Dizzy roller coaster skill

ElvenVeil

I have voiced frustration with stamina spamables being destroyed or stuff just changing constantly in this game.. And I will soon give it a rest, but before that I will just share the development of dizzy swing, which sort of showcase the frustration of playing stamina.
Elseweyr patch


Scalebreaker


dragonhold


Harrowstorm



So in elseweyr, we saw a huge nerf to dizzy swing (because that artificial 6% damage increase was not the reality in pvp). This was super strange for most of us, as it was hardly used, and was generally considered bad in pvp.
scalebreaker it recieved a big buff, because s/b skill line was butchered (I at least assume that is why). Dizzy swing became the main spamable for stamina users, because what else could they really use. This is the dreaded dot patch where onslaught (among many other things) was completely overtuned. Dizzy was very bugged, with knockback just not working. The damage itself of the skill was imo fine here but problems came from the the additions of super long duration onslaught and broken knockback
Dragonhold zos does a zos u-turn and gives dizzy a huge damage nerf. We do fix the knockback issue and give off balance stun. hurray for everyone (except damage is too low) .
Harrowstorm - better remove the reliable stun, so that everyone who has some pvp experience will know that the stun from that skill is now entirely useless, and damage still very low for a melee-cast time skill. Cast times are not a good thing in this game.

So the question really is, what is the point? we go from big nerf - to big buff - to big nerf - to put in the grave. I assume one reason for the dragonhold nerf was because too many stamina people used it, despite that being an artifical situation created by zos to begin with. So when people move away from dizzy now, either onto stamplar that has a class spamable or just bow snipe spam, will these be the next to be smashed into the ground because too many use them?

Kalixte

ElvenVeil wrote: »

So the question really is, what is the point? we go from big nerf - to big buff - to big nerf - to put in the grave. I assume one reason for the dragonhold nerf was because too many stamina people used it, despite that being an artifical situation created by zos to begin with. So when people move away from dizzy now, either onto stamplar that has a class spamable or just bow snipe spam, will these be the next to be smashed into the ground because too many use them?

For me, it'll be the(snip)-launcher and the leap with their brand new cast times. (snip) this.

(edited for profanity)

Freakin_Hytte

I just wish they could return it to its original before elsweyr, then it was used by a few as a combo opener nothing more. This back and forth of one of my favorite skills is horrible and no one asked for them. My belief in zos was low before, now its just gone entirely.

Fur_like_snow

Yeah the “balance” on d swing is all over the place. Who knows how the skill will play in 6 months with such schizophrenic changes. They nerf the weapon line alternatives and DoTs and wonder why all the stam players went to d swing. On a stam sorc what else am I suppose to use?

MincVinyl

@ElvenVeil thanks for consolidating the changes for people in your post

I've been playing dizzy stamsorc for just about 5 years now, Imo I would much rather use pre elsweyr dizzy over anything that zos has been trying since. The skill was fun to use, hard hitting, the knockback was synced with the animation, easy to counterplay, and punishing if you sucked with it. I never had any issues with the knockback on the attacking or defending end of it, unlike with the new off balance stun that can make you slide on the ground if you break free to fast.

Currently the new dizzy is so mindless anyone can use it, being a short cast, lower damage, only one aim check. Since the stun is synced to the medium/heavy there is a clunky feeling to getting hit, where your character seems to not get hit by anything and just falls over. Dizzy just feels terrible now, especially when combined with ult cast times, your playstyle is essentially 3 cast times in a row for a combo (dizzy,heavy,ult) gets even more fun if your build incorporates dark deal or channeled acceleration.

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Why didn't they just bring offbalance to wrecking blow and keep the knockback on dizzy. I've talked about this in previous posts. Essentially Wrecking would have empower and offbalance, which pushes the player to utilize different rotations depending on the scenerio instead of always just doing dizzy>heavy>dizzy>heavy>dizzy>med>ult. To burn the enemy down you use dizzy and light rotations, To chunk and prep into an ult you would use the dizzy heavy rotation when available. This could be the "spammable" morph that is in the game currently, and the older skillshot style of dizzy with the longer cast and knockback would be the "burst" style.

