Update 25 Combat Adjustments

ZOS_BrianWheeler

Hello all!

We’d like to take some time to go over our goals for the next Update coming to ESO, and some of the more noteworthy changes you’ll see.

For Update 25, the Combat Team’s primary focus has been on performance improvements, particularly related to Block and item set proc conditions. While making these adjustments, we are also bringing any item sets affected into combat standards. As a reminder, the term “standards” means we are simply using consistent formulas that determine how much an ability should cost and how effective it should be based on various factors such as being an Area Effect, having an Over-Time effect, complexity of execution, etc. This process will continue in future updates for item sets.

Block is an ability that everyone can use at any time, which means it can create a lot of traffic for the server to handle. In our continued efforts to improve performance, we are adjusting how the ability works under the hood. You will still be able to do everything you used to with Block. What you’ll notice is animations will blend a bit differently out of a “block cancel”, but the effectiveness of an ability will remain and function the same; the ability will still fire when “block cancelled” but you won’t have any “dead time” before the global combat cooldown ends. This should also get rid of a few health desync issues when getting killing blows with abilities that have been triggered after a block cancel. By refactoring Block much the same way we did with Sprint in the previous Update, we expect the usage of that ability to be more performant.

Next, we’ve been focusing on bug fixes and conditional logic (item set and ability procs). Many abilities and item sets have to step through several requirements to fire their effect beyond their standard line of sight, cost, range, etc. From these changes, the conditions for procs will now work more reliably with their stated requirements. For example, Scathing Mage will no longer erroneously trigger from the first tick of any Damage over Time, and Reflective Scales will no longer work versus channeled effects such as Radiant Destruction. While making these fixes, many of the item sets affected have also been updated to fall in line with our item set or ability standards to ensure their overall power remains closer to their intended design.

Finally, we are addressing Magicka/Stamina sustain, especially in encounters where longer fights or prolonged damage in specific areas are required. With that in mind, we are reducing the cost of Area of Effect Damage over Time (AE DoT) abilities to reduce the pressure on your Magicka/Stamina while utilizing a rotation involving an AE DoT. This does result in a revised standard between Single Target DoTs and AE DoTs which we will be evaluating with the live game and on the PTS.

Again, our focus for U25 is primarily on performance updates and bug fixing which you’ll see in more detail when we publish the patch notes. We encourage everyone to hop on the PTS when we publish U25 to run through the adjustments and give us feedback!

Moridin_82

Thanks 4 the update

Beardimus

Good to know, thanks @ZOS_BrianWheeler

Any changes to Cyrodill / PvP coming in U25?

Ragnarock41

I would complain about block cancel but what is the point when I don't have the sustain to use it in no-cp...

Anyways, this doesn't set my expectations very high, another wings nerf to start the next patch...Maybe that is a good thing though, setting my expectations right.

Edit: Will these block changes affect bash cancels too I wonder?

Tommy_The_Gun

Please, no more nerfs...

Aaxc

As long as the main goal is performance and bug fixing, I'm cool with it

Tannus15

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Please For the love of god, Listen to the PTS feedback this time!

update 23 feedback was overwhelmingly "dots are too powerful, tone it back" which you ignored and then toned it back in update 24.

update 24 feedback was "aoe costs are too high, you're messing up the sustain" which you ignored and now are correcting.

I have no idea how things are going to go this PTS, but please please please take a moment to listen to the feedback instead of leaving us with another bad meta for 3 months while we wait for the inevitable correction in update 26 that we no doubt will tell you is required during this PTS.

BohnT2

I too like playing an overly tanky patch that's fueled by overperforming defensive options while also supporting an overtuned offensive skill in accelerating drain.

NyassaV

What happened to doing over class passives? You guys are doing good work but there is other stuff that has been mentioned that we haven't heard anything about.

Dusk_Coven

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Block is an ability that everyone can use at any time, which means it can create a lot of traffic for the server to handle. In our continued efforts to improve performance, we are adjusting how the ability works under the hood.

