It means that released damage should work as literally oblivion damage that have no counter because counter to Backlash burst damage is (according to same 2.7.5 patchnotes) "actively mitigate or avoid damage".
But it not work this way and all "damage taken" effects (protection buff/mistform) affect released damage and on CP PvP Ironclad+Hardy/Elem. Defender affect released damage and thus double mitigate Backlash damage:
^^^In combat against major protection buff it means all your stored damage will be already reduced by protection, and then final released damage will be reduced by protection again. Imagine get 10k backlash that will get 30% reduction...
On CP PvP it goes same by default of Red CP - all your stored damage will be affected by your Blue CP and enemy Red CP and then burst released damage wont be affected by your Blue CP but will be affected by enemy Red CP( that can easily being pushed to over 30+% reduction), i.e. CP will double-mitigate backlash damage.
On CP PvP against major protection it means that final released damage will get 30+% reduction from CP system alone and in addition 30% from major protection and even additional 8% of minor protection. Also skills like Mistform allowing to mitigate released damage too.
Fix this overkilling bug or just make damage into Oblivion type since it already supposed to be unmitigatable damage, i.e. inherit mechanic of oblivion damage. Only problem will be that thus it will ignore damage shields that is not desirable.

B. Backlash wasn't changed to store damage only caster. Because of it skill keeping small % on amount of stored damage, and damage cap that prevent it from being effective for pve/pvp dps. As damage cap and low store damage are all result of skill being capable to stacking its store damage and store damage from other sources beside caster.
This goes against main design of this skill because current implementation is being fully group-oriented skill as its store damage have lowest damage store when used solo but highest when used in group in addition to morphs effects already promoting group play by its morphs effects that affect either survivability or dps of allies.
And it completely goes against main design of this skill according to dev com of 2.7.5 patchnotes : "We want to see Backlash as a burst damage ability that you can use in solo PvE or PvP content"
^^ So if you want to solidify skills to what it suppose to be - change Backlash to store only damage of caster, without damage cap and increased store damage %, as it was pre-2.3.5 patch.

5. Jabs:
1. Inconsistence of its snare remained:
A. it wasn't treated to become undodgeable even despite Burning Light that works same was addressed (even here comment operate with erroneous basis - you cant dodge Jabs/Shards DoT/Explosive Charge/Sun Shield because its AoEs nor you can block Shards DoT because ground dots are unblockable). It also contradict rules of AoE - if you was hitted by AoE you got additional effects of this AoE.
B. This snare on last hit is wrong because it lead to loop: you need to apply snare that helps to beat jabs weaknesses of landing it but to land snare you need to beat jabs weaknesses to land.. This snare should be either removed or swaped to proc on 1st hit to break this futile loop.

2. Speed: As we know from devs: "All cast time and channeled abilities have 0.2 seconds after their cast is complete where you cannot cast another ability while the animations complete. This change makes Dark Exchange consistent with them. Adding an additional 0.2 seconds to the cast time of these abilities reduces the amount of resources they can generate when cast quickly in succession, and grants enemies more time to interrupt them."
So with removal of 0.2s post cooldown and reducing channel time for 0.1s jabs should save at least 0.3s time and able to land in 1s instead of current 1.3s.
However on pts it messed:

^^ when jabs used with weaving - it operate almost exactly same on pts as it was on live. So where is this promised improvement "to make them easier to weave"?

When used with light attacks skill seems retain 0.3 cooldown. However if use this skill in "rapid succession", i.e. spammed:

^^Skill acting like it should - to work within 1second without having 0.2+0.1s.
However it result of animation cutting its swing part of animation when skill is spammed:
That how it look on live:

And that how it works on pts:

^^So either zos messed with change or it was made to affect gameplay when you don't use light attacks. I.e get 0.3s faster jabs aoe damage but loosing damage of light attacks and Empower buff..
Default animation should work same as it look on pts when you spam skill - only 4 ticks of jab without swing animation in the beginning to make skill perform in 1.0s not just like 1.1s with slightly speeded animation.

