WTF, AoE DoTs are now completely worthless...

Major_Lag

Just read the patchnotes and jumped on PTS real quick to check out this nonsense.
Don't have the time for extensive testing and analysis right now, gotta go to work - but one thing in particular stands out:

AoE DoTs are now hot garbage!!!

So, let's compare the numbers. CP810 character with no CP assigned, no equipment, no mundus - straight out of the PTS character template.
Force Shock (spammable) - 245*3 damage = 735 damage
Wall of Elements (AoE DoT) - 90 DPS, 63% cost increase

For reference, under the same conditions, WoE shows up as 132 DPS on Live.
And to put things in perspective - Lightning Form, a utility skill with negligible AoE DoT damage output, currently does 81 DPS on Live.

@ZOS: so you took the AoE DoTs, which have already been nerfed into the ground, and re-nerfed them even further into the lowest pits of Oblivion, to be derided and mocked by Molag Bal for all eternity.

Either restore the AoE DoTs to pre-Elsweyr state, where they are doing comparable damage to ST DoTs, and increase the cost (and/or shorten the duration) to compensate - or make them A LOT cheaper to use, since in the current state these skills have been effectively relegated to purely utility status with no usable damage output to speak of.

Dagoth_Rac

Major_Lag wrote: »

Either restore the AoE DoTs to pre-Elsweyr state, where they are doing comparable damage to ST DoTs

ST DoTS got nerfed even harder. So, bizarre as it sounds, AoE DoTs are now equivalent again to ST DoTs. It is just that both are garbage in Update 24. DoTs probably will not be worth the GCD in Update 24. Your best DPS rotation will likely be one bar, loaded up with skills that give passive stat boosts, and then spamming Force Shock nonstop for 10 minutes until the 100M health Trial boss is dead. Sounds like fun. :-\

Nerhesi

.... Dots are completely worthless now - not just AoE ones.

LiquidPony

Nerhesi wrote: »

.... Dots are completely worthless now - not just AoE ones.

It's pretty amazing that we can go from 5.1.x, DoTs are so strong that many builds use nothing else ... to 5.2.x, where DoTs are so trash that most of them aren't even worth using at all.

ZOS does this over and over again. There's never any finesse in their balance adjustments. They buff the ever-loving *** out of something one patch and then smash it the next.

I'm not surprised by the direction of this flaming trashcan of a patch, but somehow ZOS has managed to disappoint me despite my extremely low expectations.

Major_Lag

To be fair I didn't even look at ST DoTs yet, as I said I don't have the time for it currently, but I did see the huge nerfs in the patchnotes.

I don't care much about ST DoTs though, I find them quite clunky to use in PvE with the game's horrible targeting issues.
Also, repeatedly DoTting up multiple (single) targets is what I consider to be a really boring and tedious kind of gameplay.

Ideally there should be a decent balance - so that a reasonable rotation would involve a spammable, some AoE DoTs, and no more than 1 or 2 ST DoTs.
But we will never have any kind of "balance" when we are constantly seeing 30%...60% nerfs/buffs across the board.

Tannus15

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

Major_Lag

Tannus15 wrote: »

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

I did provide data, read my OP.

Besides, I don't know about you, but I want my gaming experience to be fun for the most part, not just to be minmaxing some numbers on a screen while sacrificing all fun for the sake of it.

ecru

Not just AOE dots, some single target dots now too. Rending Slashes now does less damage than single target direct damage abilities. Why would anyone ever slot this "dot" now if direct damage abilities do more damage per gcd? This makes no sense. The whole point of using a dot is to get more damage per gcd over a longer duration than you can get with a direct damage ability.

Tannus15 wrote: »

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

You can look at tooltips and figure out whether an ability is worth casting or not. For example, if a direct damage ability has a larger tooltip than an aoe ability, or damage over time ability, that ability is not worth using in a single target rotation in any situation.

LiquidPony

Tannus15 wrote: »

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

I parsed for several hours after the PTS dropped.

It's exactly what it looks like.

Doesn't take a genius to see that DPS just got cut *waayyyyyy* down.

Take your typical stamnecro from the current live patch ...

