Why nerf Iceheart?

Xvorg

OtarTheMad wrote: »

snoozy wrote: »

Israel1948 wrote: »

Nobody:

Absolutely Nobody:

ZOS: "Wait, we have a monster set... that does a tiny amount of... *gulp* frost damage? NERF! NERF! NERF!"

they really do hate frost damage for whatever reason

*cries in magden frost tank*

Yeah, they have, I believe, 3 sets that do frost damage. Winterborn, Frozen Watcher and Icy Conjurer (last two both in DLC dungeons, Winterborn only available via Maelstrom Arena). Also can you really count Iceheart as frost damage? It's like 300 damage... I'm not counting it. I am also only counting sets that do some sort of extra frost damage as an effect, not ones that boost frost damage already in game.

Wish we had more frost sets.

hey and Ysgra... Ok not

But Ice Furn... well, not that one

Lich... liches always do frost dmg right? Oh, it seems it doesn't do that

ok, so we have 4 sets with ice dmg and one of them was nerfed.

This is the very same mind set of people that used World in Ruin on poison DKs to increase the dmg of 4 skills in the whole game....

phoenixkungfu

For the love of god eso if you do this. Please make it useful in pvp and dont allow this change to be affected by battle spirt.

snoozy

Tannus15 wrote: »

@snoozy I want a frost version of skoria that drops a ice tornado like in sunspire. That would be an awesome frost monster set.

@Tannus15
that would indeed be awesome
winterborn frozen watcher seems to do something remotely similar:
5 items: Summon a blizzard around you while blocking, inflicting 1000 Frost Damage every 1 second to enemies within your blizzard. Your blizzard has a 15% chance of inflicting Chilled on enemies damaged.
i've never tried it tho. can't be bothered to farm it...

edited for frozen watcher

Dragonredux

snoozy wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

@snoozy I want a frost version of skoria that drops a ice tornado like in sunspire. That would be an awesome frost monster set.

@Tannus15
that would indeed be awesome
winterborn seems to do something remotely similar:
5 items: Summon a blizzard around you while blocking, inflicting 1000 Frost Damage every 1 second to enemies within your blizzard. Your blizzard has a 15% chance of inflicting Chilled on enemies damaged.
i've never tried it tho. can't be bothered to farm it...

That's Frozen Watcher. Also it's nice on a warden tank, it has some good synergy with leeching vines.

burty61

Why is it suddenly classed as a strong set? Useful yes, but strong?

Is this "strong" rating based on anything other than it not fitting into the balancing spreadsheet properly?

When you equip it you have made a choice to sacrifice offensive power for defensive power.

It really seems that you have run out of good ideas for new dungeon monster helms and poor old Ice Heart has taken the hit.

Dusk_Coven

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

It seems so backwards- the way they're doing things, people will run the content until they get what they need and never touch it again because it's such a drag to get through.

Or, you know, just wait for it to show up at the Golden. No one needs to touch their DLC dungeons for monster helms at all. You can instead spend that time grinding FG1 pledges to get Undaunted Keys to then still not get the matching shoulder in the weight you want.

luen79rwb17_ESO

I don't know / don't care if my last comment was deleted but I'm gonna stress again the infuriating feelings that come out of me whenever I read this approach to nerf and nerf stuff that wasn't hurting anyone to begin with!!

No, it's not my "feedback", it's how I feel about the state of the game. This kind of stuff reminds me of the sad state of Blizzard as of late. I dearly hope ZOS don't follow that same path.

Tannus15

@snoozy I was running winterborn, ice furnace and nerien'eth on my warden for a while for frozen fun times. Might drag that build out of the cupboard with the ice furnace changes.

Ice Furnace:
This set no longer requires direct damage with a proc chance to trigger.
Increased the damage to 1644 from 1056.

Winterborn:
5 items: When you deal Frost Damage, you have an 8% chance to summon an ice pillar that deals 6020 Frost damage to all enemies in a 3 meter radius. The ice pillar persists for 2 seconds and reduces the Movement Speed of all enemies within the radius by 60%.

Frozen watcher is a fun tank set, but useless as a dps set.

Dusk_Coven

xWarbrain wrote: »

"We love that people use it for vMA, but we don't want you to use it for vMA anymore."

Because when elite players who have the whole thing memorized might still take about an hour to clear vMA, that is not enough.
You must make non-elite players take even more time and attempts, just so that they can say at the end, "this was not the weapon I was looking for". Multiplied by 100 runs.

Elites will succeed with our without a particular item. But everyone else tries to put together combinations that will help them succeed. If you keep squashing every useful combination, what's the point of offering so many choices?
As others have said, Iceheart is a niche set. It's not going to suddenly help you win the whole game.

ccfeeling

jecks33 wrote: »

every patch the destroy one of the good MS in the game... earthgore, ilambris, pirate skeleton, engine guardian, sentinel and iceheart now... what's next? bloodspawn? chudan? and then?