Could you please elaborate on the reason this adjustment is necessary? Are people using it so often and what are the symptoms on the server that players are encountering?

Victor_Blade

Templar nerf when? Magblade buffs when?

Revokus

Necromancer bug fixes and improvements I hope this time ? @ZOS_BrianWheeler

Bfish22090

Harmony nerf better be a part of this update

xaraan

Hm, will be interesting to get actual details. I'm sure it will be a while before we do though, I'm expecting mostly fluff and marketing for thursday, figure details will come later.

Curious to see what they do to blocking and how else they mess up tanking. The game is to the point where I have barely been playing and only do my preferred role: tanking, when I have to. It's already to the point where you barely need a tank for most basic pledge content and the stuff you do need one for is often ridiculously tuned just to create a challenge with ability use because the challenge can't be created with good design. Feels like most content to tank is either boring or annoying. Will it get worse... Will this be the patch that finally just makes me scrap tanking all together? lol

Kalante

They better not mess up animation canceling with block now. Animation canceling has been ruined so much due to their "revisions". Combat has become so clunky. Also remove ult cast times its a terrible change that nobody likes.

Czekoludek

You promise you will bring back identity to the classes, where are my very needed nightblade changes? This class, especially in PvP is currently a clunky garbage

MentalxHammer

Can we please have clarification on the statement regarding block cancelling? You mention that after the block cancel there will be no delay before the end of the cooldown. Will the block animation carry until the end of the cooldown? Will the GCD get cancelled? After block cancelling there will be no delay for what?

Joy_Division

The last time zos adusted animation priorities, it made weaving and canceling a nightmare. Not exactly optimistic here.

Sandman929

So...you're not going to limit healing to group members? Block is the big performance hit huh? Ok then.

nafensoriel

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Block is an ability that everyone can use at any time, which means it can create a lot of traffic for the server to handle. In our continued efforts to improve performance, we are adjusting how the ability works under the hood.

Could you please elaborate on the reason this adjustment is necessary? Are people using it so often and what are the symptoms on the server that players are encountering?

I can take a stab at this one without even knowing how they did it.
I imagine right now block ticks quickly and everything damage/buff/debuff has to fire every time that tick fires.

So that means in a PVP situation when 20 guys with a total of 40+ debuffs hits you and half those hits are AOEs hitting other people also blocking you get a royal trainwreck of things happening all at once that ignite the hamster and launch it into the sun.

What they've done is probably containerize block and other elements so far fewer calculations per second are required per tick. If you are curious lookup containers vs virtual machines for the probable method they've used.

Hamboot

ZOS_BrianWheeler could you please take a look at magblade group utilty? I would love to see some changes to soul tether ulti, increase the dmg based on how many players are hit by x %, I would also love to see lotus fan radius increased by a couple of meters so that it hit more targets, also I don't understand the logic behind soul tether having a cast time but not crescent swipe?

Hamboot

the radius of lotus fan* not soul tether

Hamboot

Hamboot wrote: »

I would also love to see it's radius increased by a couple of meters so that it hit more targets, /quote] I was talking about lotus fan

VaranisArano

I appreciate the update and second the requests that ZOS act on PTS feedback before we wind up in another iteration of the cycle of "players warn about the negative results of gameplay changes on PTS, changes go Live, three months later ZOS reverts the gameplay changes."

I realize that PTS isn't well designed for completely adjusting the gameplay changes that are supposed to roll out for the coming update. On the other hand, this PTS problems -> Live problems -> gameplay reversion next update is becoming a bad habit.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Thanks for the update. Would you be able to provide any news on the following with regards to U25?
If you are unable to confirm for the update could you simply comment as to whether or not the issues are known / under investigation?