3. Wasn't addressed again that Jabs is "fake AoE": it single target potion is inherit abilities of fake aoes that previously were excluded from being affected by Evasion buff. However just exclude it from evasion is harder to do for jabs because it's single target portion is just % of channel which is dealing proper aoe damage. Excluding single target portion from being counted as aoe will create problem that Reflective Light has now - Ancient Knowledge will no longer provide full buff to skill.
However this update brought solution - Given that Jabs is unique combination of single target spammable skill attached to aoe portion and given that this aoe portion is very low hitting DoT - it could be made into being templar "rulebreaker ability" to be counted as AoE but no longer being affected by aoe mitigation sets or Evasion buffs.

6. Dark Flare: "Reduced the cast time from this ability and the Dark Flare morph to 1 second from 1.1 seconds. Increased the travel speed to match other projectiles.Reduced the damage by approximately 37% to make up for the fact that it can be cast more frequently."
1. How it work on pts:

Where is this improved frequency of weaved casts that validate 37% damage nerf? It take same time to land skill with weaving.

2. Travel speed - so it supposed to be equalized with Snipe. However it not, and landing Flare on its max range will be slower than landing Snipe from its far superior range.

3. Flare was standardized with Snipe in term of mechanic, okay lets ignore that Snipe have far superior range that allowing it to be spammable casttime ability coz less risk, unlike Flare that has range equal to other abilities and thus it not effective spammable channel because of risk to be dead from enemy projectiles/gap-closers when your channel complete. Than now do 2nd level of audit and make it as instant cast ability. This update supposed to audit class abilities however it was left unnoticed that all class abilities that apply aoe major defile are instant cast abilities - Corrupted Pollen that is ground debuff with aoe heal and instant cast or Blighted Bones with large aoe damage, aoe defile but in return having delayed effect for 2.5sec.
Another reason is because this morph was treated differently than other morph - Barrage was made from cast time ability into instant cast ability with lower damage. Also Empower bonus is outdate for Flare coz no longer work to empower skill itself but only light attacks, however cast time skill is barely benefit from weaving light attacks even with changes of this update.
In addition only weapon skill that will have major defile now is Reverberating Bash which is also instant ability.
In addition its aoe major defile was made dodgeable in summerset and thus reliability of effect decreased drastically.
To make skill operate similarly to within morphs choice and through comparable skill Dark Flare should become instant cast ability. Reduce it damage to make it into low damage spammable ability with aoe major defile; or remove Empower remove damage and change it to dot to operate as offensive version of Sun Fire.
This channel don't have strength of Snipe - its range and thus it used for debuff not for damage mostly. And having channel spammable (Jabs)+casttime debuff is very clunky and leaving user without defense for too long period. Also it not possible to kill opponent by just spamming spammable ability without additional dots/burst attacks and templar arsenal very limited in offense aspect. Making Dark Flare as instant will help a lot as enemy wont be able to mitigate Jabs channel by single healing over time effect.

7. Eclipse: another skill that showed zos weird vision for templar because of inconsistence of changes.
A. It got straight 25% damage nerf out of nowhere, that is contradict goals that were announced in article: "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.". There is no change nerf in patchnotes that would be pure nerf. Every nerfed skill got compensation in other forms... beside Eclipse. Why was it Eclipse that treated differently than any of changes this patch?
B. Damage nerf wasn't announced by dev team for reason of it. But judging from patch theme of equalizing similar abilities and using bit of logic it seems the answer is: to equalize its damage with similar skills:

How it even possible to compare self-buffs to breakable single target CC?! Eclipse cost more, having 0.250 longer cooldown than scales and none of it was addressed by this standardization.
A. Either really address skill to comparable skills of other classes by reduce cooldown to 0.5 at least or making skill back to unbreakable/add root for duration of skill.
B. Or if you compare it to seĺf-buff - change it to be such: self-buff for 6sec with additional effects. It will be templar proactive anti-range defense. It is best choice because of how messed cc rule of current eclipse - it nor hard cc nor soft cc, but have weaknesses of both.
4. Eclipse as CC mechanic wasn't checked once again and keep inconsistent, so we have CC that not disable enemy and grant immunity on its duration, after expire, after cleanse. And it became even more inconsistent with new mechanic of Immobilizations- If purging this CC leading to same effect as waiting for its expire - CC immunity, than why does same rule don't apply for new mechanic of Immobilizations? - Waiting of root expire grant immunity to root but purging roots doesn't grant immunity. Either adjust new immobilization rule to grant immunity on purge or adjust eclipse rule to not grant immunity to cc by purging eclipse.

