PTS Combat Test - Feedback Thread

TheFM

Ascarl wrote: »

I pretty much like the idea of the patch and hope his becomes life. Right now the LA weaving mechanic is so much meta that everything else is considers trash. this opens up more tactical options than just button mashing.

Light attack mashing isnt weaving properly. Only bots do that,

TheFM

Lortie wrote: »

Ascarl wrote: »

I pretty much like the idea of the patch and hope his becomes life. Right now the LA weaving mechanic is so much meta that everything else is considers trash. this opens up more tactical options than just button mashing.

From a PvP standpoint, there are multiple viable heavy attack builds, just because you don't know about them doesn't mean they aren't strong. One of the best players I've ever seen runs a corrosive heavy attack build and it is scary and giving him a 31% buff will let him run around DW heavy attacking people for 8.5k. I'm just afraid that his build will become the meta and eso combat will devolve into "Hold Mouse1 Simulator". Won't be much of a skill gap then I suppose, but maybe thats what they're going for, i'm not sure.

Exactly this. It sounds like they are trying to turn combat into skyrim, which is AN AWFUL idea. This is something that will actually make me leave. Bad performance can be avoided with playing at off peak times, but THIS, THIS is just absurd.

Grimhallow

1. As an open world PvP player, it is hard to test in game scenarios on PTS.

I still wanted to give my initial thoughts and feedback:

I hate heavy attacking in open world. It always feels slow, clunky, and easy to dodge. Taking damage out of light attack will hurt new pvp players who don't know how to combo. No new player is ever going to land a heavy attack on me, while a group of players spamming light attack will at least see the results of their team effort.

I think taking la damage away will make new players feel even more useless and discouraged in pvp.

It also takes a lot of the skill out of high damage combos, and slows combat down significantly (which is bad).

I think this change will hurt new and experienced players in Cyrodiil.

GlorphNoldorin

it doesnt need to be tested.
apart from being too great a change with the potential for being even more unbalanced than light attack weaving especially in pvp.

Your premise is that people that cant do as many light attacks are penalized currently yet you introduce mechanics that are still dependent on latency (faster/more medium attacks......more damage, faster/more Light attacks .....more resources)

out of touch, and the game still currently doesnt work

ZRT

Please stop trying to rework core combat systems. Every system you have changed has broken the game or changed it in a way that feels horrible. Instead of changing the core systems maybe teach people how it works. Animation canceling and light weaving were core aspects of high end gameplay and were some of the main reasons ESO combat was so great. not anymore

As for this change itself I think its a horrible idea. Its actually really easy to pull decent dps even if your rotation isn't perfect as long as someone takes the time to have a general idea of the combat system. As for topping the charts on dps of course its going to take some practice and learning. Many of us sit at a dummy for hours perfecting it, and that's how it should be. If there is no reason to actually put time in and learn how the combat systems work then you shouldn't have the highest dps. The ceiling should not be lowered when its really not that high to begin with. Instead put in something to teach people how to reach it or maybe add a step in between and leave the top end alone.

Once again those of us that have taken the time to learn the combat system are getting the short end of the stick. first animations with block and now light attacks. Stop reworking systems that the people you say "cant use or don't understand" don't even know the difference in their gameplay experience.

SirLeeMinion

[*] What type of content did you test these changes in? Trials Dummy

[*] If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live? DPS

[*] Approximately how long did you test these changes? An hour, but much of the time was changing builds and skills

[*] Did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? Resources were more than 3/4 full throughout the parses, LA only DPS = 5K, HA only DPS = 20 K

[*] Does the new paradigm ... feel better or worse? Hard to say while parsing; overall it feels like one more 180 degree change. We dissent.

[*] When targets became Off Balance...? I ignored off-balance and kept a semi-static rotation.

[*] How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Never, sustain will likely not be an issue.

