Update 23 will widen the gap between floor, average and ceiling more than previous patches combined

frozzzen101

Let me preface that I believe that in its current form, this patch will be the single worst thing that happened to this game. Worse than Morrowind sustain nerfs, worse than infamous Nerfmire and worse than anything devs have thrown at us in recent years. I'm talking from a perspective of Dungeon-Trial-Arena person, as I’m not knowledgeable enough on pvp matters and on the surface level pvp changes look sensible for the most part. However, pve has been hit by multifaceted nerfs all across the board, and hardest hit will be on uncoordinated dungeon groups as well as any sort of progression teams that are still struggling with content they are progressing. So, which portion of your playerbase is the combat team actually attempting to nerf?

First let’s focus on dps nerfs because these are the simplest to explain. ZoS has been talking a lot about re-standardization and new standards for dots and aoe dots, however these new standards are absolute garbage.
If we compare parses from your average Joe and from Liko, arguably one of best dds in game at the moment, you will notice that Joe’s parses will be much more affected by reduction of efficiency of damage over time abilities. That’s because the very best dds can weave their direct damage skills and light attacks much more efficiently than the average dd, they know how to mitigate damage getting even more weaves, while your average dds, coupled with average support will have to spend time shielding, dodging and surviving making LA/spamable portion of their parse much less pronounced. The most consistent way of dealing damage in low-mid end of dps spectrum is trough dots. More specifically, strong ground aoe dots that are placed on the ground without the need to aim specific target priority targets and then you can do whatever. This difference is felt much more in actual content rather than dummy parses. I won’t bother clogging this thread with ESO combat log of peak, high, mid and low tier parses because anyone with IQ higher than their shoe size can deduce the effect of lowering damage over time abilities and its effect on players in certain dps thresholds, you know, the very obvious thing that our beloved combat team is so incredibly oblivious to. If for some reason you wanted to nerf peak dps, proper way of doing it was to nerf LA/spamable portion of parses and/or alter damage formula slightly. Difference would be felt across the spectrum for sure, however higher end players would feel it more than average/low tier players, and no one would feel singled out because of nerfs to their class abilities, but I digress. Make no mistake, it’s far too late to change this mindset of our developers. Even if their methods of lowering the dps ceiling are mathematically proven flawed, nothing will change because all of these changes are already programmed in PTS and it’s far too late to change it because of programming dollars.

Healing/Support changes are far worse and more far reaching than changes to dots. Healing in ESO at the moment is based on healing over time abilities, and with changes to orbs and springs everything is pushed in direction of reactive healing. While it might not look inherently bad on first glance because it might allow for higher healer skill ceiling, it will be massive nerf for everyone who’s not close to that ceiling and mid/low tier player suffers once again. Add in the fact that for years ESO was balanced around hot based healing and unless entire game and many encounters are rewamped, many low/mid tier groups will be forever stuck at content X without any chances of progressing in game. If we compare new Grand Healing that is 56% of its former strength without capability to stack with current iteration of this skill, the peak of having 4 stacks of Illustrious Healing is 7 times more healing than what is achievable in upcoming U23 trough this skill. Is that efficient healing? No, it’s overhealing but it’s also safety net for new players who cannot predict amount of incoming damage.

Let this sink in. At its peak performance as a hot, new Grand Healing will have 14% effectiveness from U22. Just as a sidenote, vCR+3 first clears have been done with 3 tanks using non-nerfed Earthgore, two healers with Bogdan for increased healing, and as many magblades as possible because at the time they had highest offhealing potential. Yeah, when you argue about healing being overpowered just think of this little factoid, would you? There are people still progressing that content. Even after vCR, recent content has also been balanced by having huge defiles on maintank in both BRP and something like Frostvault hardmode as well as its sister dungeon of Malatar. Not to mention, having to heal multiple people on multiple places, offtanks, maintanks, stacked dds and all that. Just think of AS+2 healer roles for example.
And finally massive, truly uncalled nerf to Orbs and sustain/hot coming from that. Unless you missed history lesson from Morrowind sustain nerfs, this affects low/medium tier groups the hardest. Top groups will manage somehow. They will fit in 4 orbs from their support and 4 Symphony/Sentinel while majority of groups not as good or coordinated or experienced will remain gutted and have to invest into sustain making performance gap more and more apparent. Good groups will stack adds more efficiently to allow higher dps/resource spent, their support will walk the razor’s edge just to make sure they empower their dds, where learning/progressing or straight up weaker groups will never be able to afford such things. So I will ask once again, ZoS, who are you nerfing?

