WORST combat rotations in many patches

Zalathorm

The best current rotations on every class are as follows
Cast one back bar ground dot for berserker enchant (hail, or even wall of elements on stam characters - zos please don't make this the best in slot)
Cast barbed trap for minor force
Spam your spammable
Spam your execute at the end
Load the rest of your bars with abilities you wont use for the passives.

If you add dots on your bar, you lose damage.

Some classes have 1-2 more abilities (blastbones, grim focus) but in general, that is the current formula for about 80k dps.

Light attacks, your spammable, and relequen (for stam) is like 40-50% of your dps.

Pleease, please dont make this type of combat the norm.

---

To fix this, I suggest
1. Increase dot damage to at least 1.5 to 1.75x that of a spammable
2. Or, nerf the OP sets (Lokkestiz, relequen, zaan, etc), not skills.

Muzzick

I was thinking of backbarring channeled acceleration on my Stam instead of trap to conserve some stamina and getting the buff from any range

darkblue5

Zalathorm wrote: »

The best current rotations on every class are as follows
Cast one back bar ground dot for berserker enchant (hail, or even wall of elements on stam characters - zos please don't make this the best in slot)
Cast barbed trap for minor force
Spam your spammable
Spam your execute at the end
Load the rest of your bars with abilities you wont use for the passives.

If you add dots on your bar, you lose damage.

Some classes have 1-2 more abilities (blastbones, grim focus) but in general, that is the current formula for about 80k dps.

Light attacks, your spammable, and relequen (for stam) is like 40-50% of your dps.

Maelstrom dot rotation was a love it or hate it thing, I get it. But going from cycling through 10 abilities to 5 at most, and casting a spammable 4-5 times in a row is truly boring. The more abilities that are actually good on your bar, the more choices you get to make in real combat. Choices are good.

Pleease, please dont make this type of combat the norm.

---

To fix this, I suggest
1. Increase dot damage to at least 1.5 to 1.75x that of a spammable
2. Or, nerf the OP sets (Lokkestiz, relequen, zaan, etc), not skills.

Problem with last patch was there were also very few real choices. The only real choice was "Cast a DoT!" and it didn't particularly matter what it was named because it just did the same thing. Then you buffed those DoTs with a channel. Basically like casting the spammable over and over except it was whatever DoT was running out. There was never any real choice and you barely lost any DPS by prioritizing the wrong DoT.

Zalathorm

Darkblue5:

Yeah you're right, I'll edit my OP. I dont want this post to be about the maelstrom rotation and get off track.

John_Falstaff

darkblue5 wrote: »

Zalathorm wrote: »

The best current rotations on every class are as follows
Cast one back bar ground dot for berserker enchant (hail, or even wall of elements on stam characters - zos please don't make this the best in slot)
Cast barbed trap for minor force
Spam your spammable
Spam your execute at the end
Load the rest of your bars with abilities you wont use for the passives.

If you add dots on your bar, you lose damage.

Some classes have 1-2 more abilities (blastbones, grim focus) but in general, that is the current formula for about 80k dps.

Light attacks, your spammable, and relequen (for stam) is like 40-50% of your dps.

Maelstrom dot rotation was a love it or hate it thing, I get it. But going from cycling through 10 abilities to 5 at most, and casting a spammable 4-5 times in a row is truly boring. The more abilities that are actually good on your bar, the more choices you get to make in real combat. Choices are good.

Pleease, please dont make this type of combat the norm.

---

To fix this, I suggest
1. Increase dot damage to at least 1.5 to 1.75x that of a spammable
2. Or, nerf the OP sets (Lokkestiz, relequen, zaan, etc), not skills.

Problem with last patch was there were also very few real choices. The only real choice was "Cast a DoT!" and it didn't particularly matter what it was named because it just did the same thing. Then you buffed those DoTs with a channel. Basically like casting the spammable over and over except it was whatever DoT was running out. There was never any real choice and you barely lost any DPS by prioritizing the wrong DoT.

You've just described the difference between dots and spammables. There was a skill in keeping up good uptimes on all dots and avoid overcasting, and that differentiated a well-practiced dps from the one who just spams one skill. Now, there's no choice whatsoever - adding any dots to rotation makes it more complex, but doesn't increase your damage, so your fellow newbie who just taps two buttons is hardly behind whatever elaborate rotation you can think of.