5. Another example of Eclipse disfunction is fixing interaction with Spiked Armor. Like BoL its again treat intended mechanic as bug only reason of doing it is because whine of dks that they uncapable to completely ignore eclipse by waiting for it to expire just like rest classes. So this "fix" literally to keep it in line of being easily counterable mechanic that enemy don't even need to break..
6. Both morphs problems weren't addressed:
A. Total Dark - after sķill got cooldown on proc its damage was adjusted for 67% to compensate however feature of morph is making its heal attached to same cooldown but potency of heal wasn't addressed, that was huger oversight.
B. Unstable Core - interaction of magnetic bomb with passive wasn't adjusted for some reason:

Even tho other skills got huge damage buffs/nerf with changing durations for 0.200sec. Keeping same damage with adding 2sec delay is overkill and like 40% damage reduction to damage. It should either work as Sun Fire - each second buff damage; or swap damage for other aggressive effect. Such effect suppose to have base duration effect of 4sec, such offensive debuff is Defile. Also taking into account that such effect can be achieved only per 7-13sec, i.e. less than 40% uptime and fact that Dark Flare already have major defile effect it could become Heal Absorption with visual effect from Malatar.

8. Charge:
A. Finally good change to Toppling Charge that have to be done long ago but it mostly pointless because of minimal range restriction. I.e. we have to use gap-closer to go into melee range and then being punished for going to melee range <--- some inconsistence here.
Also currently Templar Charge goes against both mechanics of class charges and weapon line charges: all class charges are act like teleports and thus don't have minimal range and can be casted when rooted in additional effects of each unique charge. While weapon charges have minimal range also have effects that benefit on distance travaled to enemy and thus having minimal range ensures that those effects will be applied. <--- Templar Charge don't have any of specifics of those as it don't act like teleport, cant be casted when rooted and also don't have travel bonus.
Couple ideas of fixing it:
1. Grant this skill to apply minor speedbuff on you when this skill is on bar. This would have to increase gap between you and enemy to cast charge.
2. There is visual bug with Dragonleap now where it skip jump animation and look like teleportation:

So, implement it to templar charge by taking solar jump of npc and cut animations to be shiny teleport too. because unlike nb gap-closer templar charge is not "thematically satisfying".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wql81mo8hk
There is also another gap-closer that don't have minimal range, works as teleport and can be recolored to yellow colors:

Just change so when you activate charge weapon in your hand transform into aedric spear like Jabs/Shards doing.

B. Explosive Charge: this skill still don't work against Cloak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvkqUsZOu3Y
In addition now it have visual artifact of desynced vertical glow effect of spear after cast is completed:

9. Ritual of Retribution - fixing bug is good but how about remove dot from it. Name of skill tree - Restoring Light imply that it fully based on "holy" restoring effect whether healing, purging, restoring resources, protecting. Ritual of Retribution ruining this theme by removing its sacred meaning. It was said by zos that splitting skill lines on DD/Tank/Healing is working, and even tho Templars don't fully follow this split they already can follow this new effective split of skill lines as at least one of lines - Restoring Light, is focused on healing role. We already have 2 skill lines that are fully offensive with defensive capability and simply don't need another damage skill that ruining formula of splitting skill lines for different stuff.
That's why RoR should loose this aoe dot and gain some other effect in exchange.
Here is some ideas:
1. Instead of dot it grant 2sec of root immunity - this morph will become less overall healing as it have twice less hot duration, less tankabiltiy as it have 2 less purges but it will grant mobility.
2. Old idea that sadly was implemented into necro skill - Cut duration of HoT twice (from 12 to 6sec) but increase strength of HoT for 2-3 times - with such change morph will be more "front-loaded" version and grant strong but short HoT. It will make skill more mobile and will fit with requrement to spam purge more often coz less purged effects.
3. Make it same as previous but more caster-oriented like other morph by granting effect that was previously removed from Ritual of Rebirth - make HoT to heal caster 3 times more.

