PTS Combat Test - Feedback Thread

Gnortranermara

First test - Spellsword test

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

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
I main Magplar DPS. Tested Magplar with dual-wield (swords) frontbar and inferno backbar.

2. Approximately how long did you test these changes?
1 hour

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?
Light attacks – no, since they restore stam they did not help with mag recovery in testing.
Heavy attacks – yes, the damage was higher but usability is still very limited because they restore no mag and have no secondary effect, unlike skills.

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?
For a “Spellsword” setup, the light attacks restore the wrong resource, so they’re not very useful. The damage is negligible (as it should be). There needs to be a way for these to restore mag (a new Mage’s Guild passive, maybe?)
Heavies are functional, at least, but skills perform better for damage and secondary effects. Even though Spellswords "can" heavy attack now, there's inadequate incentive to do so.
Overall, time spent on a "Spellsword" dual-wield front bar feels about the same.

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?
I have never once devoted the attention of a single neuron to whether or not a target is off-balance. Off-balance isn’t even on my radar. If you ask 100 players, I doubt more than a tiny handful of them pay any attention at all to off-balance.

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?
I ran out about the same as I do on live, but restoring them felt much worse. Instead of switching to backbar staff and throwing a heavy or two (easy, plus a bit of damage), I have to switch to backbar and triple-shot LA’s (for very little damage, and it requires constant aiming unlike a locked-on channeled heavy, and buggy LA’s have a tendency to glitch and turn into heavies, which can interrupt an attempted triple-shot).

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?
Medium on the dummy (not moving around, blocking, rolling, etc), probably high in normal play. I'm comfortable with the pace of the game.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT
Heavies hit harder, but still aren't very usable
Lack of mag regen leaves the "Spellsword" playstyle dead in the water, still. Scaling damage with the highest stat is good, but regen for this playstyle needs to be addressed. A Mage's Guild passive would be a quick-fix.

ESO feels incomplete and falls short of the Elder Scrolls tradition without a viable Spellsword setup. Addressing the regen problem would help bridge the gap, but a full Spellsword weapon option remains the #1 most requested and highly popular feature.

Eur0ed

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

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

Approximately how long did you test these changes?
2 hours, more to come

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?
15% DPS loss, li rotation still outpaces heavy attacks because I can gear up with zero nods toward resource management. Heavy attacks are too slow to be of any use adding them for off balance, or anywhere in the rotation just increases my dps loss.

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?

Horrible change, light attacks still show more dps then heavy attacks in a rotation. All this has done is give us unlimited resources and less damage output (endgame players) while giving lower tier players no benefit at all, and hurting the typical newbie who uses light attacks as their primary damage source.

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?

Any change in play style resulted in a DPS loss, this basically eliminated my need to ever heavy attack as stopping a rotation to heavy attack in off balance lead to a dps loss.

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?

I only ran out of resources when I made a specific effort to overcast and didn't use potions. Under normal play conditions there was zero issue even with no focus on resource recovery.


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).
Medium High to High


Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm?
This change shows a complete lack of understanding for how this game is played by the mid level to high level players. The only parties losing in this are your most serious fans and the newest players in the game. Not to mention, the changes in effect are 100% different then the explained goals I've outlined this below.


Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?
Not with this change. We're all tired of watching crazy stuff like this get changed, while performance and bugs are ignored. Focusing efforts on making changes no one asked for, specifically ones that prove zos employees don't play the game in any serious manner is sad.




Statements in the patch notes vs my experience:


"Combat in ESO is one of the things that truly separates our game from others like it. It’s action oriented, fast-paced, and gives you a lot of freedom over its various mechanics/interactions. It is balanced not with ability cooldowns, but via ability costs and resource pools - you can’t keep casting abilities or block/roll dodge without the proper resources to fuel those actions. We’ve found that players love this freedom and there is always a “button to press” or action to take at any point in combat."

this change removes resource limitations, thereby limiting players by only the global cool down?!?!

We believe these changes will broaden the usage of Light, Medium and Heavy attacks for all players. In this new dynamic, Heavy attack builds will be more viable, giving low APM players opportunities to compete in both PVE and PVP. High APM play is still rewarded as the absolute highest DPS and requires a mix of both Light and Heavy attacks, interacting with Off-Balance as optimally as possible.

Medium and heavy attacks still result in a dps loss while also causing an impact on resource management?!?!

Heavy attack rotations showed a greatly inferior feeling and a loss over all in both resource management and dps while also reducing my agility when on world bosses (didn't have anyone to run content with)

This testing also lead to a resource issue, where typical rotations (outside of the zero recovery, no orbs no potions test) had no problems.



Conclusion:
Zos devs need to spend some more time playing this game. If these changes actually accomplished the goals outlined in the notes, they would be solving a problem that didn't exist in the first place. Since the changes don't seem to hit the goals outlined in the notes, I don't know what to think. This just feels spastic. It would be really great if we could get some bug fixes before you all go turning the game on it's ear for no reason again.

notes:

* on my templar on the pts I'm now stuck once every 2-3 parses in what appears to be the animation for power of the light. which stops me from casting any skills until I walk away and mash bash/block until it fixes.


* It seems with a perfect rotation with orbs in addition to removing all sources of recovery or cost reduction, I could also remove magic recovery from my potions and stay in my rotation.

* I spend a good amount of my time in game every week helping new players, and they tend to run around light attacking things for the first 20 levels... so this is going to both hurt low experience players in the DPS arena or make resource starved lowbies even more resource staved

* This change hurts dps from low end players, because they light attack repeatedly in my experience (been spending time helping newbies in starting areas multiple times a week since 2014). Mid level players that just spam skills and don't light/med/heavy attack will feel no change. High level players still outrun med/heavy dps with light attacks.