1) Streak CC'd for 490000 days bug
2) Stuck in Combat Bug leading to being unable to swap skills / mount
3) Crash when nearing highly player populated locations such as a keep defence
4) Client Memory leak


Additionally if you happen to read this, it would be really nice to know if there are likely to be any changes to Cyrodiil in the Dark Heart of Skyrim (I think everyone assumes about a new weapon but anything else would be interesting e.g. scoring changes based on population, updated rewards for the worthy / end of campaign rewards etc)

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

Inklings

Having aoe cost brought back down is gonna really help in giving more diversity back to builds. Especially magica. Since the large majority of class ground dots are magic based the past changes had really hurt diversity in mag builds by leaving us only to be able to afford one ground dot and that was always defaulted to vMA staff skills. This left many class aoe dots off the table, and really hurt class identity.

There is still an issue were the dots arnt really strong enough, so for the time being meta will still avoid them, defaulting back to a spamable builds with as many complimenting self buffs and triggered proc skills. BUT we at least now have the option to play outside that meta again. Having multiple play styles is what has made a game going into its 6th year so much fun and has given it its replayability. The past years changes have stripped so many options away from us on the basis of this "skill audit" and it hasnt set well with a lot of the long time players. I hope we are finally getting passed that point and can start putting some more emphasis back into different play styles. We were so close to making single target dots builds, stand your ground aoe dot builds or spammable builds not just an option but all viable. I hope we can reach that one day in the not to near future.

brtomkin

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

...
many of the item sets affected have also been updated to fall in line with our item set or ability standards to ensure their overall power remains closer to their intended design.

...

Buff Ashen Grip?

x48rph

I'm sorry but I can't help but read this as "we're going to basically nerf all the good proc sets in the name of 'standardization'" thereby rendering them useless and forcing us to yet again grind for new gear and redo all our builds that might use them.
(As a side note , I find your standardizations to be highly arbitrary as you've allowed plenty of things that break your own standards to continue to do so even after you have "reviewed" them.)

Sorry, I don't really want to take such a negative and pessimistic view but after the last year of changes and being forced to constantly rework builds, I really can't help it and this just seems to be a continuation of it. I know I'm only one player but if I have to redo builds every three months this year, it will surely be my last

Here's hoping I'm wrong and you guys do a stellar job instead and make me love eso all over again.

Captain_Slaymore

Going out on a ledge here with asking why Block is being examined as a performance issue when i have been in a group of 24 around a resource flag and all of us were blocking at the same time to survive an incoming bomb blade and not a single person experienced a hiccup, but running onto a porch filled with pet sorcs each with multiple pets out, glowing skins on, massive animations from siege, dots and skill and half the group drops/freezes/desyncs. I think you have bigger problems than block at this point.

Also, Why on Gods earth are you still making new sets? We have been told that there is going to be an unused image / item purge. Well, if that's true, at this point with min / max meta builds being the rage, 80% or your armor sets fall into that category yet we get them for killing everything. How about this? Just drop basic armor in the different levels for breaking down and instead of sets, have all sets craftable but you can only get proc traits from the dungeons / trials / arenas etc. It would eliminate so much waste. If i want a set that gives me all stam and procs a volcano under people, give the tools to do it, make running a dungeon enjoyable because i can get the traits to do it instead of the random drop and hope for the best BS.

If you do what you have always done, you get what you have always got. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity. So, what you have always done has always resulted in barely fix one thing and breaking other things then a reset next patch. Stop doing what you have always done please.

ZOS_GinaBruno

code65536 wrote: »

The last time there was a leak of patch notes, ZOS claimed that they were fake, yet they turned out to be accurate. So we are understandably skeptical of any claim that the latest leak is "fake", and the points brought up in this overview seems to suggest that ZOS may be lying yet again with these claims that they are "fake".

The patch notes haven't been sent to anyone to leak out. Anything you're seeing that discuss them are fake, because nobody except me has them currently.

frozywozy

When are we going to see an acknowledgement of the memory leak and an ongoing fix?