Ultimately this travesty of a patch cannot be reverted completely because programming costs and developer pride was often placed as a priority over wishes and protests of community. However I do hope that there is sensible person in charge who can see past pride and attempt to alleviate some of major painpoints introduced with this update. The ever growing gap between peak, high, medium and trench tier players is one of major issues this game is facing and is fracturing the community. This patch will make it worse than ever before. Power creep introduced by various means isn’t your primary concern. Power difference however is. Rethink where you will take damage from dds because it will have huge ramifications on your playerbase and its average performance.
I really don’t want to badmouth the combat team. I know they have their vision of the game and want to see it through. But if I were in charge, and got submitted this PTS notes as a draft for balance changes, you’d be straight up fired on the spot, because shortsightedness of combat team regarding far reaching consequences of this arbitrary standardization is equivalent of corporate CEO bankrupting a company.

coop500

Extremely insightful and 100% true, everybody who is like 'nah this is fine' need to consider this post.

Minno

Naw this patch looks good, if you aren't a brainless zergling lol

RebornV3x

I agree with most of this one thing to add I think the mag vs stam divide will even be worse this patch

Sanguinor2

Minno wrote: »

Naw this patch looks good, if you dont PvE at all lol

Fixed

coop500

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Naw this patch looks good, if you dont PvE at all lol

Fixed

Very accurate fix.
This patch is 100% for the PVPers, shafting PVEers in the process.
Oh but PVEers don't matter, because PVP is endgame! Damn carebears, get out of our game!
(There I said it for the PVP elitists)

Tommy_The_Gun

Agree with OP. ZOS changed their combat team and this is the result. Less & less option every patch. What I would like to know is: What is their goal ? Because it cant be balance. You don't achieve balance by making huge, revolutionary changes EVERY update, because you change the whole ecosystem too drastically. So it is even hard to predict the outcome.

I have to admit, ever since Gilliamtherogue joined combat team, thing are going downhill. I am sure I am not the only one who is disappointed. The guy's knowledge about the game seemed that if he joins combat team things will be better. But no...

mobicera

As an average player trying to progress in vet trials my groups and I will be hit very hard.
This is just disheartening, I enjoyed progressing in vet trials but with all the nerfs I simply have no idea what we should or could do...

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

mobicera wrote: »

As an average player trying to progress in vet trials my groups and I will be hit very hard.
This is just disheartening, I enjoyed progressing in vet trials but with all the nerfs I simply have no idea what we should or could do...

if you really believe that, get on the PTS with your group and show ZoS that you cant do this content with the changes.

mobicera

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

mobicera wrote: »

As an average player trying to progress in vet trials my groups and I will be hit very hard.
This is just disheartening, I enjoyed progressing in vet trials but with all the nerfs I simply have no idea what we should or could do...

if you really believe that, get on the PTS with your group and show ZoS that you cant do this content with the changes.

I am a console player I can't access pts:(

VaranisArano

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Agree with OP. ZOS changed their combat team and this is the result. Less & less option every patch. What I would like to know is: What is their goal ? Because it cant be balance. You don't achieve balance by making huge, revolutionary changes EVERY update, because you change the whole ecosystem too drastically. So it is even hard to predict the outcome.

I have to admit, ever since Gilliamtherogue joined combat team, thing are going downhill. I am sure I am not the only one who is disappointed. The guy's knowledge about the game seemed that if he joins combat team things will be better. But no...

The goal?

Part balance.
Part streamlining.
Part keeping things fresh by changing things up.
Part keeping player noses to the grind wheel by changing the meta.
Part changing visions as time passes and team members change.
Part Flavor of the Month ideas.
Part managing power creep.

You get to decide what percentage of the whole each part form.

Nifty2g

DoTs are the main skill gap when you think about it, keeping dots up and having a rotations down will result in higher dps. Nerfing dots will not widen the gap, it closes it even more.

Put

So from what I can gather you are angry because the game is getting harder to play?

Maybe the point is that some content is supposed to be hard to complete... and... maybe you aren't entitled to complete everything until you've put in the work?

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

mobicera wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

mobicera wrote: »

As an average player trying to progress in vet trials my groups and I will be hit very hard.
This is just disheartening, I enjoyed progressing in vet trials but with all the nerfs I simply have no idea what we should or could do...

if you really believe that, get on the PTS with your group and show ZoS that you cant do this content with the changes.