* Eliminating resource management issues, and then taking a set that could actually be used in this weird world (molag kena) and making it a cost reduction set continues it's useless nature. *confusion intensifies*

Gnortranermara

Second test – Double destro test

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

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
I main Magplar DPS. Tested Magplar with lightning frontbar and inferno backbar.

2. Approximately how long did you test these changes?
1 hour

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?
Light attacks – yes, recovery was amazing with LA weaving. However, this recovery drops during the spammable portion of rotation when using Sweeps.
Heavy attacks – yes, the damage was higher. However, I didn’t feel an incentive to use heavies over my spammable with this setup.

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?
The recovery feels amazing for a LA rotation. I replaced an infused regen glyph and didn’t need to use heavy attacks at all. I could probably get away with dropping another regen source and be just fine. This helped offset the LA damage loss, but not entirely.
Heavies are meh. Sticking to the LA rotation feels better.

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?
N/A, I don’t pay attention to off-balance.

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?
I had no trouble with recovery. Regen felt great. I didn’t need to use the triple-shot. The pervasive “accidental heavy attack” bug was a major annoyance, though, especially since it resulted in no resources. Usually, the ONE thing that makes this bug tolerable is that at least you’ll get some resources out of it. Now it’s even worse than before when it happens.

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?
Medium on the dummy (not moving around, blocking, rolling, etc), probably high in normal play. I'm comfortable with the pace of the game.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT
Confirmed the following pre-testing speculation:

1. The direction is awesome and has immense potential for making the game better.
2. The LA nerf could be adjusted to ~50% (half of what's currently on Live, and roughly double what's currently on PTS - a great middle ground)
3. MA and HA should grant regen, too. The lack of regen really hurts when the stuck-in-a-heavy bug occurs.
4. The regen is powerful - maybe too much so. However, the mechanic introduced here can be expanded upon and become a major benefit for the game. First, I'd dial it back to 100, then introduce a Minor/Major Respite buff that increases the amount. You can then consolidate the functions of several of group utility regen sets to grant Minor/Major Respite instead. This will help constrain the infinite sustain of coordinated groups, keep other sustain sources (cost reduction, regen races, etc) relevant and useful, and make players earn their regen in combat.
5. Empower on Solar Barrage no longer jives with a Templar Sweeps rotation. Empower should affect all basic weapon attacks: light, medium, and heavy.

ATreeGnome

1. I tested on a 21m Dummy with a Stamina Necromancer and used different rotations to see how heavy and light attacks affected things. On live most of my time is spent healing for trial trifecta progression groups (GH/IR/TTT). I would like to test these changes on my typical role in the content I typically like to do, but the idea of trying to get a serious trial group together on the PTS is kinda laughable. It's hard enough to get 12 people to show up on time for scheduled raids on the live server.

2. I tested about about an hour but plan to test more with other classes.

3. Yes, I noticed that light attacks restored resources. I don't often heavy attack when I DPS, so I can't say I noticed the damage increase per se, but the DPS difference between the two types of rotation was noticeably smaller than I would expect on live.

4. Let's start with heavy attacks. The issue isn't if they do more damage or if they restore resources. The issue is that they are slow, clunky, and break the flow of combat. This is the issue with anything that's channeled or has a cast time - the exceptions being templar jabs and lightning destro heavy attacks which both deal damage throughout the channel. Heavy attacks just don't feel fun. To be clear, buffing heavy attacks is great. They should have a unique and valuable role in combat and be useful for player that build around them. That said, I don't want to be forced to heavy attack because slowing down my play style just isn't fun and doing more damage with easier, slower rotations just doesn't make sense.

As for light attacks, I can't say that I like the feel of resource return but with lower damage. It's easily possible to sustain a light attack rotation on the live game, especially when supports run group sustain sets in a raid. So the resource return from the light attacks felt like overkill. The only thing I can really do with the extra resources is to bash weave more. The lower LA damage will already make bashes a higher percentage of DPS for "high APM" players and having the resources to do more bashes will push that percentage even higher. This will undoubtedly widen the skill gap between mid tier and top tier DPS players. Additionally, this is going to widen the current imbalance between damage races and sustain races. Damage races such as Orc and Altmer can already sustain just fine in semi-optimized raid groups. Giving them more sustain will just make the sustain races worse in comparison. Let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to re-balance races along side any light/heavy attack changes. Finally, the increased resource gain from consecutive light attacks, much like doing a heavy attack, just isn't fun. This is why the Molag Kena set is all but dead. Consecutive light attacks are awkward in a rotation. For players who play by mostly light attack spamming, this will be meaningless as you only need sustain if you're using lots of abilities. It just doesn't serve a purpose.

5. I was not able to identify when the target was off balance. Let's address a bigger issue here though - modifying a rotation around off-balance is not particularly fun. Ask any experienced stamden main( if you can even find one) how they feel about stopping their rotation to spam cutting dive for 7 seconds each time an enemy goes off balance. It's awkward, unintuitive, and difficult to track.I don't know what has made the developers think that this is a good mechanic to focus combat around but IT. NEEDS. TO. STOP. Most experienced players struggle to take advantage of off-balance windows so why would you expect new players to be able to do so? This sort of mechanics is just one more things that will widen the skill gap. The ONLY things that will make this work is to extend the off-balance window and make it blatantly obvious when an enemy is off balance, especially when there are dozens of other effects going on.

6. I only ran out of resources when I started trying to bash weave every ability with my light attack rotation. Recovering resources with light attacks felt as slow and boring as recovering with heavy attacks.

7. In trials, I likely fall in to the 200+ APM category if we are including movement actions. I find the higher APM light attack rotations to be far more fun than the slower, heavy attack rotations that were typical post Morrowind. Using a higher APM rotation felt fairly punishing on the PTS given how small the gains were compared to the extra effort required. I'm in favor of closing the skill gap in ESO but this felt like it was disincentivizing faster, harder, more complex rotations a little too much.