* Major Vulnerability reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
* Skeletal Archer damage reduced by 50%
* Rending Slashes damage reduced by 63%
* Poison Injection damage reduced by 63%
* Arrow Barraged damage reduced by 17% and cost increased by 60%
* Soul Trap damage reduced by 50%
* Barbed Trap damage reduced by 63%

Were you expecting to see something other than a massive nerf to total DPS when virtually every skill currently in use in a meta build was nerfed into the ground?

MartiniDaniels

Tannus15 wrote: »

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

Entropy, live vs PTS, exactly the same build, trial dummy buffs. Nerfed exactly in half, i.e. 100%. And this is ~ the same for every ST dot in the game.

LiquidPony

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

Entropy, live vs PTS, exactly the same build, trial dummy buffs. Nerfed exactly in half, i.e. 100%. And this is ~ the same for every ST dot in the game.

Not to mention ... Degeneration no longer restores 100 magicka per LA.

It was one of the strongest abilities in the mag DPS toolkit for one patch and now it's basically useless. Perfect.

ccfeeling

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

Entropy, live vs PTS, exactly the same build, trial dummy buffs. Nerfed exactly in half, i.e. 100%. And this is ~ the same for every ST dot in the game.

How much the magicka pool and spell dmg you have please ?

FearlessOne_2014

People begged hardcore for nerfs to DoTs. This is the results. Read em and weep em. I hope yall are happy with what yall wrought on yourselves. Very few on these forums, can rightfully fix their fingers, to cry about the very nerfs they lobbied for.

davapoole

every time they alter the skills or sets for so called re-balancing it is always done for resons of people complaining in pvp. Yet it screws up peoples ability to play the game most in pve , yet the reasons for doing it dont exist in pve. Strangely the lead combat designer is also the lead pvp designer so is it any wonder that all the changes for pvp reasons just ignore most of the games player base in pve.. Use the battle spirit to do this instead of impacting so hugely on people ability to play how they want for no reason at all in pve. make the cost higher or drop the damage a bit but using asledghammer to crack a nut is pathetic and they will have to make a massive u turn again in update 25. you adjust in small amounts so its not a stupid amount like this. making all dots useless to try to get people using other skills is forcing them to not use them as they are useless now.People follow the meta because they want to do good damage but now you are forcing your sledgehammer ideas on them and totally negating about 50% of skills in the game. Do either a cost increase or a damage reduction but not both and stop forcing changes for pvp reasons on the pve game that there is no justification for as they should be seperate and not keep causing all these stupid changes again and again. You will swap all these changes back next patch as it has made such a negative effect on the game. You said in eso live that you wanted people to be able to play how they wanted but by doing these drastic changes you have taken that choice away and are just forcing your opinion on to everyone playing the game. i run a guild and within 30 mins of these patch notes coming out all i heard for the next two hours was a constant stream of wtf they cannot be serious at least a 30% damage reduction is not balancing its destroying the dots. These are the worst and most destructive patch notes i have ever seen in 4 years and am sick of hearing everyone complaining about nothing but you destroying all there characters a one fell swoop. Not only does it take you years fixing bugs like the stamina ride bug that no one wants fixing you now try to force your idea of people being able to play how they want by taking away most of there rotations as being viable how is that helping people play how they want. Typical zos *** up but biggest yet well done

MartiniDaniels

ccfeeling wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Parses anyone?
Data?

Or are we all just reading patch notes and waving our arms around?

Entropy, live vs PTS, exactly the same build, trial dummy buffs. Nerfed exactly in half, i.e. 100%. And this is ~ the same for every ST dot in the game.

How much the magicka pool and spell dmg you have please ?

This is PVE, absolutely standard crit build FG+MS. 36k magicka, 3500 SD, minor berserk.

Lord-Otto

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

People begged hardcore for nerfs to DoTs. This is the results. Read em and weep em. I hope yall are happy with what yall wrought on yourselves. Very few on these forums, can rightfully fix their fingers, to cry about the very nerfs they lobbied for.