Jeck is right.

ESO_Nightingale

OtarTheMad wrote: »

snoozy wrote: »

Israel1948 wrote: »

Nobody:

Absolutely Nobody:

ZOS: "Wait, we have a monster set... that does a tiny amount of... *gulp* frost damage? NERF! NERF! NERF!"

they really do hate frost damage for whatever reason

*cries in magden frost tank*

Yeah, they have, I believe, 3 sets that do frost damage. Winterborn, Frozen Watcher and Icy Conjurer (last two both in DLC dungeons, Winterborn only available via Maelstrom Arena). Also can you really count Iceheart as frost damage? It's like 300 damage... I'm not counting it. I am also only counting sets that do some sort of extra frost damage as an effect, not ones that boost frost damage already in game.

Wish we had more frost sets.

We need more frost damage skills, and for magicka animal companions skills to deal frost damage too. Procs chilled and therefore the crit buff more in PvP and enables more sets like winterborn, Ysgramor's and elemental succession. As well as separating us from stamden a bit more. Instead of blue magic and green magic, it's frost magic and bleeding/poison with animals thrown in there.

Moloch1514

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

It seems so backwards- the way they're doing things, people will run the content until they get what they need and never touch it again because it's such a drag to get through.

Or, you know, just wait for it to show up at the Golden. No one needs to touch their DLC dungeons for monster helms at all. You can instead spend that time grinding FG1 pledges to get Undaunted Keys to then still not get the matching shoulder in the weight you want.

Lol yeah because that is reliable for popular DLC sets. Zaan says hello.

Stevie6

Jimmy SorcMaster “Molag bal, grant me the power to crush my enemies and drive them before me!”
Molag Bal “Granted Jimmy, so long as you know there will be a price to be paid at the end.”

Time passes and Jimmy wakes up with a nasty backache.
“Molag bal, I feel different, changed” Jimmy says.
Molag Bal “Yes jimmy, I no longer can give you the power you need. The gods above me said for me to give you this.”
Jimmy “ WTH is this! A stick?”
Molag bal “No Jimmy, it’s called a nerfbat. Go crush your enemies!”
Jimmy “Yes lord”

Time passes and once again Jimmy calls on Molag Bal’s aid.
Jimmy “lord, I got the nerfbat to work but it’s not enough. My friends left me and I’m alone now. I need to have a new weapon!”
Molag bal “I don’t make the calls anymore, either git gud or l2p with crap equipment you noob!”
Jimmy “Yes, I will fall on the nerfbat. Thank you Molag Bal. I will get good and l2p.”

Another year passes and Molag Bal wonder why he hasn’t heard from Jimmy. He watches from his throne..an image appears.
He sees a marked grave which says “Here lies unknown sorc, he died as he lived without power and hopelessness.”

Some orc says offhandedly, “He’s dead,Jim.” Then all the orcs laugh.
Molag Bal just sighs. “So much for the nerfbat.”

Rolandaxx

LukosCreyden wrote: »

As a solo player, this is kind of disappointing.

Maybe I am over-exaggerating, but I feel that nerfing this set is a nerf against solo players and ESO has always been special BECAUSE you can really be a solo player. I feel like this is a step in taking away something that makes ESO what it is.

I'm a solo player also, you're not exaggerating. This just feels mean spirited. Seriously considering cancelling + and taking a break.

pod88kk

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We know it’s frustrating to see a strong set get adjusted in this way, but it was a necessary step to bring it a little closer in strength with existing and upcoming sets.

Have you thought about making better upcoming sets?
What's the point in doing these harder DLC dungeons if you get garbage at the end of going through the pain of doing it of Veteran?

pklemming

We know it’s frustrating to see a strong set get adjusted in this way, but it was a necessary step to bring it a little closer in strength with existing and upcoming sets.

As has been mentioned prior to this, not strong, useful. What you are doing is turning something useful in to useless, not bringing it in line. As far as I know, noone here has said, "What a great change", or even, "This was a needed change". The ONLY people that want this change is ZoS, and it appears to be down to poor design of new gear, or plain lack of ideas.

You have managed to systematically annoy loyal subscribers recently. Annoy people who subscribe enough and eventually they will just decide to go elsewhere. I can only think that the advert for Skyrim was too successful, and you really need a lower server load now.

Morg08

More than one post on the forums about build fatigue. I'm so tired of reworking builds. It the opposite of fun. It is just tedious.
My time is valuable, whether the dev's think so or not. I'm almost done with this game. I just have zero interest in making builds over and over and over.
This iceheart nerf blows away a solo build I just finished and it is fun... it's not used in any serious game play... it's just something fun and they are going to ruin it because they want to sell the expansion and the crappy monster set it comes with.
It's just so lazy and see through and I'm very very close to tapping out for good.