SirLeeMinion

Have posted a few times above and so I won't repeat answers to some questions.

1) content: Vet Banished Cells 2 (solo)

2) role: Tanky, pet-sorc build

3) about 40 minutes, one complete run (minus final boss - couldn't kill him)

...

7) In addition to above information, after further testing, I'd add: Mobility while heavy attacking feels good, lightning staff heavy attack feels weak, probably because the AoE seems anemic. With the ubiquitous crowds of mobs, it's hard to take advantage of off-balance, or even get the damage to land in the right place.

Oakiyo

Hi

1) Content tested
Dummy/solo vet dungeon/Overland boss

2) For how much time
Couples of hours

3) Notice change and was it a good experience
I notice a clear drop in the damages but a significant increase in my sustain. Has the sustain isn't really an issue, so this is annoying.

4) Better or worse
It is far worse. I can't imagine how much painful it will be to kill tanks in pvp. Light attacks just does no damages. And you can't afford to heavy attack a lot in pvp.

5) Use of off balance
I tried to use heavy attack weaving during these phase. It result in no difference, if not drop in dps. And the slowness it bring in the rotation is a step back in the playing experience.

6) Sustain better or worse ?
Definitly better, but not necessary

7) APM/Penalized with the new system/Enjoy current APM
I don't know my APM. But I think I'm pretty average. I take all synergies I see, I weave 90% of my skills, I move a lot. I should be at around 180APM, and it is a very enjoyable gaming experience, actually the better I ever experienced.

First of all, I'm glad to see some experiments like these. I would like to see more of this kind initiative in the off cycle pts periods.

Concerning this light and heavy attack test, I think this is a very bad change. The current system is nearly perfect. Fast and costful rotation with light attack weaving for maximal dps, and slow rotation for sustain with heavy attack. With this new system, not only the dps is lowered by a lot, but it makes heavy attack useless. Why should I do a slow, annoying attack during which I can't take synergies, drink a potion, anim cancel, block, ... When I can do the same with light attack weaving ? Heavy attack in these conditions serve no purpose and it is has if you removed a mechanic of the game.

The skill gap between beginner, mid level and end game player is pretty large, and it is certainly an issue for the development and the health of the game. But the problem isn't taken in the right way. As a player who struggled in my begining into ESO, my main source of difficulties was to understand the game and all its basics mechanics :
What does off balance means ? What are status effect ? What target to interrupt ? What the *** is light attack weaving, I hear everybody talking about that but nothing the game mention what is it ???

Rather than lowering the APM, I think the effort should be into bringing newer player to a better level with tutorial and clear explaination about the mechanics of the game and provide a way to practice them, like an area with some specific exercices. I'm sure even some end game player could use them to perfect some of their skills.

dannv

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.

This is my general thought. It's not going to close the gap between low/mid level players and upper end players, it will widen it.

If the problem is that upper end players can blow through mechanics (i.e. are doing too much DPS) take the mechanics off of timers and put them on percentage of boss health. Then you get the mechanics no matter how fast you go.

If the probe,m is too much sustain (which I can't believe) this isn't solving that either where upper end players are concerned. If the problem is too little sustain, this will only fix that for upper end players who do't need the help.

Honestly, the only reason I see for this is to correct the logical disconnect with the idea that you do a heavy attack to get resources back, and replacing that with doing light attacks to get resources doesn't make much more sense.

I did go do some parsing on 6 mil dummies. DPS dropped about 20% due to needing to do more light attacks to get resources back. I am a mid level player and my light attack weaving leaves a good deal to be desired. What I'd like to know is if it's worth continuing to work on it now or if I should not bother due to these changes.

John_Falstaff

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.

Don't think it's quite true. Sustain in PvE is generally very good this patch, DDs don't have to make any tradeoffs in optimized groups and run full damage, purple bistat food, etc, etc. You'll simply find yourself oversustaining, that's all.

MLGProPlayer

I like the changes. I feel they could actually raise the skill ceiling.

Right now, combat in this game has a very low skill ceiling. Once you master weaving (which only takes a few hours of dummy humping), that's it. You've hit the ceiling. Adding some nuance to the combat could help make it more engaging.

One of the reasons I stopped playing this game is the combat got boring.

John_Falstaff

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

I like the changes. I feel they could actually raise the skill ceiling.

Right now, combat in this game has a very low skill ceiling. Once you master weaving (which only takes a few hours of dummy humping), that's it. You've hit the ceiling. Adding some nuance to the combat could help make it more engaging.

One of the reasons I stopped playing this game is the combat got boring.

Ever tried combat that doesn't involve a dummy?

MLGProPlayer

John_Falstaff wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

I like the changes. I feel they could actually raise the skill ceiling.

Right now, combat in this game has a very low skill ceiling. Once you master weaving (which only takes a few hours of dummy humping), that's it. You've hit the ceiling. Adding some nuance to the combat could help make it more engaging.

One of the reasons I stopped playing this game is the combat got boring.

Ever tried combat that doesn't involve a dummy?

But that has nothing to do with the combat system. That's just content mechanics. They exist irrespective of the combat system and won't change if the proposed changes go live.

Whether you're facerolling a static rotation you practiced on a dummy (current combat system) or are using a dynamic rotation (proposed changes), you will still need to learn content mechanics.

Tethalion

If the aim for this potential change to light-attack is to disincentivize the mechanic of LA-weaving in order to lessen the pressure of APM-oriented performance, then it is effective.

I found the combat, now, shifts more towards bursting out combos of skills, rather than pushing a persistent rotation. I believe how those combos are constructed and executed will still provide a reasonable gap between casual vs. competitive play approaches.