Also, if by channel you mean vMA DW, then I'll urge you to take a look at the parses. After vMA nerf, Cruel Flurry wasn't really ahead of non-vMA rotations, on most classes regular rotations were edging ahead, if not by much. And that also made a choice, who wanted, used vMA dual wield, who didn't want, used regular rotations for same or better results. Now in the following patch, good luck choosing from one dot and one spammable. ^^

FrancisCrawford

I have trouble justifying Trap on a magicka character. 10% added to crit damage is a lot less than 10% added to DPS overall. So getting that for 10 seconds is likely a lot less than one could do using that GCD for something else. The snare has no value in a boss fight.

So is it all about having a stamina dump?

Ditto Race Against Time in cases where you don't much care about the mobility (i.e. most PvE endgame). Channeled Acceleration his similar issues, actually, but at least it's something that can be used before a fight in a way that gives substantial benefit at no real GCD cost.

Guyle

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

I have trouble justifying Trap on a magicka character. 10% added to crit damage is a lot less than 10% added to DPS overall. So getting that for 10 seconds is likely a lot less than one could do using that GCD for something else. The snare has no value in a boss fight.

So is it all about having a stamina dump?

Its about minor force, youll benefit more from the 10% increase to crit damage in overall dps. Minor force last 18 seconds from barbed trap, and most ppl will probably end up backbarring channeled acceleration to get minor force from range, and only use barbed trap on a boss that is stationary. Channeled acceleration has a longer and clunkier cast time, but it does grant minor force for 36 seconds. Mag toons prolly wont slot trap, just other things for passive buff. My prediction leastwise

FrancisCrawford

Guyle wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

I have trouble justifying Trap on a magicka character. 10% added to crit damage is a lot less than 10% added to DPS overall. So getting that for 10 seconds is likely a lot less than one could do using that GCD for something else. The snare has no value in a boss fight.

So is it all about having a stamina dump?

Its about minor force, youll benefit more from the 10% increase to crit damage in overall dps. Minor force last 18 seconds from barbed trap, and most ppl will probably end up backbarring channeled acceleration to get minor force from range, and only use barbed trap on a boss that is stationary. Channeled acceleration has a longer and clunkier cast time, but it does grant minor force for 36 seconds. Mag toons prolly wont slot trap, just other things for passive buff. My prediction leastwise

So magicka builds probably shouldn't include the Minor Force skills? That's how it seems to me, but for a couple of patches it seemed like a lot of folks thought otherwise.

Nemesis7884

yeah the last 2 patches are absolutely horrible...horrible

makes me think the people involved have never and dont play their own game - it makes no sense, no fun, i dont see the strategy its just horribly bad...

the first patch was just "dot and wait"

and this patch is "only spam spam spam spam cause everything else is pointless"

how the hell can something like this happen? I think simply the wrong people with the wrong approach are in place - i am sorry - but this approach isn't' working out and its not yielding results...and iterative process should yield better results with every iteration...this is just horrible from one nightmare to the next without any plan or direction.

Guyle

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

So magicka builds probably shouldn't include the Minor Force skills? That's how it seems to me, but for a couple of patches it seemed like a lot of folks thought otherwise.

No, you'll most likely want to include minor force in your rotation. Most of the actual dps your going to be doing is on front bar, seeing as how dots are dead, your back bar is going to be entirely for proccing berserker using an infused 2 hander, and the added dps from vMA inferno staff using wall to increase LA damage if you have it. Besides that, all the skills will be utility skills like heal, purge, and space for channeled acceleration. Minor force adds a lot of damage, and will be worth the couple of seconds to cast it every 36 seconds.

Rex-Umbra

Dots dmg was fine maybe only allow a player 2 dots but keep dmg last patch

MehrunesFlagon

The problem with this is I really I hate how rotations look this patch,and I know I'm not just speaking for myself.

mikemacon

LOL...

OG_Kaveman

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Guyle wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

I have trouble justifying Trap on a magicka character. 10% added to crit damage is a lot less than 10% added to DPS overall. So getting that for 10 seconds is likely a lot less than one could do using that GCD for something else. The snare has no value in a boss fight.

So is it all about having a stamina dump?