[*] When playing our game... Do you enjoy playing...?
Medium APM
My DPS has dropped from ~63 K on live to around 50K on PTS, Both heavy and light attack mag builds felt weak. To be clear, I ran just a few parses with mag sorc comparing MSW + BSW with Undaunted iniltrator + unweaver, (CP were set up to match current sorc heavy attack builds. I could hit 20K on the trials dummy just heavy attacking, so maybe the floor has been raised a bit. Still, I can't see myself handling the more difficult content with what appears to be yet another DPS nerf. Frankly, I've enjoyed playing less with each of these major overhauls. They all seem to kick mid-level players like myself (those with decent, but not great, DPS) right in the teeth. I stopped grinding new gear last summer, stopped leading groups last fall, started playing it as Skyriim online this January... I actually support the intent behind these changes, but as currently implemented, this is just going to further alienate your mid to upper tier players.

Nord_Raseri

Just when Ithought Werewolves couldn't be nerfed anymore than the gutted mess they are today, you nerf them even more by nerfing LAs...I uh, jus can't.

Grimhallow

One more thing worth mentioning- this change will make bash weaving the meta in a pvp damage combo. This benefits high CP players who have access to riposte, and obscures damage from new players. Riposte is strong already, but there is a big risk to sustain by bash cancelling. This change to light attack makes bash cancelling less risky.

This also means that the PvP tank meta is strengthened indirectly by rewarding players for turtling (by protecting them from the riposte bash weave).

blkjag

T3hasiangod wrote: »

You shouldn't be balancing the game around the inexperienced players.

JinxxND

T3hasiangod wrote: »

You shouldn't be balancing the game around the inexperienced players.

This will lead to a terrible meta for both PvE and PvP if this goes through.

Valenor

After a lot of messing around there is only one thing that I find detrimental to every kind of player, is reducing the damage of light attacks. I mean reducing could be fine, but it barely tickles now. And even I started playing eso during the first beta test, I remember clearly relying on skills and light attacks to get things done (with difficulty as you can easily imagine).
Imho, the almost removal of light attack damage is going to hurt newer players, people that are struggling to get any knid of rotation going. At most, reducing the damage of light attacks by 20/25% at most would far sufficient to tone down dps while maintaining resource return on light attack, which is a welcome change for people struggling to sustain their abilities. Honestly, light attacking a mob with a nirnhoned legendary weapon and seeing 825 damage is quite underwhelming

Kolzki

1. Trial dummy. Magica templar dd, altmer.
2. Around an hour of hitting a dummy.
3. Individual light attack damage is *very* noticably worse than the damage of a heavy attack. However, the (admittedly more optimized) light attack rotations did higher damage per second with worse sustain. The slow nature of heavy attacks meant fewer skills used, resuting in the overall good sustain (together with still including a good number of light attacks) and lower damage.
   
   Sustain was a non-issue for rotations both with and without heavy attacks. Light attack rotations dropped to 70% magicka as a minimum. Heavy attack rotations stayed above 80% magicka and brought me to 100% magicka on potion and shard synergy use. No sustain skills were needed.
   
   Bashing now does more damage than a light attack making bash weaving even more important for high damage output.
4. Using heavy attacks feels slower. Slower is less fun. The empower from solar barrage didn't seem to add enough damage to justify using.
5. I didn't really pay attention to off balance as no resources were needed. It's not clear that heavy attacking during off balance would add to overall dps given the slow nature of heavy attacks and the reduction to the damage gain from off balance.
6. Resources are essentially infinite with or without heavy attacks. I could sustain a light attack rotation on a dummy for over two minutes on ghastly eye bowl "parse food" without using potions, resource skills or sustain sets/enchants on an altmer templar.
7. Towards the higher end of APM. Under the new paradigm I feel penalized relatively to live by a dps reduction of around 12k dps from the reduced light attack damage.

Kilnerdyne

RMerlin

I always found it counter intuitive that heavy returned resources while light did the DPS. Changing this is a good idea, it will now be a question as to how this will be balanced out.