10. Rite of Passage - this ultimate wasn't adjusted since 2015 year(without counting 2017 year and Morrowind update that forced Remembrance to be nerfed coz it old mechanic of granting major buff in 20m area). Not adjusting it in this update going against main goal of this update "to bring abilities back in line with the current state of the game and create a solid foundation of standards for the future."
In patch 1.2.3, i.e. in 2014 year ult changed to grant CC immunity while channel because everyone is bashing it and cancel channeled healing but in exchange it was stated to grant root on caster.
in 2015 year was attempt to adjust ult to changed pace of combat - in patch 1.6.5: radius of this ability increased to 20 meters from 12 meters because battles became more mobile but root was remained.
Much later - In 2016 in patch 2.6.4, happened audit of channel ultimate - "Soul Strike: This ability can no longer can be purged or interrupted, but can now be blocked. You will now be immune to CC while channeling this ability."
Soul Assault was treated to grant cc immunity to caster simply because CC enemy means cancelling ult and according to new rules ultimates should "feel strong" (like Meteor being no longer reflectable), so you should be capable to cancel channeled ult so easy. It means that it was made as rule that channel ultimate should grant immunity to CC to be capable of effectively channel its effect just by per se. It means that old Rite of Passage mechanic of being immune to CC while channel but being rooted in exchange is no longer consistent to new game rules. Yet this oversight was ignored.
In patch 3.3.0 it was stated that according to renewed again rules it still "Ultimate abilities (Soul Strike, Rite of Passage, etc.), and Heavy Attacks are still exceptions to this rule and cannot be interrupted." Yet it wasn't addressed again that RoP have root that originally validated by granting CC immunity during channel.
Later this formula was applied to new ult Rapid Fire in 4.0.5 patch - "Rapid Fire: This ability and the Toxic Barrage morph now grant you crowd control immunity while you are channeling them.
Developer Comments: This puts these abilities more in line with the Soul Strike ability, which provides similar protections. We don’t want players to activate an Ultimate and have it easily and immediately negated."
"All other ults already received treatment of fast pace of combat": 1. in patch 4.0.5: "Bolstering Darkness: This morph now causes the Major Protection buff to remain on you even after leaving the area. The buff will persist for the duration of the ability." making it into ground ult with mobile buff 2. In same patch "Soul Siphon: Increased the radius of the heal applied by this morph to 28 meters from 15 seconds." making it while being mobile ult also have larger radius of heal than Rite of Passage. 3. in patch 3.2.5: "Shifting Standard: This morph now increases the duration of the standard to 25 seconds, and the standard can be shifted an unlimited amount of times." making it into semi-portable ultimate.
^^^ According to all this history lesson Rite of Passage should be finally audited as other ults already were and current mechanic of rooting by Rite of Passage is not consistent and thus should be removed. Inexchange of granted mobility radius of healing should be standardized back to 1.6.5 where it was 12 meters and then to current standard - 10 meters for Rite of Passage and Practiced Incantation. so it will look smth like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPCu2PI-ZUM
Remembrance cant get same treatment coz in patch 3.0.5 it was changed to loose its pure group utility and become more self-oriented but problem is that it retained it pure group-oriented functionality, and result it self-survivability tool - major protection negatively interfere with group utility of skill - channeling heal; and as result making Practiced Incantation more beneficial morph.
^^Taking this into account in addition that magplars (and this update stamplars too) don't have self-survivability ult - Remembrance could become as ult that no longer destroy mobility of caster by channeled heal but: (A: able to heal only 1 target and no longer get cc immunity and get 10sec of major protection only for caster); (B: no longer grant major protection but grant cc immunity for 5sec). Literally what Light Champion was once. (you know it is Templars who are Champions of Light, not sneaky nightblades). Making morphs of this ult as different as Honor the dead/Breath of Life, Sollar Barrage/DArk Flare, etc. with fully different functionality.
(^^Incase of standardize Practiced Incanation to how Remembrance could work - it could be instead of being mobile channel it could be same non-channel single-target heal but as morph change it would heal 2 targets at a time to keep it as group utility skill.)

This. All Devs need to read this.

Agreed. Templar is in Abad spot now compared to the other classes that got skill buff audits. In addition to cinbri's feedback, stamplar list both identity and effectiveness with the final straw killing off stamplar mains. I literally saw some stamplar mains playing sorcs and only because they didn't have a DK leveled up lol.

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RobGarrett temps well be in Abad spot come chapter regardless of nerfs to other classes if these bugs/audits keep missing the mark.

Narvuntien · April 2019

Okay, so stamsorcs want more stam abilities.
So I suggest making endless fury into storms fury a stamina morph, ranged execute.