Its about minor force, youll benefit more from the 10% increase to crit damage in overall dps. Minor force last 18 seconds from barbed trap, and most ppl will probably end up backbarring channeled acceleration to get minor force from range, and only use barbed trap on a boss that is stationary. Channeled acceleration has a longer and clunkier cast time, but it does grant minor force for 36 seconds. Mag toons prolly wont slot trap, just other things for passive buff. My prediction leastwise

So magicka builds probably shouldn't include the Minor Force skills? That's how it seems to me, but for a couple of patches it seemed like a lot of folks thought otherwise.

just minor force is worth like 4-5% dps on most builds, right @WrathOfInnos? doesn't really matter how you get it, skill wise. wish they would make Medusa a viable set.

Juhasow

Yeah in general it sucks. Like what's the point of even learning rotations ? People claim that now we'll have insane amount of choices but reality seems te be kinda different in my opinion. The most braindead static rotation will be used by most of the people since it'll be easiest to perform with close to none DPS loss when compared to dynamic and harder to perform rotations. Like I get ZoS wanted to put abilities closer together so there could be variety and different casual players could mix and match whatever they want and not be behind others whie still being able to participate in everything but reality is if everything gives You almost the same numbers then You just choose what's the simpliest. There will be still meta setups , abilities considered not worth slotting etc.

WrathOfInnos

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Guyle wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

I have trouble justifying Trap on a magicka character. 10% added to crit damage is a lot less than 10% added to DPS overall. So getting that for 10 seconds is likely a lot less than one could do using that GCD for something else. The snare has no value in a boss fight.

So is it all about having a stamina dump?

Its about minor force, youll benefit more from the 10% increase to crit damage in overall dps. Minor force last 18 seconds from barbed trap, and most ppl will probably end up backbarring channeled acceleration to get minor force from range, and only use barbed trap on a boss that is stationary. Channeled acceleration has a longer and clunkier cast time, but it does grant minor force for 36 seconds. Mag toons prolly wont slot trap, just other things for passive buff. My prediction leastwise

So magicka builds probably shouldn't include the Minor Force skills? That's how it seems to me, but for a couple of patches it seemed like a lot of folks thought otherwise.

just minor force is worth like 4-5% dps on most builds, right @WrathOfInnos? doesn't really matter how you get it, skill wise. wish they would make Medusa a viable set.

You’d need very high crit chance to see 5% DPS from Minor Force. I think it’s usually in the 3-4% range. I actually stopped using Minor Force for most Scalebreaker builds, with all the other good DoTs available and bars very full. On Dragonhold PTS Barbed Trap seems almost necessary, since the Minor Force now exceeds the strength of nerfed DoTs and sustain is so bad you have to mix in stam skills and/or heavy attack a lot.

Have I mentioned I don’t like this PTS update? Really hoping this doesn’t make it to live without serious adjustments.

Borys_Finlay

Zalathorm wrote: »

The best current rotations on every class are as follows
Cast one back bar ground dot for berserker enchant (hail, or even wall of elements on stam characters - zos please don't make this the best in slot)
Cast barbed trap for minor force
Spam your spammable
Spam your execute at the end
Load the rest of your bars with abilities you wont use for the passives.

If you add dots on your bar, you lose damage.

Some classes have 1-2 more abilities (blastbones, grim focus) but in general, that is the current formula for about 80k dps.

Light attacks, your spammable, and relequen (for stam) is like 40-50% of your dps.

Pleease, please dont make this type of combat the norm.

---

To fix this, I suggest
1. Increase dot damage to at least 1.5 to 1.75x that of a spammable
2. Or, nerf the OP sets (Lokkestiz, relequen, zaan, etc), not skills.

Hmmm i think i get it.

So another 30% nerf to ground aoes is the way to go then. Im looking forward it.

Muzzick

Now that trap is kind of trash, would any of you recommend tzogvins in melee builds?
Also regarding backbar vMA staff for Stam, would that really be better than master bow?

InvictusApollo

Zalathorm wrote: »

The best current rotations on every class are as follows
Cast one back bar ground dot for berserker enchant (hail, or even wall of elements on stam characters - zos please don't make this the best in slot)
Cast barbed trap for minor force
Spam your spammable
Spam your execute at the end
Load the rest of your bars with abilities you wont use for the passives.

If you add dots on your bar, you lose damage.

