Why nerf Iceheart?

snoozy

honestly what is zos' problem with solo players?? this is so unnecessary and just plain mean.

people asked for a story mode. so let's make solo play even harder by nerfing their best defensive set into oblivion! now they'll have to run group content to experience the story and they'll be forced to buy the new dlc to farm a set that is only viable for templars

i'm so done with this. solo players are paying customers as well, you know??? and they would buy more dlc if they could actually run them solo without being forced to group by mechanics.

drkfrontiers

beyond our standards O.o

karekiz

Clear Cash N Grab

Anyone who thinks for a minute they "Just squeezed this nerf in" on week two of PTS out of random is silly. Its clear as exactly how you read it.

Like before reduce variety of choice and you will end up with essentially "Deal X Damage" as the only choice. Whichever ends up with "Deal X+1 damage" will be slotted and the rest avoided.

Lets nerf Slimecraw next shall we? It essentially removes healers role from encounters thus leading to Less Skill.

Ohh wait, can't have that discussion can we?

redlink1979

It's very important that players keep buying dlcs or the access to them...

"Developer Comment:
Iceheart has long been a powerful defensive set that has become a staple for situations where you want to sacrifice damage for survivability, especially in instances such as Maelstrom Arena and no-death Trial runs. While we love the idea of this set helping in those contexts, the value of defensive and offensive potential this set provided was leagues beyond our standards when comparing it to other sets such as Brands of the Imperium or Phoenix." means "This set was great compared to useless sets so we decided to make it useless to be in line with the others. By the way, the new set in the new dlc is better. Go buy it!"

ESO_Nightingale

#SaveIceheart

fred4

People bring up vMA. I am one of those players for whom vMA is borderline. When it came out, I couldn't do it. Years passed before I finally completed it during glyphgate. Then I thought: "Oh boy, with DOTs nerfed into the ground after Scalebreaker I won't be able to do this anymore". How wrong I was. I used to go in with 2x monster resistance pieces and still do on some classes. Take magplar, though, specifically my unmodified PvP build - New Moon, Amber Plasm, Grothdarr - and it steamrolls vMA. Going in with defensive setups has never been great for that arena. Steamrolling things before they become an issue is what you want to do. If a mid-level player wants to go in with the original Iceheart, why not? Maybe it helps with a no-death run, but you won't be posting a high score with it. It's one of those sets you just tend to grow out of.

Solaire

"Let's nerf an existing set to make the new set more appealing"

snoozy

redlink1979 wrote: »

It's very important that players keep buying dlcs or the access to them...

"Developer Comment:
Iceheart has long been a powerful defensive set that has become a staple for situations where you want to sacrifice damage for survivability, especially in instances such as Maelstrom Arena and no-death Trial runs. While we love the idea of this set helping in those contexts, the value of defensive and offensive potential this set provided was leagues beyond our standards when comparing it to other sets such as Brands of the Imperium or Phoenix." means "This set was great compared to useless sets so we decided to make it useless to be in line with the others. By the way, the new set in the new dlc is better. Go buy it!"

jokes on them, i won't buy *** if this change goes live. i wanna experience the story and i'm not gonna support this if i cant solo it

Rehdaun

Show of hands. Besides Templars, who's gonna use Zos new garbage set, Mother Ciannait even after the Iceheart nerf?
Anyone? Anyone?

kind_hero

fred4 wrote: »

People bring up vMA. I am one of those players for whom vMA is borderline. When it came out, I couldn't do it. Years passed before I finally completed it during glyphgate. Then I thought: "Oh boy, with DOTs nerfed into the ground after Scalebreaker I won't be able to do this anymore". How wrong I was. I used to go in with 2x monster resistance pieces and still do on some classes. Take magplar, though, specifically my unmodified PvP build - New Moon, Amber Plasm, Grothdarr - and it steamrolls vMA. Going in with defensive setups has never been great for that arena. Steamrolling things before they become an issue is what you want to do. If a mid-level player wants to go in with the original Iceheart, why not? Maybe it helps with a no-death run, but you won't be posting a high score with it. It's one of those sets you just tend to grow out of.