MentalxHammer

These dizzy and off balance changes for harrowstorm are so freaking frustrating. Literally no one complained about off balance stun being overpowered. No one wants the new dizzy mechanic. PLEASE ZOS, listen to your player base, revert dizzying swing, revert off balance!

MincVinyl

See, but nobody complained about pre elsweyr dizzy, which really only got gutted since onslaught got changed.

MartiniDaniels

Lethal arrow now looks interesting option for stamDK melee spammable, because it will force your opponent to interrupt you and you'll proc major berserker set on break free. With 5x stacks of hawk eye that thing will hit like truck and on DK it has laughable cost.

Xvorg

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lethal arrow now looks interesting option for stamDK melee spammable, because it will force your opponent to interrupt you and you'll proc major berserker set on break free. With 5x stacks of hawk eye that thing will hit like truck and on DK it has laughable cost.

and you can use the more than desync new leap to make everyone in Cyro cry about that.

This patch should be called Sorrowstone... I never thought that would be a patch that makes me look at Sorrowind as a good patch

MartiniDaniels

Xvorg wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lethal arrow now looks interesting option for stamDK melee spammable, because it will force your opponent to interrupt you and you'll proc major berserker set on break free. With 5x stacks of hawk eye that thing will hit like truck and on DK it has laughable cost.

and you can use the more than desync new leap to make everyone in Cyro cry about that.

This patch should be called Sorrowstone... I never thought that would be a patch that makes me look at Sorrowind as a good patch

Yep, break free - snipe - snipe - bar swap leap - executioner that's how we all imagine dragon knight

Dr_Ganknstein

Because zos seems to do stuff like this a lot (dots) they should give us some free bag space above 205. I have had to flip flop builds that I've worked hard to obtain so much. I refuse to get rid if any of the old gear because we dont know what the next nerf/buff will be.

GeorgeBlack

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Xvorg wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lethal arrow now looks interesting option for stamDK melee spammable, because it will force your opponent to interrupt you and you'll proc major berserker set on break free. With 5x stacks of hawk eye that thing will hit like truck and on DK it has laughable cost.

and you can use the more than desync new leap to make everyone in Cyro cry about that.

This patch should be called Sorrowstone... I never thought that would be a patch that makes me look at Sorrowind as a good patch

Yep, break free - snipe - snipe - bar swap leap - executioner that's how we all imagine dragon knight

Just as bad as magic rocks (new stonefist)

ElvenVeil

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lethal arrow now looks interesting option for stamDK melee spammable, because it will force your opponent to interrupt you and you'll proc major berserker set on break free. With 5x stacks of hawk eye that thing will hit like truck and on DK it has laughable cost.

I don't know about the specific sets, but snipe is the strongest spamable available.. which is rather bizarre that a ranged skill is also the hardest hitting

MincVinyl wrote: »

See, but nobody complained about pre elsweyr dizzy, which really only got gutted since onslaught got changed.

yeah. And also seems to me people just generally prefered the game back then more to what it has become now.

MincVinyl

@ElvenVeil
Well generally the game favored counterplay over guaranteed damage. There were proc and dot builds, but not all of the playerbase was being forced to use them. Now those guaranteed damage setups are the meta because they are the only thing that are consistent for your average-low skilled player. Why run direct damage and think about combo timings and burst windows when you can just press the same dot rotation over and over like in pve and do more damage without any chance of the enemy countering it.

Even dot setups were more diverse back in the day as well. A while back dots didn't stack, which meant they worked in solo/small man gameplay for easier duels and burning down one target. Now since dots were allowed to stack from multiple sources on one target it is really easy for a large group of unskilled players to have a guaranteed kill on someone who would normally be capable of outplaying these people. Since dots/hots didnt stack, you would have people running different morphs instead of everyone running the Bis ability. I remember having good healers coordinating what morph they were bringing that day to make sure they could benefit their group the best possible way. The game would also not face things like the sloads meta or the soul trap meta, since any idiot who banked off of a mechanic that required no brain input to function would have little to no affect on an enemy player.