Single-target DoTs needed a nerf, especially that ridiculous Soul Trap. The big surprise here is the hefty double nerf, damage and cost, and also the nerf of AoE DoTs. We didn't ask for that. In classical ZOS fashion, they completely overshot the goal. This is what is so baffling.

ecru

Lord-Otto wrote: »

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

People begged hardcore for nerfs to DoTs. This is the results. Read em and weep em. I hope yall are happy with what yall wrought on yourselves. Very few on these forums, can rightfully fix their fingers, to cry about the very nerfs they lobbied for.

Single-target DoTs needed a nerf, especially that ridiculous Soul Trap. The big surprise here is the hefty double nerf, damage and cost, and also the nerf of AoE DoTs. We didn't ask for that. In classical ZOS fashion, they completely overshot the goal. This is what is so baffling.

I agree that single target magicka dots were overtuned, but dots like rending slashes or the dk dots were fine because they required you to get into melee range to apply them, so the risk vs reward was balanced. Not only did you have to get into melee to apply them, since you're playing melee you have to stay in melee to apply pressure on top of those dots. It made sense for stam to have access to those strong dots.

Giving everyone dots equal to those dots that they can apply and stack from 28m range was the major mistake that never should have happened. If melee dots or melee abilities do equal or less damage than ranged abilities, there is no incentive to play melee.

Rending Slashes seems to have gotten the biggest nerf, with it doing less damage than every direct damage ability I could compare it to. Like 20% less damage than Flurry, which is hilarious.

Tannus15

@LiquidPony Yeah, I know you've been in PTS and parsing, I would just like to see maybe a representative parse on a 21m or something.
I mean, they are intentionally shifting the meta away from stacking dots, so that's cool, but how does that actually look?
Are we back to a spammable meta?
How does that look now?

I guess more to the point, the devs know what the tool tips look like and what's in the patch notes, but do they know exactly
what impact this is going to have on end game builds. Are they aware of exactly how much dps loss this equates to compared to live?

All this thread is doing is saying "hey, you know that thing you did? yeah, you did that!"

ecru

Tannus15 wrote: »

@LiquidPony Yeah, I know you've been in PTS and parsing, I would just like to see maybe a representative parse on a 21m or something.
I mean, they are intentionally shifting the meta away from stacking dots, so that's cool, but how does that actually look?
Are we back to a spammable meta?
How does that look now?

I guess more to the point, the devs know what the tool tips look like and what's in the patch notes, but do they know exactly
what impact this is going to have on end game builds. Are they aware of exactly how much dps loss this equates to compared to live?

All this thread is doing is saying "hey, you know that thing you did? yeah, you did that!"

I don't think a lot will change for an "optimal" rotation. Dots and ground AOEs will still have priority over direct damage abilities, but not by a whole lot, so there won't be a big difference between a parse with good dot uptime, and a parse without. Or at least not as much as there is on live.

LiquidPony

Lord-Otto wrote: »

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

People begged hardcore for nerfs to DoTs. This is the results. Read em and weep em. I hope yall are happy with what yall wrought on yourselves. Very few on these forums, can rightfully fix their fingers, to cry about the very nerfs they lobbied for.

Single-target DoTs needed a nerf, especially that ridiculous Soul Trap. The big surprise here is the hefty double nerf, damage and cost, and also the nerf of AoE DoTs. We didn't ask for that. In classical ZOS fashion, they completely overshot the goal. This is what is so baffling.

I just did a number of parses on a stamden ...

Starting with a typical-ish (from prior patches):

DW: Cutting Dive, Rending Slashes, Growing Swarm, Sub Assault, Bird of Prey. Bear.
Bow: Arrow Barrage, Poison Injection, Barbed Trap, Bull Netch, Bird of Prey. Bear.

I hit about 77k

Looking at the DPS per each DoT, wasn't really sure many of them were worth running.

So I removed Rending Slashes, moved some things around. 77k.

Ok ... so I removed Growing Swarm, moved some things around again. 77k.

Ok ... so I removed Poison Injection, swapped from a Master Bow to a Maelstrom Bow and morphed from Arrow Barrage to Endless Hail. Guess what? 77k.