It also was a FUN set to have, it was great for learning. It was called a carry set or a crutch, but IMO you have to consider the average player who also wants to play DLC dungeons and such. Iceheart helped a bit, but it did not win vMA for you. It was fun.. you could pair it with Permafrost which at least felt clever, it was a nice situational set. Now you would rather have something else. I am very disappointed with how the devs choose to continue this game. They really do not listen to their player base, they are very stubborn in their vision, and antagonise their fans with each patch. People are expecting improvements, not nerfs, new content, not messing around with the established sets, new mechanics and skills, not cheap changes that benefit none. What is the benefit of nerfing this set???

Czekoludek

drkfrontiers wrote: »

beyond our standards O.o

Who would know that they have standards xD last time when I checked, they were killing every inch of fun in this game. Nerfing usable sets and skills because of "standards" but allowing one class to be above every other by huge margin in PvE for year (necro). Because your standards is selling new dlcs by nerfing old sets and classes and increasing power creep by adding broken/previously taken buffs, skills, sets. Disgusting to be honest, you just take advantage of poor competition on MMO market (lets hope this will change soon).

karekiz

Week 1 PTS - Hey this is a good patch, just buff a bit of things here or edit some of the new sets, and fix some bugs. Finally a nice patch.
Week 2 PTS - ZoS: Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Heelie

no more cheesing IR with dog *** dps

Odovacar

Heelie wrote: »

no more cheesing IR with dog *** dps

#Barrier

Nirntrotter

Okay so let me get this straight:

They butchered a decidedly defensive set in part because of its offensive potential (????) instead of just taking away the damage portion of the effect at least?

THE NEW MC SET IS STILL GARBAGE. Just because you make IH less attractive doesn't change the fact that MC's proc condition is HOT GARBAGE.

ESO_Nightingale

ethuiliel wrote: »

Okay so let me get this straight:

They butchered a decidedly defensive set in part because of its offensive potential (????) instead of just taking away the damage portion of the effect at least?

THE NEW MC SET IS STILL GARBAGE. Just because you make IH less attractive doesn't change the fact that MC's proc condition is HOT GARBAGE.

The damage wasn't an issue. Don't forget it's the only frost damage monster helmet in the game.

Nirntrotter

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

The damage wasn't an issue. Don't forget it's the only frost damage monster helmet in the game.

Of course not!! I was just going off their developer comment. Their reasoning is complete garbo front to back, that's what I wanted to say.

Eldartar

Just for Information/reference

Iceheart

LEVEL 50 CHAMPION 160

(1 items) Adds 833 Spell Critical
(2 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you have a 20% chance to gain a damage shield that absorbs 8600 damage for 6 seconds. While the damage shield holds, you deal 770 Cold Damage to all enemies within 5 meters of you every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.



On the PTS and subject to change

Mother Ciannait Set

LEVEL 50 CHAMPION 160

(1 item) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(2 items) While in combat, casting an ability with a cast time or channeling an ability grants you a damage shield that absorbs 3000 damage for 10 seconds. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.

burty61

Stupid change that hurts the average players the most. Most are using it to help them with first time runs in difficult content ( and or crap server/game performance) they are not use to, and then move on from it.

Also hurts those that enjoy solo builds or others that want to play as some sort Ice Mage. I don't see how any of the above were hurting the game or causing problems.

I'd just started to get the faith back after the roller coaster balancing of 2019 and then you get changes like this which are just daft.

Xvorg

robpr wrote: »

Whole design of Mother Ciannait is flawed.
It gives max magicka and proc of cast time/channel skills. So clearly it is intended for magicka characters. The problem is, only 2 classes have channeled/casted non-ult abilities, that is Templar's Sweeps/beam and Sorcs hard casted frags and dark deal. Magicka nightblade can proc it only on casting soul harvest. Magicka DKs, Wardens and Necromancers have no way to proc it...without another DLC, giving them Channeled Acceleration or using Vamp Drain that is utterly useless in PvE unless you want to quick charge your ult on dummy.
On other hand, stamina specs have Rapid Strikes, Wrecking blow, Snipe, allowing all kind of specs to use it reliably on cd but then the max magicka and magicka restore bonus is useless.

Can it be pvp intended shield set? With battle spirit it's 2500 shield. It's around Harness Magicka levels but again, magicka chars aside of Templars and Sorcs dont have abilities that would proc the effect.

Inevitable detonation should do the trick, but it puts you in a looooooong animation. In fact Inevitable Deto is better casted from ranged, when you need a shield. You will do much, much better with Light of Cyrodiil withou having to sacrifice a set. In fact, any smart magplar runs LoC + BS.