I am a console player I can't access pts:(

well you can pick the game for pc pretty cheap, you just need the base game, to get an "active" account to access the pts, everything is unlocked there anyways. it is really worth doing, if you are serious about the game.

mobicera

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

mobicera wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

mobicera wrote: »

As an average player trying to progress in vet trials my groups and I will be hit very hard.
This is just disheartening, I enjoyed progressing in vet trials but with all the nerfs I simply have no idea what we should or could do...

if you really believe that, get on the PTS with your group and show ZoS that you cant do this content with the changes.

I am a console player I can't access pts:(

well you can pick the game for pc pretty cheap, you just need the base game, to get an "active" account to access the pts, everything is unlocked there anyways. it is really worth doing, if you are serious about the game.

I don't even have a PC this is simply impossible for me at the moment or I would.

Mojmir

Put wrote: »

So from what I can gather you are angry because the game is getting harder to play?

Maybe the point is that some content is supposed to be hard to complete... and... maybe you aren't entitled to complete everything until you've put in the work?

its not actually harder, its artificial

Mizael

Absolutly agree with OP, this patch will make the gap bigger and make trials way more difficult to clear for medium level guilds.Seems like housing will be the endgame for pvers lol

peacenote

I agree with the OP.

TimeDazzler

coop500 wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Naw this patch looks good, if you dont PvE at all lol

Fixed

Very accurate fix.
This patch is 100% for the PVPers, shafting PVEers in the process.
Oh but PVEers don't matter, because PVP is endgame! Damn carebears, get out of our game!
(There I said it for the PVP elitists)

Wow! It’s almost like the last 2 years of patches have all catered toward pve and have boned pvp every time. Pvp finally gets a good patch and the pve boys can’t handle it. Pvp players have been adapting since the launch of this game. Now if only pve players could do the same.

mobicera

Cries wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Naw this patch looks good, if you dont PvE at all lol

Fixed

Very accurate fix.
This patch is 100% for the PVPers, shafting PVEers in the process.
Oh but PVEers don't matter, because PVP is endgame! Damn carebears, get out of our game!
(There I said it for the PVP elitists)

Wow! It’s almost like the last 2 years of patches have all catered toward pve and have boned pvp every time. Pvp finally gets a good patch and the pve boys can’t handle it. Pvp players have been adapting since the launch of this game. Now if only pve players could do the same.

Please post a video of you clearing the harder dlc trials and content on the pts this Monday...
These changes hurt average groups pretty badly and may simply kill prog groups.

TimeDazzler

mobicera wrote: »

Cries wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Naw this patch looks good, if you dont PvE at all lol

Fixed

Very accurate fix.
This patch is 100% for the PVPers, shafting PVEers in the process.
Oh but PVEers don't matter, because PVP is endgame! Damn carebears, get out of our game!
(There I said it for the PVP elitists)

Wow! It’s almost like the last 2 years of patches have all catered toward pve and have boned pvp every time. Pvp finally gets a good patch and the pve boys can’t handle it. Pvp players have been adapting since the launch of this game. Now if only pve players could do the same.

Please post a video of you clearing the harder dlc trials and content on the pts this Monday...
These changes hurt average groups pretty badly and may simply kill prog groups.

What does your post have anything to do with what I just said? Not only is your comment irrelevant but not very original. All the pve players saying clear XYZ on HM this Monday. It’s like me asking pve’rs to do 1vX this Monday and how good this patch is for that. Please try harder and read my OP again.

mobicera

Cries wrote: »

mobicera wrote: »

Cries wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Naw this patch looks good, if you dont PvE at all lol

Fixed

Very accurate fix.
This patch is 100% for the PVPers, shafting PVEers in the process.
Oh but PVEers don't matter, because PVP is endgame! Damn carebears, get out of our game!
(There I said it for the PVP elitists)

Wow! It’s almost like the last 2 years of patches have all catered toward pve and have boned pvp every time. Pvp finally gets a good patch and the pve boys can’t handle it. Pvp players have been adapting since the launch of this game. Now if only pve players could do the same.

Please post a video of you clearing the harder dlc trials and content on the pts this Monday...
These changes hurt average groups pretty badly and may simply kill prog groups.

What does your post have anything to do with what I just said? Not only is your comment irrelevant but not very original. All the pve players saying clear XYZ on HM this Monday. It’s like me asking pve’rs to do 1vX this Monday and how good this patch is for that. Please try harder and read my OP again.

If all you do is PvP your comments and opinions are irrelevant
I asked for something very simple show me these changes are ok..

del9

widening the gap between the floor and ceiling is a good thing [snip]. A game should reward players for being skilled. are we being trolled?

[Edit for bait.]