Granicus

Threads created by others in the General discussion area keep getting closed in favor of this thread. Granted, the matter is currently a PTS issue, but we know how this issue will end. Let’s not inform the general community just yet ... but we ‘appreciate’ your ‘feedback’ on this ‘Strong’ set (some spin right there).

If ZoS is indeed neutering the current environment to help sales of their new DLC, as it appears to many people here, then perhaps a nice boycott on buying the new content and subs might actually help make the point that we see and do not like. If true, this is a despicable tactic by any company. Iceheart today, what unnecessary nerf tomorrow to drive sales?

notvenousdrake

It’s pretty pathetic honestly, though sadly enough I kinda thought this was gonna happen seeing the new set come out combined with the track record these guys have on “adjusting”, we shouldn’t even need to come up with any sort of alternative nerfs just leave the damn set alone and stop trying to justify it

ccfeeling

We compromise , we will have more and more monster sets nerfing on coming DLCs .

ZOS is just testing our bottom line .

Rolandaxx

pklemming wrote: »

I can only think that the advert for Skyrim was too successful, and you really need a lower server load now.

LOL I had that same thought

Deohjo

They don't even know what age groups remain in this game

SirMewser

ZoS can't create new content, they know that which is why they break old content so people go for replicas in their "new" content.

What they are oblivious of, is that we already knew this (and many past) changes were going to happen. It's a spit on the loyal players who remained and a turn off on the players to buy into new content.

They won't see the results of that yet, but it is long-term.

Kaartinen

SanguineMyBrother wrote: »

Not since the racial changes to wood elf have I felt this disgusted.

You're giving me flashbacks..

Yamenstein

jecks33 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We’ve been reading everyone’s feedback about the recent change to Iceheart (not just on the forums, but other channels and sources as well) and we appreciate you taking the time to let us know your thoughts. We know it’s frustrating to see a strong set get adjusted in this way, but it was a necessary step to bring it a little closer in strength with existing and upcoming sets.

That said, based on some in-game data, testing, and the feedback we’ve been reading, we’re going to make further adjustments to this set in next week’s PTS patch. The plan is to make the baseline function meet the same standards as the Mother Ciannait set, with a 5k shield that lasts up to 6 seconds with a 6 second cooldown. With Iceheart's auxiliary function being focused on preserving the shield to get as much effectiveness out of the damage as possible, and Ciannait around rushing in boldly to break the shield to maximize the Magicka gain, there will be a better parity between the two that helps them both meet our standards as well as feel different from an engagement standpoint.

Sorry Gina but this is the wrong way, adjustements (nerfs) are never well acepted. Instead of nerfing everything to "bring it a little closer in strength with existing and upcoming sets", buff older useless sets, make new sets more desirable and not the only possible choice.

Buffing older sets would mean buffing alll monsters and content as well, wouldn't it ? Otherwise the difficulty of the game goes down further because the sets got buffed.

I have no problem them needing iceheart, as long as it's done right.

They want to have all sets on the same level.

If they give OP sets in DLC then everyone complaining about this nerf will then instead just complain about the payable content being better. Pay to win! Yay. *Sarcasm*

So because they can't do that, when they bring out new sets they'll be forced to make sure they are in line with older sets. Especially when they are similar.

Could they have made the new monster set better than it currently is ? Sure! They could. It's not very original I agree with that.

But people who think Iceheart didn't need a nerf is just delusional.

NupidStoob

Contaminate wrote: »

God forbid anyone uses defensive sets for defense amiright

Crutching on being shielded? Noob!

Crutching on having a healer? Casual baby!(/s)

People can use all the defensive sets they want and I don't care since normally it comes at a cost. Iceheart however hardly affects DPS negatively and casts a free shield every ~7 seconds. Which other monster set in the game casts a free skill for you with that frequency while also having a secondary function? None.

Besides that stop putting words in my mouth. I am not insulting anyone's ability to play here and just point out the current state of the game.

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

The kind of people wearing Iceheart are the kind of people who struggle to clear vMOL, not the kind of people getting high-end achievements. It's a, "maybe I can survive an extra round of adds on the Twins fight" set, not a no-death hard-mode speed-run set.

That is not true. There are a ton of tripple achievement progression groups that rely on Iceheart and barrier rotations and these are most often players that already cleared most of the hardmodes.

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

TIL that there are a bunch of video game snobs who act like we're trying out for the Olympics. Thank god you're here to be the arbiter of what does and does not make a "legit" achievement.