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In my opinion: In any scenario where the player is skilled enough to make counterplay choices against a larger group of players regardless of size, that player who is doing everything right should win the scenario. Yes i am saying that I think the group of 30 people spamming things like wall of elements and whatever cc they can should never be guaranteed a win.

ElvenVeil

@MincVinyl I think balance in itself is hard. obviously not made easier by those crazy changes that messed up the game around scalebreaker. In the past it was a hard choice choosing between s/b, 2h and dw . everything offered something you really wanted. To me this sense of build diversity is at the core of what makes this game fun - that I can choose a direction I want my build to go, and I can most likely make it work. I can't say I am a fan of the idea of dots not stacking, simply because having mechanics that negate your setup entirely goes very much against the original spirit of the game.

Everything was just more diverse before- it wasn't zos telling me what I could and could not use, and if I could choose a direction I wanted to see in the game to be heading towards, it would be to buff a ton of skills and make them viable, like you suggest with dizzy above. Not shutting down playstyles every patch, while having a load of useless morphs or useless sets for that matter. I just find that aspect so integral to the game design, and now they are constantly moving away from build diversity and choice.

MincVinyl

@ElvenVeil sorry but i feel a full explanation is in order,
TLDR: I explain how building how you want isn't really in eso. How Dots not stacking would be a net benefit in multiple ways with little downside(build diversity/ benefiting smallman/ disincentive zerging/reduces server lag).

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So in terms of you can build how you want:
Once you hit late game I would say this isn't true, generally there is only one Bis build path, for example:
(magdk run dots)
(nb banks off bow proc)

yes you could go off the beaten path, but it is equivalent to walking through a patch of thorns the whole time. There will always be a downside, whether it is only working in duels or group play, better for solo farming or a certain dungeon. Only viable against someone not running major evasion or purge. etc.

for SS right now if you are not running Bloodspawn/BrpDw/fury/(nma/singer/briar) you are easily less effective.

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Dots not stacking would be a change that doesn't necessarily mean you are worthless, it just means there are now reasons to not follow the same buildpath as everyone else if you want to be effective (for instance, use inclass dots instead of everyone running soul trap one patch). Is it right that 20 people without a thought to what they are doing should be at 100% effectiveness just by default. In my opinion i think players should be rewarded for putting thought into their gameplay and not cater to people like it is their birthright to do damage equivalent to someone who is making choices and inputs as fast as possible in the game.

for 1v1s: Dot standard would most likely be able to be raised, and could be raised

for smallman: good groups will outperform others by having build synergy to utilize every aspect of the game instead of all running the one Bis ability/proc for the patch.

for largescale: again smart groups will work out who is running what, most players will bank on direct abilities that have possible counterplay for opposing players. against a single opponent, the defender will have options to fight back and counter the incoming damage instead of being killed by simple minded and guaranteed suffocation damage/mechanics. (most zerglings wont even notice the change anyways, or wont be able to pick up on their dots not being as effective on that one guy out of 30 that they are hitting)

Server load is to be considered here aswell. Dots are the most calculation dense abilities in the game, aoes coming in second(to clarify, yes you can have dot aoes, which are worse, but for argument sake i will talk about individual mechanics not combined mechanics). How does this cut server lag? Well simply it is calculations in/out of the server.
First a direct ability vs a dot vs an aoe
Direct: Per 1 gcd there will be one calculation
Dot: per 1 gcd there will be one calculation for each tick (1gcd for a 1s tick 10s dot = 10 calculations/gcd)
aoe: per 1 gcd there will be one calculation for each person hit (#player/gcd)
dot aoe: (#player*tickrate*duration/gcd)

Now you might say that an aoe can match a dot. Which is true some of the times, like during group bombs(think of bomb builds getting hit by small lag when getting kills). Not every player is getting the perfect aoe off to hit the most amount of players, if they are it only lasts for a short amount of time. In massive engagements it is more likely that trades back and forth will allow dots to fully play out especially with seige. This is one of the reasons zos tried aoe caps, but the problem with that was that it drastically hurt solo/small man players and barely shook zergs. Dots no longer stacking will only prevent zerging and benefit solo/small man gameplay which is dying in the game.