The potential change satisfies the aim of taking pressure off a rote-based damage output system and may encourage more combat diversity. However, just to be clear, this will be a damage-output reduction; whether that is intended in the change scope or not, I cannot comment.

f047ys3v3n

Your Questions

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

Dummy

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

Exact toon I run PVE dps on.

3) Approximately how long did you test these changes?

1.5 hrs

4) 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?

Running logs told me that light attacks were returning resources but it was not sufficient to really notice while light weaving. If you just spammed lights you notice because of the stacking benifit... but you don't do any damage at that point. Heavy attacks doing more damage was also not noticeable because a low duration medium starts scaling at the light attack number (just without any resource return.) Longer charged heavies weren't of much use as you lost ability casts (now even more important because of the massive nerf on all light / heavy attacks) so still lost damage.

Ironically, when you run out of resources, I expect you will still be higher in dps doing full heavies with abilities weaved between than by spamming light attacks with no abilities until you get back on your feet. This is despite having no resource return from the heavies.

5) 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?

The idea seems better eg. light weave to gain resources back or hold a little into the heavy for more damage but in practice that is not what you have. Light weaving doesn't really decrease damage or feel like you are sacrificing damage for resources because the 225 return per attack is just not a big number. It's like 400 regen. Heavy or medium weaves on the other hand are all without value now (full heavies have some use on live when you run out of resources). On PTS, any quick duration medium weave does very little damage more than a light (because it starts scaling at the same damage as light just without any resource return) and every duration medium weave is lower damage than a light weave because ability casts on cooldown are so much more important with massively nerfed heavy / light attacks. So:
-On live: .23-2.1 second duration attacks suck and you suck for using them
-On pts: all attacks over .23 seconds suck and you suck for using them.
Big improvement.

6) 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?

Nobody really notices when targets are off balance and reacts differently than normal. Sorry, it has just never been a thing. There are a million things to watch and react to in a raid. People are looking for synergies and stuff that kills us, not your stupid off balance system you want us to care about.

7) 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?

Nobody was buffing me so all the time. Recuping them felt even worse because I was basically doing no damage and just spamming the light key. They did seem to come back quickly then but doing no dps and pounding one key doesn't feel great.

8) 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?

200+ I really doubt your going to get any terrible players testing on PTS. As for feeling penalized for doing lots of things. No, you light attack weave on live for best dps, you do same on PTS. On either every slight medium gives you the big donkey D in your heiny and you will probably just hold a full heavy weave if you run out of resources on both. I did feel hella penalized to have ~10k chopped off my dps by nerfing heavies and lights ~73% though. Not sure why you felt the need to give me the big nerf bat.

Of course I enjoy playing and not sucking, who doesn't like to be good at stuff?

Now my other thoughts:

My initial thoughts when I read the patch notes were that this was a good and clever idea. Full heavies suck for resource return because you often get interrupted by having to block or roll to react to a boss mechanic in that 2.1 seconds. When this happens, you are just SOL and have to try again at the cost of more dps loss. I also loved the change that allows full movement speed when attacks charge. Its a great change that makes combat feel faster and more fluid. Furthermore, currently every possible attack duration from .23 seconds to just before a full 2.1 seconds sucks, and is dps loss of around 5k for the quickest medium attacks. This is not great since it is actually rather hard to hit that under .23 second mark and still have held it long enough to count and time well with the ability cool-down timer. Ping seems to matter as well and those with slow connections just can't do lights and get them to count ever. For my part, I have never been about to get better than about 80% light attacks on a dummy or 60% in actual combat.

Of course, when I read the patch notes I thought that medium attacks damage was going to start at the live light attack number not the PTS light attack number. You didn't actually mention a massive medium / heavy attack damage nerf in the notes to go with the light nerf. On my toon, that would make mediums start with an unbuffed crit of 8k, not the 1.7k I found them to start at. So, I thought you would really get something for giving up the resources. The resource return number looked low (800 might be more appropriate than 225) but the concept made sense. I thought you were supposed to light weave for resource return or medium / heavy for damage. Since the damage of the mediums scales with time, slight variations in how long you hold the medium would not wreck you like the transition from light to medium currently does. There would still certainly be optimum points but most of the possible duration would not be terrible (used to actually be this way for those who remember). In practice though, you don't get anything in the transition from light to medium when you give up 200 magic. Medium scales starting at the same damage as light. As your medium duration increases, you are also loosing ability casts per second so you are always behind at any duration and now that the attacks start so very weak, your actually falling even further behind a quicker ability rotation. The only thing that could be worse than holding those mediums until full charge would be no abilities at all..... Of course, that is what you made it take to really get resources back from light attacks with your stack mechanic.

So, really all the changes mean is that now light attack weaves are the only way to go even more than on live, you loose ~10k dps because of a big ~73% light/medium/heavy attack damage nerf, and you gain resources equivalent to ~400 regen. I don't see as you are accomplishing the goal of making more attack types worthwhile and people are going to be very pissed to loose such a huge amount of dps.

bilbobaggins30

What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc):
Target Dummy, 21M Trial Iron Atro (Standardized Raid Buffs/Debuffs)

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
Magicka Sorcerer, I dip between a Templar Healer/Warden Healer/Magicka Sorcerer on live

Approximately how long did you test these changes?
1+ hour

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?
I noticed my sustain was better either direction. With heavy attacks, running Max Mag/Mag Recovery Food (Ghastly Eyebowl Soup), I would say sustain with given synergy is the same.

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?
Worse, and less intuitive. Heavy attacks take a long time, and on the PTS do not feel rewarding for making me waste time I could have weaved another spammable + LA in.

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?
Nothing. I did not notice a difference. I don't normally as Magicka build, or play around the need for there to be Off Balance on the target.

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?

None, then again, I rarely run out of resources when utilizing the aforementioned food / 21M Trial Iron Atro Dummy.