TimeDazzler

mobicera wrote: »

Cries wrote: »

mobicera wrote: »

Cries wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Naw this patch looks good, if you dont PvE at all lol

Fixed

Very accurate fix.
This patch is 100% for the PVPers, shafting PVEers in the process.
Oh but PVEers don't matter, because PVP is endgame! Damn carebears, get out of our game!
(There I said it for the PVP elitists)

Wow! It’s almost like the last 2 years of patches have all catered toward pve and have boned pvp every time. Pvp finally gets a good patch and the pve boys can’t handle it. Pvp players have been adapting since the launch of this game. Now if only pve players could do the same.

Please post a video of you clearing the harder dlc trials and content on the pts this Monday...
These changes hurt average groups pretty badly and may simply kill prog groups.

What does your post have anything to do with what I just said? Not only is your comment irrelevant but not very original. All the pve players saying clear XYZ on HM this Monday. It’s like me asking pve’rs to do 1vX this Monday and how good this patch is for that. Please try harder and read my OP again.

If all you do is PvP your comments and opinions are irrelevant
I asked for something very simple show me these changes are ok..

Please post the 1vX video on Monday. Also if all you do is pve your comments are irrelevant. Uno reverse card

TheValar85

frozzzen101 wrote: »

Let me preface that I believe that in its current form, this patch will be the single worst thing that happened to this game. Worse than Morrowind sustain nerfs, worse than infamous Nerfmire and worse than anything devs have thrown at us in recent years. I'm talking from a perspective of Dungeon-Trial-Arena person, as I’m not knowledgeable enough on pvp matters and on the surface level pvp changes look sensible for the most part. However, pve has been hit by multifaceted nerfs all across the board, and hardest hit will be on uncoordinated dungeon groups as well as any sort of progression teams that are still struggling with content they are progressing. So, which portion of your playerbase is the combat team actually attempting to nerf?

First let’s focus on dps nerfs because these are the simplest to explain. ZoS has been talking a lot about re-standardization and new standards for dots and aoe dots, however these new standards are absolute garbage.
If we compare parses from your average Joe and from Liko, arguably one of best dds in game at the moment, you will notice that Joe’s parses will be much more affected by reduction of efficiency of damage over time abilities. That’s because the very best dds can weave their direct damage skills and light attacks much more efficiently than the average dd, they know how to mitigate damage getting even more weaves, while your average dds, coupled with average support will have to spend time shielding, dodging and surviving making LA/spamable portion of their parse much less pronounced. The most consistent way of dealing damage in low-mid end of dps spectrum is trough dots. More specifically, strong ground aoe dots that are placed on the ground without the need to aim specific target priority targets and then you can do whatever. This difference is felt much more in actual content rather than dummy parses. I won’t bother clogging this thread with ESO combat log of peak, high, mid and low tier parses because anyone with IQ higher than their shoe size can deduce the effect of lowering damage over time abilities and its effect on players in certain dps thresholds, you know, the very obvious thing that our beloved combat team is so incredibly oblivious to. If for some reason you wanted to nerf peak dps, proper way of doing it was to nerf LA/spamable portion of parses and/or alter damage formula slightly. Difference would be felt across the spectrum for sure, however higher end players would feel it more than average/low tier players, and no one would feel singled out because of nerfs to their class abilities, but I digress. Make no mistake, it’s far too late to change this mindset of our developers. Even if their methods of lowering the dps ceiling are mathematically proven flawed, nothing will change because all of these changes are already programmed in PTS and it’s far too late to change it because of programming dollars.

Healing/Support changes are far worse and more far reaching than changes to dots. Healing in ESO at the moment is based on healing over time abilities, and with changes to orbs and springs everything is pushed in direction of reactive healing. While it might not look inherently bad on first glance because it might allow for higher healer skill ceiling, it will be massive nerf for everyone who’s not close to that ceiling and mid/low tier player suffers once again. Add in the fact that for years ESO was balanced around hot based healing and unless entire game and many encounters are rewamped, many low/mid tier groups will be forever stuck at content X without any chances of progressing in game. If we compare new Grand Healing that is 56% of its former strength without capability to stack with current iteration of this skill, the peak of having 4 stacks of Illustrious Healing is 7 times more healing than what is achievable in upcoming U23 trough this skill. Is that efficient healing? No, it’s overhealing but it’s also safety net for new players who cannot predict amount of incoming damage.