To the people saying it dropped their DPS while making resource management a non-issue, are you still using enchants that increase your regen? Since the weapon attacks now do more regen and less DPS, have you tried replacing those regen enchants for DPS enchants, to compensate for the change?

I.e., those mechanics changes might require some gear changes as well to adjust.

IARTOI

What about "Imbue Weapon" and its morphs.

**Infuse your weapon with power, causing your next Light Attack used within 2 seconds to deal an additional 739 Magic Damage and apply the Burning, Concussion or Chill elemental status effect.
If the power is not consumed in time, you restore 1873 Magicka.
Converts into a Magicka ability and deals Magic Damage. Applies a random status effect.

**Infuse your weapon with power, causing your next Light Attack used within 2 seconds to deal an additional 739 Physical Damage and heal you for 25% of the damage done.
If the power is not consumed in time, you restore 1629 Stamina.
Heals you for a percentage of damage done.

This skills empowering the light attack so when the light attack is dead 78% how do you think this skill will work?

I think you forgot this skill. Requires rework for sure.

@ZOS_GinaBruno

GerStyler

Do this *** and me and my whole Guild will quit this game. Stop destroying it !!!!!

walidd24nrb18_ESO

The fact that you even consider a dumb change like this annoys me beyond reason. Before you *** over the endgame community like that, at least FIX UR SERVERS! Stop trying to balance the game around players who are bad and don't know how to LA weave, they will eventually learn it if they practice and want to. Also if you actually execute this change in live server, I can already tell u with guarantee u will loose ur endgame community...

Madhatten512

Royaji wrote: »

Ascarl wrote: »

I pretty much like the idea of the patch and hope his becomes life. Right now the LA weaving mechanic is so much meta that everything else is considers trash. this opens up more tactical options than just button mashing.

And the changes on PTS change nothing about that. It's just that on live LA weaving gives you damage directly. With PTS setup it will still give you huge advantage through increased sustain. And players who can weave will have no problems leveraging additional 400 stam/mag recovery into damage.[/quote


This is 100% false because at one time in combat are you spamming 3 light attacks without a skill in-between them.. You must've miss read because its not 3 light attack weaves its landing 3 consective light attacks. Which is the dumbest thing ive ever heard who is wasting global cooldowns spamming 3 light attacks. This proposal is absurd. If it goes through they will lose every veteran player left they haven't already lost and hell that might be their goal.. No one anyone that plays this game at a remotely high level would think this garbage is a good idea. Its just a way to save bad players that are to lazy to learn a simple game mechanic.

Philelectric

WHAT THE ACTUAL...... This is the most terrible idea ive ever seen in this game. Poisoning the game with patch 1.6 (aka2.0) now this to make sure the game dies even faster.

forthwinds

What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)

Trial Dummy

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?

Mag & Stam Necro. My current 2 main dps I play in raids

Approximately how long did you test these changes?

45ish mins each

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage?

Yes, but it is unneeded sustain. You can already sustain a min max build with proper group support.

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

200% Worse. I love the combat in this game because of how it's fast paced. Heavy/Medium attacks create very clunky combat that isn't fun or viable when you need to do mechanics.

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?

none, making people pay attention to Off Balance is just raising the skill cap

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?

Never, but resources aren't a problem on live either with proper group support.

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

I play at a High APM in both PvE & PvP (when the servers let me). This game has always been my go to because of how smooth the combat feels.

Closing Remarks

Changing the basics of combat after 6 years seems a little too much to me. This is after people have been having to learn new rotations every patch as of recently (think dot meta rotations). I believe that the class balance is very good right now and trying to adjust things this drastically will ruin any good work that has been done in the previous balance changes we've just went through.

As others have mentioned, this change may actually further widen the gap between the top end and the new players. By nerfing light attacks so much you made it almost essential to bash weave in addition to light attack weaving to do decent dps. This increases the required APM to meet certain dps checks and the likes.