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, to the point that when parsing, I perform over 0.89 Light Attacks per second, plus an ability. This puts me at a minimum of nearly 120 APM. This is what I would consider the high end for someone parsing. Any extra things that happen is to react to game mechanics, since I do not add in an additional 60 APM bashweaving.

Now time for my comments and my insight on how we close the skill gap (I am a GM of a Trials / Dungeons training guild, I get to see people all over the spectrum, from the new player, to the achievement ready people):

#1: The average player cannot light attack weave.

#2: The average player spams light attacks

#3: The average player spams skills, and no light attacks or heavy attacks

1 of 3 situations is very common when trying to teach people how to properly dish out damage.

How do we close the gap for these people, and bring them CLOSER, but not quite high enough to begin to tackle the hardest trials / dungeons in the game?

As it stands a person who does #1 - 3 would not in my guild qualify for "Spectre" rank, which is 45K+ DPS on a 21M Trial Atronach Dummy (which qualifies them to enter the Craglorn Trials on Veteran as a DPS).

While we need to realize that a person who does #1 - 3 obviously has much to learn about this game, we can close the gap in the following ways:

#1: Reduce LA Damage by no more than 20%.

#2: Buff LA Damage by no more than 20%. Yes, heavy attacks should deal more damage, as a tradeoff for the increased GCD they consume.

#3: Medium attacks should be on a sliding scale, and depending on how long they are held before the transistion to a Heavy Attack should deal more damage.

Now that is intuitive. Let's make the sustain changes more intuitive.

Light Attacks should work the same way when it comes to sustain as they do on the PTS, however, Heavy Attacks should restore more resources. There should be a slider that coorelates to the amount of resources return based on how long you let the medium attack charge for. Sometimes even as a healer, I want to quickly Medium Attack to gain some resources back, because I need to react, or refresh a buff on my team. On live, I have to wait for the full heavy, but with this change, I would not have to wait the full duration, or I could light attack weave, and have higher uptimes on my buffs and debuffs, thus causing my contribution towards group DPS to be higher.

This answers #2: If a player only light attacks, they are still dealing damage, albeit they do take a nerf.

This answers #1 as well, if a player cannot light attack weave, they do not gain the benefit of the tiny bit of sustain. Maybe they are just pressing buttons slowly, so they would gain the benefit of sustain and a bit of damage.

Now, for #3: The people who just use abilities. As it stands on live, abilities do not count for most of the DPS a player does, in all tests that I have seen from a Magicka Damage Dealer perspective (and even several of the Stamina Damage Dealers), Light Attacks do the majority of the DPS. What if you shifted that a bit?

What if instead of reducing our overall DPS, you increase the amount of DPS a skill does? Make it so that a person who is not able to LA weave is still able to put out competent DPS. They may not be top tier who can LA weave, but they can use a sustain race, and sustain food. Those of us who LA weave in-between our skills are rewarded with a bit more DPS, better sustain, AND we have the option to use a race that does not provide nearly as much sustain, and we can tailor our CP/Food to give us better damage with our skills, since we can sustain on our own.

This could have an impact even as far as selecting gear that support wear in a Dungeon or Trial. If I am taking a group through a trial, I may put my support in sets that increase further the DPS my group does, since we are competent enough to LA weave reliably, and we can sustain ourselves better, versus putting them in sets such as Symphony of Blades, Worm Cult, Hollowfang, and Hircine's.

And as a final note, please revert Bashes to Summerset levels of DPS. A bash is in my honest opinion not meant to be a DPS skill, but one that is used to stun an enemy, causing them to not do some big, mean, nasty attack.

LiquidPony

bilbobaggins30 wrote: »

What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc):
Target Dummy, 21M Trial Iron Atro (Standardized Raid Buffs/Debuffs)

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
Magicka Sorcerer, I dip between a Templar Healer/Warden Healer/Magicka Sorcerer on live

Approximately how long did you test these changes?
1+ hour

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?
I noticed my sustain was better either direction. With heavy attacks, running Max Mag/Mag Recovery Food (Ghastly Eyebowl Soup), I would say sustain with given synergy is the same.

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?
Worse, and less intuitive. Heavy attacks take a long time, and on the PTS do not feel rewarding for making me waste time I could have weaved another spammable + LA in.

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?
Nothing. I did not notice a difference. I don't normally as Magicka build, or play around the need for there to be Off Balance on the target.

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?

None, then again, I rarely run out of resources when utilizing the aforementioned food / 21M Trial Iron Atro Dummy.

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, to the point that when parsing, I perform over 0.89 Light Attacks per second, plus an ability. This puts me at a minimum of nearly 120 APM. This is what I would consider the high end for someone parsing. Any extra things that happen is to react to game mechanics, since I do not add in an additional 60 APM bashweaving.

Now time for my comments and my insight on how we close the skill gap (I am a GM of a Trials / Dungeons training guild, I get to see people all over the spectrum, from the new player, to the achievement ready people):

#1: The average player cannot light attack weave.

#2: The average player spams light attacks

#3: The average player spams skills, and no light attacks or heavy attacks

1 of 3 situations is very common when trying to teach people how to properly dish out damage.

How do we close the gap for these people, and bring them CLOSER, but not quite high enough to begin to tackle the hardest trials / dungeons in the game?

As it stands a person who does #1 - 3 would not in my guild qualify for "Spectre" rank, which is 45K+ DPS on a 21M Trial Atronach Dummy (which qualifies them to enter the Craglorn Trials on Veteran as a DPS).

While we need to realize that a person who does #1 - 3 obviously has much to learn about this game, we can close the gap in the following ways:

#1: Reduce LA Damage by no more than 20%.

#2: Buff LA Damage by no more than 20%. Yes, heavy attacks should deal more damage, as a tradeoff for the increased GCD they consume.