Some classes have 1-2 more abilities (blastbones, grim focus) but in general, that is the current formula for about 80k dps.

Light attacks, your spammable, and relequen (for stam) is like 40-50% of your dps.

Pleease, please dont make this type of combat the norm.

---

To fix this, I suggest
1. Increase dot damage to at least 1.5 to 1.75x that of a spammable
2. Or, nerf the OP sets (Lokkestiz, relequen, zaan, etc), not skills.

Really? If that is so, then I guess I might pick up PvE again. I was fed up with watching timers run down. I prefer pew pewing.

Erraln

Muzzick wrote: »

Now that trap is kind of trash, would any of you recommend tzogvins in melee builds?
Also regarding backbar vMA staff for Stam, would that really be better than master bow?

Not intensely better, but yes, unfortunately, it is. To get the full usage of the Master's Bow in PvE, you need to cast Poison Injection and also a Volley morph. PI by itself doesn't keep your back-bar glyph active at 100%. On live both of those skills are a credit to your damage, but on PTS AoE dots are so expensive that trying to keep Volley active noticeably impacts your sustain. And as Single-target dots are very nearly a waste of time, it creates this space where a different method, any method, of proccing your Berserk glyph might be preferable. Wearing a staff and casting Wall alone moves the cost to your (mostly unused) blue stat pool, and making it the Maelstrom staff allows your frontbar light attacks to get bonus damage regardless of what stat they consume to calculate that damage.... at least for the first 8 seconds.

The only reason you haven't heard of the mages doing the same thing in reverse is that there isn't really an easy stamina version of the staff's utility, where you consume green pool in order to provide glyph uptime plus statless bonuses. If Dual Wield still let you get two unnerfed glyphs like earlier this year, you'd see a bunch of DW backbars on mages for sure. And maybe frontbars.

Drako_Ei

Im already level 9 in WoW classic :P

Not saying i quit the game... but i canceled my eso+ sub until zos gets their *** together

universal_wrath

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

I have trouble justifying Trap on a magicka character. 10% added to crit damage is a lot less than 10% added to DPS overall. So getting that for 10 seconds is likely a lot less than one could do using that GCD for something else. The snare has no value in a boss fight.

So is it all about having a stamina dump?

Ditto Race Against Time in cases where you don't much care about the mobility (i.e. most PvE endgame). Channeled Acceleration his similar issues, actually, but at least it's something that can be used before a fight in a way that gives substantial benefit at no real GCD cost.

For dummy parses I think, or maybe bosses who don't move much like last boss of HOF.

universal_wrath

Drako_Ei wrote: »

Im already level 9 in WoW classic :P

Not saying i quit the game... but i canceled my eso+ sub until zos gets their *** together

You are probably going to reach max level before zos fix what they screwed.

ExistingRug61

darkblue5 wrote: »

Problem with last patch was there were also very few real choices. The only real choice was "Cast a DoT!" and it didn't particularly matter what it was named because it just did the same thing. Then you buffed those DoTs with a channel. Basically like casting the spammable over and over except it was whatever DoT was running out. There was never any real choice and you barely lost any DPS by prioritizing the wrong DoT.

This why I think the underlying issue here isn't the strength of the DoTs itself but rather the fact that all DoTs have the same strength, as I raised here https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/494658/thoughts-on-standardisation-dots-and-class-identity.
As long as all DoTs do the same standardised damage it will result in one of two cases: either all DoTs are better than spammables in which case we use DoTs only (U23), or no DoTs are better than spammables in which case we use no DoTs (current PTS).
Buffing or nerfing DoTs as a whole will only make us switch between the two options.

MLGProPlayer

The rotations are certainly better than last patch.

wild_kmacdb16_ESO

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

darkblue5 wrote: »

Problem with last patch was there were also very few real choices. The only real choice was "Cast a DoT!" and it didn't particularly matter what it was named because it just did the same thing. Then you buffed those DoTs with a channel. Basically like casting the spammable over and over except it was whatever DoT was running out. There was never any real choice and you barely lost any DPS by prioritizing the wrong DoT.

This why I think the underlying issue here isn't the strength of the DoTs itself but rather the fact that all DoTs have the same strength, as I raised here https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/494658/thoughts-on-standardisation-dots-and-class-identity.
As long as all DoTs do the same standardised damage it will result in one of two cases: either all DoTs are better than spammables in which case we use DoTs only (U23), or no DoTs are better than spammables in which case we use no DoTs (current PTS).
Buffing or nerfing DoTs as a whole will only make us switch between the two options.