I think I have a solution to the grim focus issue. atm the skill has no effect when it is used and only after 5 light attacks is it even a skill. This just seems bad. I suggest that % damage for light attacks is added to the skill. Either a perminate effect or as a scaling effect as the light attack counter goes up. I would prefer that the stamina morph gets the minor endurance back.

Nercomancers seem a little too strong atm. The skeleton summon and the graveyard appear to be doing a little too much damage comparable to elemental blockade. i suggest a small nerf to the per tick damage. The blastbones is awkward as many have said but I think it kind of adds flavour.

Nser · April 2019

Are there any changes you feel are against the spirit of the class?
dragon knight dots i so week compering to other class why??
other class dot reach like 30k+ tooltip and dragon knight 13k ?? why dk supose to be dot class
mdk have the weekest dots in the game

Are you able to weave abilities better or worse in this Update?
no still powerlash skil porocsesl stuck sometime

Do you feel your class is stronger, weaker, or relatively the same with the standardization pass on class abilities?
no dk class not stronge

Do you feel we addressed abilities that in the past year have been over or under performing?
please increase the dot damage of all dk dots 100% to be in same line with other class this is realy not fair.

Do you have any other general feedback?
mdk need some cost also the only class that dont have any cost reduation or reg why??
change some passive cuz its just usless

Nser · April 2019

i

im hoping you guys change MDk gap closer Fiery Grip to this cuz it's suck and it's need rework.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_RichLambert

Zedrian · April 2019

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for current class balance and the class ability audit in this update. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:
Are there any changes you feel are against the spirit of the class?

Are you able to weave abilities better or worse in this Update?

Do you feel your class is stronger, weaker, or relatively the same with the standardization pass on class abilities?

Do you feel we addressed abilities that in the past year have been over or under performing?

Do you have any other general feedback?

From PVE perspective in my opinion:

Are there any changes you feel are against the spirit of the class?
The payable classes (warden and Necro) have special bonuses. I see this as a incentive to play these classes, but right now the necro is way beyond the other classes in terms of damage. Trials will be all necro ?

For the Magicka Nightblade, the DPS is subpar compared to other magicka classes. The merciless resolve is now useless in my opinion for PVE as it costs magicka upon cast with no damage for a second, making the rotation just as difficult but with less damage than if you used an extra Elemental weapon instead. The magicka sustain and the dps has been nerfed way too much these past patches and is now lagging behind Magsorc, MagDK... etc...

The fact that minor berserk was removed, it also removed the utility of the Magicka Nightblade which often had the role to do the dirty solo work such as going to the shadow realm in Cloudrest to destroy crystals or the spheres upstairs on the factotum boss in the halls of fabrication... Nightblades had mobility, decent healing over time, and single target burst damage, but the last two has been continuously nerfed. The heal on the bow is also useless, because it is not a heal you can reliably use in your "oh *** moments", but you have to build up to it for 5 seconds... I don't think it is good idea to build up the bow just for healing purposes, and it is better to simply use swallow soul instead... Finally, the argument that in trials, the group is always buffed by combat prayer is also false... In Asylum, the group fighting olms is too spread out for healers to cover the entire room with ground AoEs... in vmol the back kiters fighting rakkhat rarely have combat prayer on them.... and this is also true on Aetherian archive the mage hardmode, execute phase of the warrior in HelRa... Magicka lost its autonomy and will most likely be replaced with bigger dps classes from now on.

Are you able to weave abilities better or worse in this Update?
The weaving on the necro is a bit clunky and it is sometimes difficult to tell if your light attacks are going off.
For all classes, in general, when you use a controller and activate a synergie it also activates either the triangle/circle buttons on a PS4 controller... This wastes resources and ruins the rotation, and it is even more annoying when you activate a long cast time ability such as Jabs on the templar or the tombs with the necro.

Do you feel your class is stronger, weaker, or relatively the same with the standardization pass on class abilities?
On the PTS i have only tried the Magsorc, Magblade, Magnecro, Stamplar and Stamblade. I will edit my post once i try the other classes.