#3: Medium attacks should be on a sliding scale, and depending on how long they are held before the transistion to a Heavy Attack should deal more damage.

Now that is intuitive. Let's make the sustain changes more intuitive.

Light Attacks should work the same way when it comes to sustain as they do on the PTS, however, Heavy Attacks should restore more resources. There should be a slider that coorelates to the amount of resources return based on how long you let the medium attack charge for. Sometimes even as a healer, I want to quickly Medium Attack to gain some resources back, because I need to react, or refresh a buff on my team. On live, I have to wait for the full heavy, but with this change, I would not have to wait the full duration, or I could light attack weave, and have higher uptimes on my buffs and debuffs, thus causing my contribution towards group DPS to be higher.

This answers #2: If a player only light attacks, they are still dealing damage, albeit they do take a nerf.

This answers #1 as well, if a player cannot light attack weave, they do not gain the benefit of the tiny bit of sustain. Maybe they are just pressing buttons slowly, so they would gain the benefit of sustain and a bit of damage.

Now, for #3: The people who just use abilities. As it stands on live, abilities do not count for most of the DPS a player does, in all tests that I have seen from a Magicka Damage Dealer perspective (and even several of the Stamina Damage Dealers), Light Attacks do the majority of the DPS. What if you shifted that a bit?

What if instead of reducing our overall DPS, you increase the amount of DPS a skill does? Make it so that a person who is not able to LA weave is still able to put out competent DPS. They may not be top tier who can LA weave, but they can use a sustain race, and sustain food. Those of us who LA weave in-between our skills are rewarded with a bit more DPS, better sustain, AND we have the option to use a race that does not provide nearly as much sustain, and we can tailor our CP/Food to give us better damage with our skills, since we can sustain on our own.

This could have an impact even as far as selecting gear that support wear in a Dungeon or Trial. If I am taking a group through a trial, I may put my support in sets that increase further the DPS my group does, since we are competent enough to LA weave reliably, and we can sustain ourselves better, versus putting them in sets such as Symphony of Blades, Worm Cult, Hollowfang, and Hircine's.

And as a final note, please revert Bashes to Summerset levels of DPS. A bash is in my honest opinion not meant to be a DPS skill, but one that is used to stun an enemy, causing them to not do some big, mean, nasty attack.

I keep seeing this totally incorrect idea that "Light Attacks do the majority of damage on a DPS parse, especially on magicka, and that needs to be fixed."

It's wrong.

Light Attacks are the #1 source of damage on a magicka DPS parse. They are far from the majority of damage. LAs are doing maybe 15-20% of DPS or something like that. The other 80-85% is coming from abilities, glyphs, poisons, passives, set procs, synergies, etc.

TheFM

Seven pages of tets, overwhelmingly negative responses.

I bet theyll still push it through, just like the dot buffs / nefs.

TheFM

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.

Well I really hope you are paying attention, because most everyone is unhappy with these changes. In fact I would dare say more people are unhappy with these changes, than the shield cast times that were proposed in the past.

apophis999

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. Trial Dummy, magicka nightblade dps
2. I do magblade/magdk/stamblade/stamcro dps, templar healer, dk tank on live
3. about an hour of parsing to see how it would look, tried to find some way to not use light attacks. But it was horrible trying to do anything that was as slow as heavy attacking. i just wanted to stop.
4. I noticed the increase sustain, but immediately went about doing whatever I could to keep it negative. bistat food, running necrotic orb, new moon alcolyte without pfgd, all the things I could do to translate the sustain into useful damage.
5. it was just trial dummy parsing.
6. after maximizing expenditure, I was able to sustain a ~5:30 parse with 3 siphoning strikes casts (magblade) and pots on cooldown, drain was 1709 vs 1656 regen according to combat metrics
7. Medium. I'm like just over 100apm (abilitiies+ attacks) not counting bar swaps, usually ~0.85 la/second.

Of note, I'm probably an average player that has worked at it enough to be proficient enough to succeed at vet dlc trials and farm them (~75k dps mag/stam, 60k total dps on yolnakrin is about where I'm at) but never going to be top tier godslayer runs as dps. I enjoy playing on live with the current system, I won't be switching over to do heavy attakcs, I'll either eat my 10k dps loss and be horrible, get better at bash weaving and just bash away instead of light attack weaving, focus more on end game tanking/healing, or just slowly drift away unless / until some new meta comes back that is interesting to play.

I get the point of what the intent of the changes are, but I don't think as implemented they necessarily make sense, make for an enjoyable game, or are going to "close" any gaps.

LiquidPony

TheFM 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.

Well I really hope you are paying attention, because most everyone is unhappy with these changes. In fact I would dare say more people are unhappy with these changes, than the shield cast times that were proposed in the past.

To be fair, I'm not sure that's the case.

Watch the conversations around this topic on Reddit. The casual players who think this change is somehow going to make them better because ZOS said so, and won't be bothered to do any testing to see if that's actually the case, are happy. The "LiGhT ATTacK weAViNg iS AN ExPLoiT" buffoons are all patting each other on the back. The "ESO isn't popular because the combat sucks, I want 45-minute cooldowns like I have in my WoW clones" crowd thinks it's just the bees-knees.

In fact, outside of the PTS forums and Discords where end-game players congregate, this change actually seems somewhat popular on the surface. Now of course one could argue that that's simply because the people who like the change are not the kind of people who use PTS, so they don't actually have any idea what's happening.

But anyway I think it's somewhat important to note that because it might give some insight into what ZOS is actually trying to do here. Which is the same thing many developers try to do late in a game's lifecycle: cater to new and casual players to try to keep that revenue stream strong.