I do agree that tightening the gap between newer players and the top end is a good idea, I do not believe this is the correct way to do it. It will make it much harder for any PvE team to progress content if this goes through without rebalancing the rest of the skills to put out more damage. As a raid leader, I can tell you that more people will get into the end game if you make it easier. I think that is what ZOS wants but this is going in the opposite direction.

Madhatten512

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Caelc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We know reading about these potential changes and ideas is a little overwhelming, but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback. The point of this thread is for us to gather feedback after you've tried it out - not to have discussions about it. If you'd like to discuss what's on the PTS, please do so here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/517547

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

i think the problem is that you guys have a very long history of ignoring peoples feedback on pts so it causes people to be very frustrated and lash out like this.

If you listened and communicated better i don't think there would be this level of frustration. So, yes, people need to clean up their act but you guys need to do better to. It is a team effort.

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

Why is this change even needed. Its another situation where your ignoring massive in game problems to do changes no one is asking for. I look at the forums a lot not once have a seen a post complaining that light attack weaving is to OP please nerf. The game is in shambles right now. On live you can barley cast skills. You can't reliable break free. There are tons of actual issues, but you do a special pts cycle over a really bad idea that breaks what makes the combat great. You said it yourself the speed of combat in this game is what sets it apart. The combat team has already chipped away at that with ult cast times and many other small changes patch after patch, but this will kill it. The combat that kept people playing this game through all the issues and lag will be dead. You can't just up and change the core mechanics of a 6 year old game because its to hard for the very bottom tier player. Please don't let them ruin what is left of ESO.

Arwyr

tried a few tests on both live/pts 3 mil dummy (not gonna bother taking the time on a trial dummy) with my stamsorc bow build (i know, not meta). no recovery glyphs, dunmer race, alc. poison on frontbar rather than absorb glyph. gear: tzogvin, twice fanged serpent, stormfist, and vma backbar bow.

dps drop was very noticeable. live was avg. 37k, pts was at most 30 (slightly less with a HA rotation). i definitely like the idea of light attacks doing less damage and restoring resources, but damage from skills needs to be buffed significantly to make up for the dps loss. heavy attacks could probably use more of a buff too, as they're still not really worth it (at least on a stam build, not sure how pet sorc is doing).

i really want to like the change, i feel that done right it could definitely help bridge the gap and possibly even make more of the non-meta builds more viable, but the numbers for both la/ha damage and skill damage needs to be heavily adjusted for this change to be a good thing.

AScaryDinosaur

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Light and Heavy attack changes currently on the PTS. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, please answer the following questions and let us know what you think.

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer. Please keep all other discussion surrounding these changes to this other thread; we want to focus this thread on the questions being asked. Thank you!

1. What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
   • If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
2. Approximately how long did you test these changes?
3. During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?
4. Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?
5. When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?
6. How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?
7. When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

1.) Target Dummy (3mil for faster testing)
-DPS and DPS. Should mention as well this was all done with a 810 Wood Elf Nightblade wearing 5pc Aegis Caller, 5pc Hundings Rage, 2pc Selene, with the Shadow Mundus.
2.) About 30 minutes so far
3.)Honestly, no. I tried four rotations: all light attack weaving, heavy when I swapped bars, light attack weave while applying buffs and heavy weave spammables, and use primarily heavy attack weaves. All did less DPS than simply light attack weaving.
4.) My build supported my sustain already, so the light attacks just gave me sustain I didnt need, and any rotation with a heavy attack I tried actually did less damage than just light attacks
5.) If the target is off-balance, the sustain is definitely higher and the heavy attacks do much more damage. However, the only real way I could think to get off-balance against a dummy on my stamblade was through Surprise Attack out of Shadow Cloak. It actually felt pretty smooth to use, but it lowers DPS significantly (about 5k from light weaving) and magicka definitely becomes an issue.
6.) Never. Not even close. I did not have to put thought into sustaining my stats because, since light attack weaving still delivers the most damage, I only used light attacks. Light attack restore plus my inherent sustain led to infinite, mindless sustain.
7.) I have no means of counting my inputs, however I imagine I would easily fall under High (200+) APM. My light attacks definitely do less damage, so that seems punishing in a way. However, I cannot imagine lower APM players are benifiting much from these changes as anytime I tried to incorporate heavy attacks my DPS plummeted. Could be a learn-to-play issue, but I do not think so. Heavy attacks need to be channeled and channeling takes much more time. More time channeling = less abilities cast and since light attack damage is so low, abilities become the most important for DPS.
I do enjoy playing at High APM. ESO is a game known for its fast paced gameplay an it is what keeps me coming back.