With literally a rotation that is:

Endless Hail, swap
(Sub Assault, Cutting Dive x 2) x 4

Cast the Bear when it's up. Recast Barbed Trap and Bull Netch when they're up. Under ~25%, replace Cutting Dive with Whirling Blades. Under ~10%, replace Sub Assault with Whirling Blades.

This is a bad joke.

lassitershawn

Title is true facts.

BahometZ

Being on console, I'm just gonna wave my arms till the patch drops.

I pray I have the stamina for it.

IronWooshu

They literally took ST Dots and halved them rather than lowering them to 2.0% from 2.5% and going from there.

juhislihis19

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

People begged hardcore for nerfs to DoTs. This is the results. Read em and weep em. I hope yall are happy with what yall wrought on yourselves. Very few on these forums, can rightfully fix their fingers, to cry about the very nerfs they lobbied for.

No, they absolutely didn't.

People here begged for an intelligent nerf, if any. It was ZOS who AGAIN decided to butcher.

No use to be that "I told you so" guy, when you're not even in the right.

Skjaldbjorn

LiquidPony wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

People begged hardcore for nerfs to DoTs. This is the results. Read em and weep em. I hope yall are happy with what yall wrought on yourselves. Very few on these forums, can rightfully fix their fingers, to cry about the very nerfs they lobbied for.

Single-target DoTs needed a nerf, especially that ridiculous Soul Trap. The big surprise here is the hefty double nerf, damage and cost, and also the nerf of AoE DoTs. We didn't ask for that. In classical ZOS fashion, they completely overshot the goal. This is what is so baffling.

I just did a number of parses on a stamden ...

Starting with a typical-ish (from prior patches):

DW: Cutting Dive, Rending Slashes, Growing Swarm, Sub Assault, Bird of Prey. Bear.
Bow: Arrow Barrage, Poison Injection, Barbed Trap, Bull Netch, Bird of Prey. Bear.

I hit about 77k

Looking at the DPS per each DoT, wasn't really sure many of them were worth running.

So I removed Rending Slashes, moved some things around. 77k.

Ok ... so I removed Growing Swarm, moved some things around again. 77k.

Ok ... so I removed Poison Injection, swapped from a Master Bow to a Maelstrom Bow and morphed from Arrow Barrage to Endless Hail. Guess what? 77k.

With literally a rotation that is:

Endless Hail, swap
(Sub Assault, Cutting Dive x 2) x 4

Cast the Bear when it's up. Recast Barbed Trap and Bull Netch when they're up. Under ~25%, replace Cutting Dive with Whirling Blades. Under ~10%, replace Sub Assault with Whirling Blades.

This is a bad joke.

Ironically, I parsed higher with a 2her. The execute is quite nice for Warden atm. Imma try dropping dots though. They really are just trash.

satanio

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

People begged hardcore for nerfs to DoTs. This is the results. Read em and weep em. I hope yall are happy with what yall wrought on yourselves. Very few on these forums, can rightfully fix their fingers, to cry about the very nerfs they lobbied for.

Single-target DoTs needed a nerf, especially that ridiculous Soul Trap. The big surprise here is the hefty double nerf, damage and cost, and also the nerf of AoE DoTs. We didn't ask for that. In classical ZOS fashion, they completely overshot the goal. This is what is so baffling.

I just did a number of parses on a stamden ...

Starting with a typical-ish (from prior patches):

DW: Cutting Dive, Rending Slashes, Growing Swarm, Sub Assault, Bird of Prey. Bear.
Bow: Arrow Barrage, Poison Injection, Barbed Trap, Bull Netch, Bird of Prey. Bear.

I hit about 77k

Looking at the DPS per each DoT, wasn't really sure many of them were worth running.

So I removed Rending Slashes, moved some things around. 77k.

Ok ... so I removed Growing Swarm, moved some things around again. 77k.

Ok ... so I removed Poison Injection, swapped from a Master Bow to a Maelstrom Bow and morphed from Arrow Barrage to Endless Hail. Guess what? 77k.

With literally a rotation that is:

Endless Hail, swap
(Sub Assault, Cutting Dive x 2) x 4

Cast the Bear when it's up. Recast Barbed Trap and Bull Netch when they're up. Under ~25%, replace Cutting Dive with Whirling Blades. Under ~10%, replace Sub Assault with Whirling Blades.