Besides that, it cannot be used with sets that proc on dmg.

Alienoutlaw

this change has effectively removed half of the game content from low-mid level players trying to learn the harder content. in affect you will increase the gap between the "end game elite" and those who aspire to progress. IC was if nothing else used as a tool to learn without to much grief and a set that was dropped once confidence had grown. whats next? nerf DLC dungeons and trials to bring them in line with the poor sets?

jecks33

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?

Stevie6

Maybe the devs / elite players should test "average joe" purple gear/overland/crafted gear without gold glyphs/weapons and do Vet Scalecaller Peak. Their group must include a basic sorc, stamDK(tank), magplar (healer), and a Nightblade (mag or stam). They cannot use ICEHEART or any other monster set! They must use overland/crafted purple gear only.

Then they can test which monster set will work and get the noobs/scrubs thru harder content. If Iceheart is sooo good, why can I not do vSCP? It's not VMA or a TRIAl. It's just as hard however. It took me a long time to get Iceheart and it's not very good. Some people will say it is a crutch. Who really cares? It's a game to have fun and enjoy when you have time off from work or the daily stresses of life in general. I could care less if someone has Zaan's and killing joe monster. It doesn't affect me one way or the other.

So, is nerfing everything to the point of "well I guess I'm not good enough so maybe my money is well spent somewhere else?" Where did the fun go? Eve Online went the same direction. The fun left after it was discovered "BOB" alliance manipulated everything and the devs were in BOB. Kind of makes me wonder about ESO..maybe "they" don't want the scrubs to progress. We can only go so far with the nerfs and overland/crafted sets aren't cutting it. We need damage and defense...

Heh DAYZ is looking pretty good now. lol good luck with Elder Scroll Nerf Online.

thadjarvis

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)

RABIDxWOLVERINE

Reducing the damage shield is one thing but reducing it and doubling the cool down is ridiculous.

EcclesiaFides

Literally no one complains about Iceheart. It's a great defensive monster set that is really helpful for solo players, solo builds, no-death runs, and high-damage portions of trials or dungeons. No one is out here saying it's too strong or too common or too prevalent. No one. It's not a pain point. And yet you nerf it to oblivion. Like, you nerf every aspect of it. And no one asked for or indicated that a nerf was necessary. Because "standards". Like can’t we have a few sets that go outside your precious standards?? I’m so tired of hearing about these “standards”. They are placing everything under the 30-ton crushing machine of “stAnDardS” and grinding it all to dust and calling that “balance”. Well guess what? Mashing everything down to fit some subjective, capricious measuring stick means everything suddenly starts feeling like nothing stands out from anything else. It already feels like that now and they just keep pushing ahead. *** one size fits all standards. It doesn’t work in the real world and it doesn’t work in this one, either. It's bad enough with just skills, but it's much worse when it comes to equipment, and especially equipment that has been in the game as long as Iceheart has. Why now??? If the set has been "SO OP" why now?? Why are we just hearing about it now? It's been this way for years. C'mon ZOS.

MorganaLaVey

Great, i like it! Can you Nerf Brawler too pls? Its even more OP in vMA than IH! Especially with Bastion CP and 2H Master-Weapon.

(Buffed with Weapon Pot.)


What else can we Nerf?

ZOS_Volpe

Greetings,

We have recently had to remove a handful of bashing and inappropriate comments from this thread. Feedback is a very important function of our forums, but we do ask that all feedback remains civil and constructive.

Thank you for your understanding.

ZOS_GinaBruno

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.

karekiz

MorganaLaVey wrote: »

What else can we Nerf?

Slimecraw - Perma Minor Berserk with no healer or Restro staff requirement. This allows Tank + 3 DPS to effectively cheat out having a pseudo healing with 100% effectiveness on Combat Prayers, while the tank delivers orbs (Or DPS) to the team. This undermines appropriate group composition and reduces the need for healers to play a role in a group.

New Change:
Slimecraw -
1 piece - Crit
2 piece - Whenever you deal light attack damage from the Back grant yourself Minor Resolve for 2 seconds.

Fixed. This new set still uses the old idea in new ways!

New DLC New new set:

DLC The Red Herring:
1 piece - Stamina/Magica
2 piece - Whenever you light attack a monster grant yourself Minor Berserk for 2 seconds.