Let this sink in. At its peak performance as a hot, new Grand Healing will have 14% effectiveness from U22. Just as a sidenote, vCR+3 first clears have been done with 3 tanks using non-nerfed Earthgore, two healers with Bogdan for increased healing, and as many magblades as possible because at the time they had highest offhealing potential. Yeah, when you argue about healing being overpowered just think of this little factoid, would you? There are people still progressing that content. Even after vCR, recent content has also been balanced by having huge defiles on maintank in both BRP and something like Frostvault hardmode as well as its sister dungeon of Malatar. Not to mention, having to heal multiple people on multiple places, offtanks, maintanks, stacked dds and all that. Just think of AS+2 healer roles for example.
And finally massive, truly uncalled nerf to Orbs and sustain/hot coming from that. Unless you missed history lesson from Morrowind sustain nerfs, this affects low/medium tier groups the hardest. Top groups will manage somehow. They will fit in 4 orbs from their support and 4 Symphony/Sentinel while majority of groups not as good or coordinated or experienced will remain gutted and have to invest into sustain making performance gap more and more apparent. Good groups will stack adds more efficiently to allow higher dps/resource spent, their support will walk the razor’s edge just to make sure they empower their dds, where learning/progressing or straight up weaker groups will never be able to afford such things. So I will ask once again, ZoS, who are you nerfing?

Ultimately this travesty of a patch cannot be reverted completely because programming costs and developer pride was often placed as a priority over wishes and protests of community. However I do hope that there is sensible person in charge who can see past pride and attempt to alleviate some of major painpoints introduced with this update. The ever growing gap between peak, high, medium and trench tier players is one of major issues this game is facing and is fracturing the community. This patch will make it worse than ever before. Power creep introduced by various means isn’t your primary concern. Power difference however is. Rethink where you will take damage from dds because it will have huge ramifications on your playerbase and its average performance.
I really don’t want to badmouth the combat team. I know they have their vision of the game and want to see it through. But if I were in charge, and got submitted this PTS notes as a draft for balance changes, you’d be straight up fired on the spot, because shortsightedness of combat team regarding far reaching consequences of this arbitrary standardization is equivalent of corporate CEO bankrupting a company.

Thank you for your post. i agree with you in every point. in my opinion ZOs should hier you. becasue what is ee now from teh company is no more then incompetency wich ruins everything with teh game and for the whoel player base in global scale.

VaranisArano

del9 wrote: »

widening the gap between the floor and ceiling is a good thing [snip]. A game should reward players for being skilled. are we being trolled?

[Edit for bait.]

Depends on which floor.

ESO's PVE skill gap is like a skyscraper.

Top Floor: Vet top-tier DDs and guilds
Vet Progression Guilds
Vet Group Content
Normal Group Content
Bottom Floor: Overland Content


PVE content is generally developed for each tier. New Vet DLCs and Vet Trials + HM tend to be developed for the upper end of that skyscraper, obviously because those players are more skilled.

But that creates a problem, if the gap that's happening is:

Top Floor: Vet top-tier DDs and guilds
^
^
^
^
^
Vet Progression Guilds
Vet Group Content
Normal Group Content
Bottom Floor: Overland Content


If the very top floor increases and the rest of the players are losing ground, but content continues to be developed with the very top-tier in mind...I hope you see the growing problem.

Lilly_Elessa

Thank you for this post, OP!

It says so much that needs to be said ... I just hope it's being listened to.

Strider__Roshin

Sounds like a good patch to me. This is how things should be.

karpok

This is a good analysis.
Besides I can't help having a very bad feeling about all this changes. Not so long ago a dev mentioned balancing was a tricky work that needed successive, limited and delicate changes, not to break the whole gameplay.
Here we have global changes that are affected most part of the game (DoT, sustain, healing playstyle,...). Actually it would probably unbalance the game even more and it would take months of subtle changes to have it back to something more on the par.

FrancisCrawford

Nifty2g wrote: »

DoTs are the main skill gap when you think about it, keeping dots up and having a rotations down will result in higher dps. Nerfing dots will not widen the gap, it closes it even more.

Not true. Even a mediocre or bad player such as myself (whatever category I fall into) can have good DoT uptime. It's do everything else in addition where we fall horribly short.

msalvia

Basically here's my readout:

Casual and mid-tier players (95% of ESO population): This sucks and invalidates the work I've put into farming sets, learning rotations, learning class and weapon skill lines etc. Across-the-board damage nerfs limit the number of players who can clear vet stuff with reasonable effort and skill.

Elite/"pro"/sixteen hours per day players: This is great, reward my ability to play this game as if it were work. I'm in end game guilds and can just farm any set any time.

Seems like the second group is over-represented on the forums. Sure it should take effort and skill to clear hard stuff, but we can't deny an obvious (and increasingly wide) skill gap in this game, and this isn't gonna close that gap.