This is a bad joke.

Ironically, I parsed higher with a 2her. The execute is quite nice for Warden atm. Imma try dropping dots though. They really are just trash.

Same observation here. 2h may actually be meta.

Bashev

5k for wall of elements is too much. Yes it could be used in PvE where mobs stay at the place you want them but for PvP it is too expensive skill. Unslotted!

f047ys3v3n

I think that the overall direction is good.

You will be able to slot utility now because it costs you only 1.25x another spam-able cost per rotation for every Dot removed instead of 2.5+x. I think that is good, I think the 9 DOT's on your bar and a shield or vigor meta was not enjoyable or dynamic to play and left nothing for build options or creativity.

I am worried that:

1) The content has not been re-scaled and players will realistically do 50% the dps they did in Elsewhere now. It won't matter the direction. People will hate that in a way that no reason will salve. They need to re-scale content before going live or the hemorrhaging of players that started last patch will get worse, not better.
2) I think the cost increases to AOE's were a bit dramatic (perhaps this was to end them in PVP) and that AOE dots need a bit of DPS compensation for the disadvantage of being stationary.
3) The whole light attack / heavy attack broken scaling mess will loom even larger now and really needs fixed. I really would have fixed this issue first as it has been a big underlying problem for a long time now.

Mayrael

LiquidPony wrote: »

Nerhesi wrote: »

.... Dots are completely worthless now - not just AoE ones.

It's pretty amazing that we can go from 5.1.x, DoTs are so strong that many builds use nothing else ... to 5.2.x, where DoTs are so trash that most of them aren't even worth using at all.

ZOS does this over and over again. There's never any finesse in their balance adjustments. They buff the ever-loving *** out of something one patch and then smash it the next.

I'm not surprised by the direction of this flaming trashcan of a patch, but somehow ZOS has managed to disappoint me despite my extremely low expectations.

You read my mind. Nobody used DoTs before U23 because of a reason. They overbuffed them thats true, but ffs why overnerf them again? 10-20% nerf would be fine for now, just to see how it will work (when using 3 dots it would be 30=60% nerf!). But no, ZOS needs to do their balanace rollercoaster every single time. Im really tired because of this.

Wayshuba

davapoole wrote: »

every time they alter the skills or sets for so called re-balancing it is always done for resons of people complaining in pvp. Yet it screws up peoples ability to play the game most in pve

This is somewhat true but a perfect example of why they were asked if they play their own game today.

Yes, there were complaints about the DoT abilities in PvP BUT not for the reasons they believe - that they were too powerful. The primary issue is that PvP is a game a skill-counterskill, but ZoS upped the Dot meta huge and did NOTHING about the counter skill.

All that was needed to fix this was to reduce the cost of Purge by about 50% and this would have most likely fixed the issue. Simple. Instead, we are getting a litany of changes that are going to upend the game, yet again, only three months later.

Furthermore, you don't even need to test to see that reducing damage all over the place while keeping the healing meta up is already going to be a problem with PvP.

I mean these changes they keep making don't even look good on paper, never mind when they go live.

The issue is, they do not know what they are doing. You do NOT make these kind of wild swings every three months that cause players to have to relearn their characters over and over again. If this is the case, then I will say a skill-based MMO is a failure then. However, I don't believe that. I believe we have an out of control combat dev team that ZoS management best get in line BEFORE we start seeing major player retention issues. It has already reached a point where these ludicrous swings in skills from patch to patch is completely overshadowing the excitement of the new content coming.

Major_Lag

Wayshuba wrote: »

I believe we have an out of control combat dev team that ZoS management best get in line BEFORE we start seeing major player retention issues. It has already reached a point where these ludicrous swings in skills from patch to patch is completely overshadowing the excitement of the new content coming.

What I'd like to see in the next patch notes:

Patch Notes wrote:

Combat dev team:

• Reduced the salaries by 66%,
• Lead dev now does flat surface maintenance instead of the previous function,
• Increased the working hours per week to 64 from the previous value of 40.