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Combine these two topics:

Since dots/hots would no longer stack:
-out of class dots like (sloads/soul trap meta would not exist, if anything they are one off builds instead of Bis for zegs for months at a time)
-inclass options would be far more effective, creating a greater build diversity between any amount of players.
-group synergy is opened up, causing multiple morphs to be used(like old groups running mutagen and rapid regen instead of every single mag player running rapid regeneration)
-Solo/small man groups are now able to avoid being suffocated by something they can't counter
-Meta shifts towards dots being a supplement like aoes as they originally were, direct damage makes counterplay options available across the board. (again solo/small wouldn't lose much in terms of dots against larger groups)

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TLDR: I explain how building how you want isn't really in eso. How Dots not stacking would be a net benefit in multiple ways with little downside(build diversity/ benefiting smallman/ disincentive zerging/reduces server lag).

feel free to @ mention me, i am willing to explain or discuss these further

SodanTok

ElvenVeil wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lethal arrow now looks interesting option for stamDK melee spammable, because it will force your opponent to interrupt you and you'll proc major berserker set on break free. With 5x stacks of hawk eye that thing will hit like truck and on DK it has laughable cost.

I don't know about the specific sets, but snipe is the strongest spamable available.. which is rather bizarre that a ranged skill is also the hardest hitting

Except thats totally untrue /shrug

Strongest spammables are actually used by people crying about them not just cried about :P Like dizzy or jabs

ElvenVeil

@MincVinyl I will try and respond the best I can, while still keeping to the topic of the thread (sorry your post is just very long and very convoluted, had to read it through a few times).

When I say that build options have gone down, I dont mean in regards to sets, as much as I mean in regards to skills. Skills need to have a certain level of strength (e.g weapon damage scaling) before they are worth considering. dots like bloodcraze have much too low damage now to be worth using for the damage, and dizzy swing's low damage with its cast time and without stun, just isn't good enough to keep up with where the game is at. I don't mind that skills have different levels of strengths, but ideally a multitude of skills should be viable - which just isn't the case right now, and less with this patch going live. Should dots stack, I am not sure the game would lead to the conclusions you predict, but at least first they should be made viable, which should be a keyword for all skill lines imo.

I do not agree that there is only set combination that is 'bis' though, as I play stamsorc like you (in no cp) , and I do not run that combination, and I very sure what I run is a much more optimal combination. sorry I don't want to go more into details with that here as this is the nerf forum and it scares me . Set options have gone down, but what makes the game feel much more homogenous to me is not what sets people run as such, but that we are forced to using the exact same skills with very few alternatives. Stamina has always been identical to a larger degree than magicka, but these changes the last few patches take it to a whole new level. Stamsorc with dizzy swing next patch - just not going to happen anymore, and it is crazy frustrating to have everything that feels remotely fun taken away

Asardes

I main Stam DK, so throwing dirt trice is way better than swinging twice

luizpaulom17

Well m8... dont know what to tell U, except that ESO is that... A huge Rollercoaster... and the reason why is cuz game was poorly designed... they didn't really design a combat system to start with...

MincVinyl

@ElvenVeil
Yeah i tried to sum it all up in one post instead of bouncing back and forth between several people with how a change like that would work. For the most part I believe we agree on everything related to dizzy. As for stamsorc or bis gear nocp does open up options for different builds to work, but at the same time the build i mentioned bloodspawn/BrpDw/Fury/(damageset) would still function to a very high degree. If anything the damage set could be replaced by something like hulking/bonepirate/Acrobat for more sustain.

Stibbons

It is just fine. We just have to adapt a bit.