In conclusion, heavy attacks are not doing more damage than light attacks in my testing. Which was, as I understand it, the entire point of the change. I proposed some changes in the discussion forum, and will include them here as well. I understand not everyone is even physically capable of playing at a high APM and agree something ought to be done so they may compete. However, these changes seem to have missed the mark. Please consider my propositions to, if nothing else, help guide you towards another solution.

Revert set changes and keep resource return as they are on live.

Reducing Light attack damage by ~5-10% (or whatever % you deem appropriate). Light attacks being less important means new players will not be at such a disadvantage before learning how to weave.

Increase damage of "spammable" skills by x% (not all spammables are created equally, so I left the value as "x"). New players often rely on spamming abilities to do damage. By raising ability damage and lowering light attack damage, new players will be doing more DPS and veterans will be virtually unaffected.

Increase damage of heavy attacks by x% (again, because heavy attack damage differs greatly depending on weapon type). This would help veterans in a PVP situation, however in a DPS situation this will aid new players much more than a veteran player. Veterans likely have a DPS setup which accounts for their resource needs (as I did in my testing) so they rarely run out of stat anyway. New players do not have this knowledge yet and, as I've noticed, tend to rely mainly on heavy attacks for resource return. Increasing the damage of heavy attacks will allow new players to keep up on DPS while learning to manage their resources.

The idea here being to bump up players you cannot or do not play at high APM while also ensuring high APM players are not being punished for playing the way we do.

stevenyaub16_ESO

So far these changes only make missing light attack weaves more forgiving.

From a stam perspective it does not change anything in the rotation due to nature of needing to light attack to proc relequen, and keep sustain up.

Heavy attacks still seem largely useless. Bash weaving is now more necessary to reach highest output.

JusticeSouldier

Madhatten512 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Caelc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We know reading about these potential changes and ideas is a little overwhelming, but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback. The point of this thread is for us to gather feedback after you've tried it out - not to have discussions about it. If you'd like to discuss what's on the PTS, please do so here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/517547

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

i think the problem is that you guys have a very long history of ignoring peoples feedback on pts so it causes people to be very frustrated and lash out like this.

If you listened and communicated better i don't think there would be this level of frustration. So, yes, people need to clean up their act but you guys need to do better to. It is a team effort.

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

Why is this change even needed. Its another situation where your ignoring massive in game problems to do changes no one is asking for. I look at the forums a lot not once have a seen a post complaining that light attack weaving is to OP please nerf. The game is in shambles right now. On live you can barley cast skills. You can't reliable break free. There are tons of actual issues, but you do a special pts cycle over a really bad idea that breaks what makes the combat great. You said it yourself the speed of combat in this game is what sets it apart. The combat team has already chipped away at that with ult cast times and many other small changes patch after patch, but this will kill it. The combat that kept people playing this game through all the issues and lag will be dead. You can't just up and change the core mechanics of a 6 year old game because its to hard for the very bottom tier player. Please don't let them ruin what is left of ESO.