I'd be ok with the damage nerf to DOTs if all DOT's had useful secondary effects. Ex: Poison Injection inflicts minor defile.

But the fact they took Major Sorcery away from Entropy makes me think that Zenimax wants them all to be one dimensional.

ecru

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The rotations are certainly better than last patch.

yeah but they're braindead easy now. i understand wanting to raise the floor but having so many abilities just barely worth slotting is pretty terrible. some ground aoes are just total garbage, like boneyard which does the same damage as a single target dot if you don't consume a corpse, but at 3x the cost.

Grandma

currently dps is high and easy and nice. I'm pushing 50k in vcr+1 at some points and i do downstairs. my best end log was i think 41k with downstairs. not bad at all! but now that dps is dropping i'll be lucky to hit 35k in all likelyhood.

If they really want to go through with these massive gutting nerfs they also need to massively overhaul the raids and achievements tied to them. I don't care what math they think they know, godslayer will be 100% unachievable next patch if it goes live. not that there's any top tier players left to even try for it anyways.

if the raids and achievements actually got adjusted [which i know they won't i'm just dreaming] then yeah I could see lower dps being okay. and i mean it's less interesting or tasteful but it's definitely easier than rotating 9 dots like current. but class identity hits a toilet, and zos's idea of 'new gameplay elements' and 'class identity' is giving stamdks a spammable and giving wardens minor vuln, idk what drugs they're snorting but i wish they would go cold turkey. In other MMOs new gameplay elements mean each class plays actually differently. some classes are all about dots, some are all about burst, some have class mechanics to balance [my fav example was ffxiv - don't love the game but the mage mechanic where you have to swap between fire and ice magic depending on your mana and timing was a fun little minigame] their dps out with skill and stuff. but no. in ESO 'class identity' means you get a different colored spammable.

Tannus15

I keep saying this, but I keep reading people over looking it.

If they buff dots back up we will immediately return to the dot meta

The problem is there are too many available dots. There is no downtime in a rotation between refreshing dots which means if dots are stronger than spammables there is no reason to have a spammable HOWEVER if dots are the same as spammables running ONLY spammables is significantly easier

You cannot solve this stand off by changing the damage values, you're just see-sawing back and forth between only dots and only spammables.

Soul-Trap needs to be a utility skill, not a damage skill.
Entropy needs to be a utility skill, not a damage skill.

This means you can't just fill your bars with dots, you need a spammable otherwise you're refreshing the dots too early and lose the dps & sustain advantages of dots.
This means you can't stack all your CP into dots or direct damage.

ExistingRug61

Tannus15 wrote: »

I keep saying this, but I keep reading people over looking it.

If they buff dots back up we will immediately return to the dot meta

The problem is there are too many available dots. There is no downtime in a rotation between refreshing dots which means if dots are stronger than spammables there is no reason to have a spammable HOWEVER if dots are the same as spammables running ONLY spammables is significantly easier

You cannot solve this stand off by changing the damage values, you're just see-sawing back and forth between only dots and only spammables.

Soul-Trap needs to be a utility skill, not a damage skill.
Entropy needs to be a utility skill, not a damage skill.

This means you can't just fill your bars with dots, you need a spammable otherwise you're refreshing the dots too early and lose the dps & sustain advantages of dots.
This means you can't stack all your CP into dots or direct damage.

Completely agree, see my post above.

It could also be addressed if they allow some variation in DoT damage from the standard that comes as a tradeoff vs utility or cost, ie: allow some to do more damage but have decreased utility, whereas others do decreased damage but have increased utility.

Another method I have seen suggested which could work is if DoTs get damage buffed back up a bit but have the duration of (perhaps only some) increased to something like 15-20sec so that you have to use a spammable as you can't fit enough DoTs on your bar to be able to just rotate through DoTs.

But as long as we have access to as many DoTs as there are that all doing the same standardised damage with only minor utility, it will always be all DoTs or no DoTs.

giantpixie

Leave out the minor force skills with infallible aether becoming useless healers will need a new set so twilight remedy gives minor force when a synergy is used and everyone can use one orb now so need to slot a skill for minor force