The Magicka sorcerer with pets is way too strong even with the Daedric pray nerf. I realize that the pets have a 100% crit bug, but even without the crit chances, you can do the math and realize that the Pet Sorc does 10k more with trial buffs than the Magblade with a simpler rotation. In contrast the Magicka Sorcerer without pets is doing a lot less. However the overall magicka sustain for magsorc is better as a breton and the cost reduction of frags which is very much appreciated for players who enjoy light attack rotations.

The Magicka nightblade and stamina nightblade are both weaker than 3 patches ago. It is less a problem for the Stamblade, but a real issue for the Magblade....

the Magicka Necro is really strong, really fun to play, and if the skills animations were a bit faster and include visually the light attacks, then it will be a great class. Also it is great that the Stamina Necro has many stamina skills which will make it more unique in comparison to other stamina classes.

The Stamplar still has a fairly easy rotation, which is great for console players. The damage is not amazing but consistent and reliable. I will there was a Vampires bane or spear with a stamina morph... Then again using magicka for casting the spear does help with stamina sustain. The Sweep ultimates also need a rework to either bring more damage over time, or utility to the group for the ultimate to be useful in trials. The sweep could be viable with War Machine set for example if brought as much damage boost than the Incapacitating strike ultimate of the Nightblade.

Do you have any other general feedback?
I now play both PC and PS4 and I can tell that the game is going more and more toward dynamic rotations, with the time to cast for certain skills that don't easily match with others. On PC, this is not really a problem if you are using add ons such as Srendarr or Action Reminder duration... but on console we don't have these visual cues... As a result on console, players will stick to static rotations which do a lot less damage. I hope the game will be adapted correctly for console by either including these timers, combat metrics and so on, otherwise the player progression on console will be too slow in comparison to PC and the population will keep decreasing or migrating to PC.... if you have too many players on PC EU with Logging Queues that is maybe the consequence of console players going on a platform that works better. Also on console the game framerates are low in trials and the servers lag just as much with lower populations, so it doesnt make the quality of life any better.

Iskiab · April 2019

Magblade

Are there any changes you feel are against the spirit of the class?

Merciless losing the damage buff. Little effect in pve, large effect in pvp.

Are you able to weave abilities better or worse in this Update?

Same

Do you feel your class is stronger, weaker, or relatively the same with the standardization pass on class abilities?

PvP perspective
Magblade healing - same
Magblade ranged - same
Magblade melee - weaker

Do you feel we addressed abilities that in the past year have been over or under performing?

No.

Dark cloak - change will impact NB tanks negatively. Weaker effect, negative change.
Suggestion: buff the healing amount

Swallow Soul/Funnel Health - damage is tied to your damage done making it a weak skill for pvp. Higher resistances in pvp result in a weak healing amount.
Suggestion: decouple the healing amount from damage done. Have it do damage and apply a heal over time based on your sp/magicka

Do you have any other general feedback?

Inventory management is an issue. More storage space is needed and make it easier to find/retrieve items from storage.

Minno · April 2019

Nser wrote: »

i

im hoping you guys change MDk gap closer Fiery Grip to this cuz it's suck and it's need rework.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_RichLambert

Sorry don't be stealing our Templar ideas. Find agap closer of your own lol

Silver_Strider · April 2019

Minno wrote: »

Nser wrote: »

i

im hoping you guys change MDk gap closer Fiery Grip to this cuz it's suck and it's need rework.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_RichLambert

Sorry don't be stealing our Templar ideas. Find agap closer of your own lol

Inb4 ZOS introduces a Magic S+B skill line with this as the gap closer.

Joy_Division · April 2019

Thanks @Cinbri

Minno · April 2019

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Nser wrote: »

i

im hoping you guys change MDk gap closer Fiery Grip to this cuz it's suck and it's need rework.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_RichLambert

Sorry don't be stealing our Templar ideas. Find agap closer of your own lol

Inb4 ZOS introduces a Magic S+B skill line with this as the gap closer.

Lol they are going to place all these on that line too lol.

cpuScientist · April 2019

StamSorc

Are there any changes you feel are against the spirit of the class?

No, there were no changes...

Are you able to weave abilities better or worse in this Update?

Same, I have noticed no change, just like the class..

Do you feel we addressed abilities that in the past year have been over or under performing?

No, nothing has been addressed. Such as hurricane, still does the same piddly damage.

Do you have any other general feedback?

StamSorc feels empty and devoid of anything even remotely interesting at this point thank you.