absolutly agree, no one asked for this.
idea is destructive and i'm really scared of how it could come and then go into the cycle because what we can get in the same way here later...
And problem is not in my conservative like vision (and its not I'm absolutly appreciate constructive revolutionary changes, i personally wrote tonns of feedbacks how to do that for many many things in eso...).
But problem is how it touches concepts of tanky and offensive builds as result, how it changes rotations principles, how it interacts with human reactions. And what we will have if devs will work at it instead of moire important problems.
Simple example - overtuned general amount of damage in eso and as result trend to come into tankiness for everyone (max health, resists etc), which allows u to do great damage to your targets at the same time while u have 30k+ health, resists, sustain.
Or purge mechanics, which make templar and necromancer chosen ones between others who have no any alternative things - but only overheal/shield or nb's suppression with Shadowy Disguise...
Or.. this list is too long to wrote it here.

I see here no vision from Zenimax team if such thing started to test without even discussion if it needed before.
@ZOS_GinaBruno Where is discussion first if we need such change of light and heavy attacks mechanics?

JusticeSouldier

Worst thing is, at this basement, we will get so many bugs, if it will be implemented, so many things, which Zenimax team will leave behind as usual with changes on such level of combat mechanics.
I even can't imagine what scary garbage we can get as result.
please, don't implement discussed here system, adjust current light and heavy attacks numbers, animations, interactions, anything but don't ruin existing working one. please, it's great mistake

GeorgeBlack

Now that is trully meaningful combat changes.
Go ahead and do it.

In every other game "normal atks" have some short of FUNCTION instead of extra glitched looking dps.

And ESO has both light and charged atks.

Beautiful.
There are going to be so many new builds.
Maybe the glitched looking combat will look better.

Go ahead zos. This is beautiful.
I hope that SOMEHOW it will affect performance for the better as well.

Varana

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Light and Heavy attack changes currently on the PTS. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, please answer the following questions and let us know what you think.

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer. Please keep all other discussion surrounding these changes to this other thread; we want to focus this thread on the questions being asked. Thank you!

1. When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?

5. This applies to Live as well: I find it so hard to identify whether a target is still Off Balance, esp. if there is a lot of other effects going on, or I lose sight of a target for a moment, that I don't bother with the status except - very rarely - immediately after I see the "OFF BALANCE" notice above their heads. If I see it at all. Because of that difficulty of recognising the status, Off Balance simply isn't worth bothering.
(PvE perspective.)

darthgummibear_ESO

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback.

Your propensity for ignoring PTS feedback entirely is in direct opposition to this statement.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

Seriously? Final warning? You're giving ultimatums to players for calling out your terrible testing and feedback process? Way to garner goodwill there, guys.

Cellentel

I posted the results of my testing on the PTS earlier in the thread. After thinking through it all day, here's my suggestion what you might want to approach this change instead. At this point in the game's lifecycle, fundamentally changing how light and heavy attacks work is going to alienate the player base without significantly improve anything. Instead, I think both types of attacks should be brought up to be roughly equivalent so people can choose depending on their playstyle. People who enjoy light attack weaving (such as me) can continue to use light attacks, whereas people who don't like weaving can use a heavy attack based rotation.

To that end, both light and heavy attacks should restore resources and do damage, with heavy attacks doing more of each to compensate for the fact that they take longer.

• Leave light attack damage as it is on live
• Light attacks should restore resources (although maybe not as much as in the current pts)
• Heavy attacks take roughly two GCDs (not quite for most weapons, but I'm keeping it simple), so give them roughly 3X the damage of a light attack. The extra damage compensates for the fact that they miss out in a skill.
• Since heavy attacks are inherently resource friendly since you don't consume resources while doing them, they should restore a bit less than 2X the resources that a light attack does (say, 1.8X)
• Medium attacks should be somewhere in the middle for each, based on how long the attack is held.

People in the best groups already have fine sustain, so adding resources to light attacks won't be much of a buff for them. People in decent but not top groups will receive a bit of a sustain buff from light attacking, rewarding that gameplay. Everyone gains the ability to switch to a medium or heavy attack rotation as it suits them, without anyone being nerfed.