JoeBaze

Reposting what I said in another thread:

With everyone talking about the changes to light attacks I decided to investigate the other end of things and see what heavy attacks are like. Feel free to correct me if I say anything wrong or incorrect. The intent is more directed at PvP, namely places where CP is enabled. My goal was to maximize the damage done at the instant of a heavy attack. This is not limited to the damage caused by the heavy attack itself but also includes buffs and bonuses applied at the instant the heavy attack lands. I didn't have anyone on PTS to help me so I ended up testing on a robust human target dummy (18200 resistance). With self supplied buffs, skills, sets etc... I was able to land a an attack + set + enchant for 36,163 without crit. If you include the crit which was 1.820x the normal value, this single attack was dealing 65,817. If we were to include battle spirit this would be halved and still land for about 32,909. Now, granted there are extra applicable defences to players, CP, crit resist, and blocking in place so I'm sure we wouldn't see a number like this in Cyrodiil. However even if you chop off something like 50% of the damage, you are still faced with approximately 16,454 from a heavy attack! All I would need to do is find a player who is not paying attention to block and hit them with one HEAVY ATTACK and they would be in ruin.

As a bonus I attacked a Trials dummy that provides all the trials buffs and I was able to land a full crit at 107,304. The multiplier was 1.970x.

blendertoes

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. 21 mil and 6 mil dummies
2. DPS (Breton petsorc)
3. One hour
4. Yes, light attacks restored resources, but it was irrelevant because I don’t have sustain problems on either dummy. Heavy attacks did more damage per cast, but the channel time reduced the number of spamables that I could cast which lowered overall DPS.
5. I didn’t notice any off balance effects on the dummy.
6. I did not run out of resources, but again, I usually don’t on live either when parsing.
7. I am a medium APM player. I did a full parse on the 21 mil with my normal rotation and hit 52k as opposed to 60k on live. I tried LA weaving buffs and HA weaving spamables on the 6 mil and hit 29k as opposed to 34k on live. The HA rotation was slow and not fun. I feel heavily penalized by the changes. I have spent the last 6 months grinding gear and upgrade mats as well as dummy practice to get from 37k to 60k on the 21 mil. Additionally, I recently joined a vet trial guild with a 55k minimum and with these changes, all my effort would be wasted.

Before I started using spell power pots and more expensive food, I relied on a HA rotation to keep my resources up. With these changes, I would have to LA weave for resources and do heavy attacks for damage, which is not lowering the skill floor.

Furthermore, if people don’t want to learn to LA weave, that’s on them, but they have to accept that high end content is out of reach. Having a skill gap is fine. I found a sense of accomplishment the first time I ran a vet trial and consistently pulled my weight on each fight.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I do like the change to have LA/MA/HA scale off of max stats. That may actually increase build diversity.

hashsnob

LiquidPony wrote: »

But anyway I think it's somewhat important to note that because it might give some insight into what ZOS is actually trying to do here. Which is the same thing many developers try to do late in a game's lifecycle: cater to new and casual players to try to keep that revenue stream strong.

If this is about revenue stream, I hope they are prepared to lose a lot of it from their endgame community.

Hooded_1

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. I tested it in vet HRC and on the trial dummy
2. Solo tanking vet HRC, and DPS trial dummy (stamina warden)
3. about 1 hour per role
4. I did notice that light attacks restore resources, to the point that resource sustain is a non-issue on my DPS, but is now a huge issue on my tank. The reason being, is that instead of doing a quick .8 second HA to get back stamina or magicka, I have to spend a whole 3 seconds out of block to recover resources, which hugely affects my survivability when tanking.
5. I believe this test feels worse than what is on live; having infinite sustain on my DPS is nice, but it is at a huge cost to my overall DPS.... I went from 76k to 66k on the trial dummy. I consider this to be a punishment to my ability to play at a high level. And to reiterate on my tank, the loss of capability to gain a burst of resources from HA hurts my survivability by a lot.
6. I tested D-swing as my spammable on the trial dummy, and ended up just using LA's against it still, since it seemed to provide the most DPS overall. Having to add medium/heavy attacks through the use of paying close attention to when the target was off-balance caused my rotation to become a lot more clunky and a lot less enjoyable.
7. on my stamden DPS, I never had any resource issues. In a well organized raid group however, resource sustain is a non-issue regardless so this point is moot. On my DK tank, I ran out of resources quite often because of my inability to HA to return them. And once I was out of resources, I ended up dying very quickly. If I tried to LA to return resources, again, it caused me to be out of block for too long which also caused me to die very quickly. Overall, I prefer a different approach to what you guys are currently testing.
8. I would say I am a medium-to-high APM player. When im sitting in front of a target dummy, it's medium, since all I'm doing is LA weaving between skills. When i'm doing PvE content however, and you add in synergies/role dodging/ani cancelling, that gets bumped up to medium-to-high situationally. I currently enjoy playing at my current APM on live, and I am working on increasing my APM to get from 70k/ish DPS on the trial dummy to 80k and above. The light attack damage nerf you guys are testing in this PTS severely punishes my style of play. Furthermore, I am currently at the cusp of completing a number of hard content achievements (trying to get into vCR and vSS HM), which requires me to push out a large amount of DPS. These changes just mean I have to work even harder to achieve those same numbers. In my eyes, you are effectively increasing the gap between top-tier players, who have mastered the art of achieving maximum APM, and the people below them.

TheFM

LiquidPony wrote: »

TheFM 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.

Well I really hope you are paying attention, because most everyone is unhappy with these changes. In fact I would dare say more people are unhappy with these changes, than the shield cast times that were proposed in the past.

To be fair, I'm not sure that's the case.