And no, the players that are causing the power creep aren't the ones using Iceheart, not even close. It's comical that you think that power creep can be attributed to Iceheart. Come tell me how you're doing on your stam DDs when the precious Lokke + Rele combo gets nerfed and then we'll talk.

Don't need me to point out that ZoS is cheapening PvE achievements more and more, you just need some common sense. You can put labels like "snob" or whatever else you want on me, but what I say is still true. Achievements have a clear purpose in the game which is to evoke a sense of accomplishment. Nobody posts on the forums or reddit how they got meaningless achievements like Volunteer or Jewelry Crafter, because it simply takes little to no effort. To anyone who cares about achievements the rarity and difficulty to accomplish it is what makes it special.

The point I make is quite simple to understand: It is easier than ever to accomplish anything in this game. They could completely remove Iceheart and that statement would still be true.

Powercreep is not caused by players, but by the evolution of the game. The kind of players that were doing 50% of possible DPS 3 years ago are the same kind of players that do so now. However the possible DPS has more than doubled so they now easily hit max DPS from a couple years ago. HP recommendation for trials used to be 17.2K HP and that was at a time when we had around 500 CP and way less red CP for more defense. At the same time trials have been nerfed multiple times.

Dusk_Coven

.

Alienoutlaw

i for one will not be giving anymore feed back from the PTS find your own bugs fix your own sets, im not gonna help ruin anymore sets/skills or class's for the sake of a sneak peak at a dlc. i gave my feed back in good faith and that has been destroyed

Juhasow

thadjarvis wrote: »

Didn't get chance to get on PTS earlier, which I will try to do today. I can provide a reference baseline from past testing.

---

Damage

A few months ago, we ran a few vDLC dungeons with MagDK with Grothdaar and Magden with Iceheart otherwise same gear.
It worked out that Iceheart did about 30% the damage of Grothdaar in the logs.

That made sense:

Taking tooltip from ESO sets as I'm not sure what passives are active affecting in game.

Grothdaar is 1907 DPS with potential 50% uptime or 954 AOE DPS with a range of 8m
Iceheart is 770 DPS with potential 100% uptime or 770 AOE DPS with range of 5m
Adjusting for 39% surface area that is 300 or 31% of Grothdaar

Though Iceheart does more than 300 single target, the figure remained at 30% in content because the damage stops if the shield drops which happens when positioning to get the most damage. IE the uptime of IH was close to 70% in tests while Grothdaar was up closer to 45%.

So, we thought it was a fair trade: 1/3 damage in exchange for Crit over max Mag and a bit of sustain and DPS avoiding shield/heal casts. It seemed quite balanced with Grothdaar in content in our perspective.

From the patch notes it appears that IH's max DPS dropped from 770 to 250 (32% of 250)
Thus, IH would do approximately 10% (31%*32%) of Grothdaar in content; considering Elf Bane maybe 5%?

---

Defense

There are no other LIVE shield monsters but healing and shielding skills in ESO are often balanced similarly so we can use healing sets as a proxy. The closest set to IH is this area would be a 40-50% single target heal or shield proc. Chokethorn fits perfectly.

Max Shield/Heal per second:
Chokethorn: 2,250
LIVE IH: 1,433 (63%)
PTS IH: 504 (22%)

One could argue that Choke is not a good comparable. PTS Iceheart vs Scourge, Earthgore, Crest of Cyro would respectively be 52%, 59%, and 27%.

---

Summary

Live IH has 30% damage of a comparable full damage alternative and 63% of a (power budget) comparable defensive set.

PTS IH has 10% damage and 22% defense relative to other options.

This does not consider other important factors like usefulness of uptime etc. That's been covered by others. This is just my data findings.

Related Reference Info (I may have some wrong figure below. So, please check yourself before using)

Very flawed comparision tbh. Comparing iceheart to healing sets is kinda silly. Heals help You to outheal damage , shields negate that damage from interacting with Your health bar. Also there is a thing called overhealing when I havnt heared about "overshielding". Shields are extension of Your health and You can be still healed when having shield which is completly different interaction then heals have. Is there any chance that chokethorn , earthgore , malubeth etc will help 20k hp player survive 21k dmg mechanic applied with 1 hit ? Because that is what Iceheart will do. It's not the same as getting 8,6k heal every 6 seconds. It's extending Your health bar by 8,6k every 6 seconds. And there is a huge difference between both.

Anotherone773

Disclaimer: Only read the first few posts.

I sometimes talk about ZOS's knee jerk one extreme to the other balances and how it messes everything up because they make to drastic of changes at once. The changes on this set are a perfect example of that. They could have increased the CD to 12 sec and left it alone and see how it did. OR they could have reduced damage shield and damage. Though if i was reducing these two i would of reduced half as much as they did.

These chances are far to drastic for any type of balance. This is NOT how you balance a video game.