Watch the conversations around this topic on Reddit. The casual players who think this change is somehow going to make them better because ZOS said so, and won't be bothered to do any testing to see if that's actually the case, are happy. The "LiGhT ATTacK weAViNg iS AN ExPLoiT" buffoons are all patting each other on the back. The "ESO isn't popular because the combat sucks, I want 45-minute cooldowns like I have in my WoW clones" crowd thinks it's just the bees-knees.

In fact, outside of the PTS forums and Discords where end-game players congregate, this change actually seems somewhat popular on the surface. Now of course one could argue that that's simply because the people who like the change are not the kind of people who use PTS, so they don't actually have any idea what's happening.

But anyway I think it's somewhat important to note that because it might give some insight into what ZOS is actually trying to do here. Which is the same thing many developers try to do late in a game's lifecycle: cater to new and casual players to try to keep that revenue stream strong.

Look at all the posts in this thread, and in cyro. Its overwhelmingly negative to anyone that actually knows what they are talking about. The absolute irony is, Im going to be able to stomp potatoes in pvp EVEN more after these changes hit if they go through because one simple weave of a heavy into my sorc rotation will put EVERY casual player on the ground. 13-15 k heavies? Yes please. xD

technohic

So if APM is the issue for people with slower APM; why not just have a policy that allows macros. Or; even build them into the game? Macros are terrible as they prevent you from intervening, but I suppose if you are incapable of 2 or 3 keypresses in a 1 second GCD; guess you're not interrupting your actions anyway.

Mykriz

Overall I like most of the changes but now my HA does more damage than Wrecking Blow which doesn't make sense.

csbeau1969

Excellent overview and I fully agree with Xynode's assessment.

Link: https://youtu.be/5_LPM4zlJkc
--
The changes are logical and do not have a significant impact on a person's ability to achieve similar DPS. It should be noted that there are more then just DPS in the game; impact on tanks and healers must also be considered. Tanks and healers need to play strategically and watch the tide of the battle closely. The changes (reduced APM) does allow for a more strategic game play.

What I like most about the change is "class identity". By changing the sustain mechanism to light attacks and increasing heavy attack damage; it should have the side benefit of using more of our class abilities. Today, so much of our DPS comes from light attack weaving; that does not really drive class identity. Creating a mechanism where we use more abilities as we have more stamina or magicka; theoretically, that could lead to better class identity.

I think that all of the above are good directions for ESO to take; more strategic game play, more use of abilities and a chance for better class identity.

Thank you ZOS once again for sharing some potential direction on PTS. I hope you move forward with it.

csbeau

Stevie6

hashsnob wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

But anyway I think it's somewhat important to note that because it might give some insight into what ZOS is actually trying to do here. Which is the same thing many developers try to do late in a game's lifecycle: cater to new and casual players to try to keep that revenue stream strong.

If this is about revenue stream, I hope they are prepared to lose a lot of it from their endgame community.

It won’t just be the endgame community, it will encompass everyone. I said this in another post. The devs need to look at pre Morrowind to see what worked and basically made the game fun to play. Nerfmire killed the game. The classic petsorc was killed off, shield and damage nerfs, chasing the meta, and trying to keep up with the Joneses left the casual player in ruins. No real need to improve with all the nerfs. Now, with this new pts patch, all I can say is good luck.

To the Devs,

Bring back shields and damage pre Morrowind. The same with all monster sets, overland, dungeon sets as well as the races and class abilities. Basically a roll back...

Foxic

LiquidPony wrote: »

TheFM 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.

Well I really hope you are paying attention, because most everyone is unhappy with these changes. In fact I would dare say more people are unhappy with these changes, than the shield cast times that were proposed in the past.

To be fair, I'm not sure that's the case.

Watch the conversations around this topic on Reddit. The casual players who think this change is somehow going to make them better because ZOS said so, and won't be bothered to do any testing to see if that's actually the case, are happy. The "LiGhT ATTacK weAViNg iS AN ExPLoiT" buffoons are all patting each other on the back. The "ESO isn't popular because the combat sucks, I want 45-minute cooldowns like I have in my WoW clones" crowd thinks it's just the bees-knees.

In fact, outside of the PTS forums and Discords where end-game players congregate, this change actually seems somewhat popular on the surface. Now of course one could argue that that's simply because the people who like the change are not the kind of people who use PTS, so they don't actually have any idea what's happening.

But anyway I think it's somewhat important to note that because it might give some insight into what ZOS is actually trying to do here. Which is the same thing many developers try to do late in a game's lifecycle: cater to new and casual players to try to keep that revenue stream strong.

Exactly, so many people have been saying "so many more builds are going to be viable now and my DPS is going up"

But if you ask any of those people any sort of specifics they won't be able to tell you. All they know is zos said the mission statement is to raise the floor and they're blindly following that ideal

Sanguinor2

csbeau1969 wrote: »

The changes are logical and do not have a significant impact on a person's ability to achieve similar DPS. It should be noted that there are more then just DPS in the game; impact on tanks and healers must also be considered. Tanks and healers need to play strategically and watch the tide of the battle closely. The changes (reduced APM) does allow for a more strategic game play.

What I like most about the change is "class identity". By changing the sustain mechanism to light attacks and increasing heavy attack damage; it should have the side benefit of using more of our class abilities. Today, so much of our DPS comes from light attack weaving; that does not really drive class identity. Creating a mechanism where we use more abilities as we have more stamina or magicka; theoretically, that could lead to better class identity.

I think that all of the above are good directions for ESO to take; more strategic game play, more use of abilities and a chance for better class identity.

Thank you ZOS once again for sharing some potential direction on PTS. I hope you move forward with it.

csbeau

Tanks and healers now Need more APM if they want to Keep up Sustain from live because they will have to do Minimum 4 consecutive light attacks to reach the resource restore from a 0.8 seconds cast time heavy attack on Sword and Shield for a tank. Situation is similar for a healer.
The more you heavy attack the less class abilities (or abilities in General) you use.