Update 26 Combat Preview

xaraan

Beardimus wrote: »

To be fair I don't mind the sound of this focus.
As for vMA. It's not like you HAVE to farm it. Your current setups not getting nerfed. Sure you want the absolute few % then yes you going to need to farm. But players that ~1-2% matters for are good enough to blitz thru in under 30mins.

I have a problem with the defense that "it only screws you a little, so you shouldn't mind".

Fact is, I ran vMA and earned vMA weapons.

In a month, not because of new content, my drops will be turned into essentially nMA weapons.

And a player running old content for the first time will get a better drop for doing the same content I did (even technically a day apart if someone ran vMA right before new patch without realizing). This is on top of the fact that the old content is already much easier due to power creep than it was years ago.

PLUS, that argument also ignores the fact that the players that actually care about having the best gear and would farm for it will feel as if THEY HAVE to do it. The only ones that won't are the ones that don't care if they really have the best gear anyway.

BennyButton

I hope ZOS doesn't think that this recent surge of players means their game is getting better; everyone's quarantined.

xaraan

Shantu wrote: »

So this guy Wheeler comes out and introduces a thread with "Greetings Gang!"...then drops a stink bomb...and disappears.

What kind of character does it take to do that?

That's why they keep doing these big changes on the major expansion. Because they've already sold it to tons of players, others won't notice and it will appear successful because people are buying the new content despite the fact that the changes are horrible.

I think that's what irritates me most is they think because the cash shop or an expansion sucks in some money, that they bad changes are fine. Think of how much bigger and better the game could be without those bad changes constantly. But they made a .4% increase this month vs. last year in the crown store, so they sit around on streams and laugh about how players hate them for bad dungeon mechanics or horrible balancing and never fix them.

Rianai

Dracane wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

Are you aware that healing isn't all that big of an issue but rather the naturally high health pools and the abstinence of being burstable for most of the time, due to casttimes on ults, lack of offensive CCs.
@ZOS_BrianWheeler

I tend to agree, I now regularly see top players 1vXX and take no damage despite simultaneous multiple debuffs and ultimates. If anything you need to look at how much damage LOS and structures absorb with players playing ring-a-rosie around and in structures. It's simply ridiculous and it favors heavy armor to a point of unfairness.

Thank you, Marius. This is the true cancer. I fear, there is nothing to be done though. This line of sighting will remain until the end of times. They could however look at the natural damage mitigation that the most notorious LoS classes bring to the battlefield.

Is "natural dmg mitigation" really an issue on magsorcs tho?

Dubhliam

Inarre wrote: »

Can we see adjustments to the achievements:




These are nearly impossible to achieve. Before adjustment to Battleground queue, players used to create groups and game the queues in order to "farm" these achievements. This is now impossible to do with single queue, and will be even more difficult to achieve now that healing will be nerfed in PVP come Greymoor.

The BG leaderboards prove that healing large amounts is not conducive to the high crit and burst damage goal of the game, and with the reduction of burst heals becomes even less probable. These achievements need a complete rework, or a HUGE reduction of expected value.

Thank God I already have those achievements, as I can agree with you they are damn near impossible, and will be even harder to get with healing reduced.

blkjag

This is just lazy. Giving new players vma weapons won’t make them better. Give any new player my account and they still won’t be able to clear harder content. Sure it might be a slight buff but it doesn’t teach them anything. Players only get better by learning mechanics and putting in the time to get better. We will still have 810 snipe spammers in vet dlc dungeons. BuT i HaS vMa BoW

We as a community have put up with a lot zos. The horrible performance, cp nerfs, cp cap, no updates on nb or cp changes, pvp is unplayable, the list of issues and bugs goes on, and now you pull this. I didn’t think it could get worse after the light attack idea but you guys always amaze me.

Yamenstein

Woeler wrote: »

So does this mean everyone will have to re-farm their all time favourite; maelstrom arena?

Basically. But it's not for the SAME item. That's my understanding. So it's either grinding vMA or grinding something else instead.

Much of a muchness.

Can't wait to see the full patch notes!

Gariele

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Your current VMA and DSA Weapons will not be automatically upgraded to Perfected versions.

JamieAubrey

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Greetings Gang!

Completing Maelstrom or Dragonstar Arena will now grant Blue versions of the non-perfected weapons from these arenas.

So does this mean I can run vMA in Normal and get the ( as of now ) current set of Weapons ? and will they keep the same stats or will be be changed

Banana

No #$_&-* way I'm farming VMA again. You people really are miserable

Bigevilpeter

Good thing I quit this game a some time ago and definately after the Malestrom weapon changes that will remain the case, very dumb decision since it is exactly the same effort that will be required after the patch its not getting any harder

heaven13

Iron_Blurr wrote: »

Imagine feeling so entitled that you believe you deserve perfected weapons you did not earn. You think your situation is bad? Let me remind you all that before transmutation came out there were players that actually had to farm for the perfect trait on their needed weapon in vMa.

Imagine not realizing that the method to obtain the perfected version post Update 26 is the exact method used to obtain the current weapons prior to Update 26.

WeerW3ir

Why do i have a feeling this is actually a bait?


i mean. he shows up. he drops this in. we catched it. and in the hide there will be much MOAR shady stuff like this?

peacenote

karekiz wrote: »

peacenote wrote: »

Lastly, again.... STOP TRYING TO MAKE OLD STUFF "NEW." We deserved a new vampire skill line. We deserved a new solo BG queue in addition to what we had. Heck, we even deserve a new mount model for the next few events, instead of more indriks! And we deserve new solo and 4man arenas, or at least a new modes, if they are going to drop BIS weapons. It is great to fix old things but it's NOT great to parade fixed up content or simplified, gutted content as new features. Stop it. Either make the weapons that previously dropped from the veteran arenas perfected, or make the weapons that drop from normal inferior to what we have now.

It isn't like they aren't making new stuff...

Oh I know they are. And I even like some of it. For example, I very much like the new dungeons.

But that doesn't mean that we can't still recognize when changes to old content are short-changing veteran players who already paid for that content long ago. Which is exactly what's been happening in the examples I've given.

-We've made PvP BG's better! Shorter queue! More balanced teams! (Oh but to do this we took away the group queuing option, which means you can't play with your friends and if you enjoyed creating a competitive team you can't do that either. You bought the game to be able to do BG's as a group? Oh well, sorry about that.)

-We've made vampires better! New abilities! They look cooler! Our whole next release features them!! BUY IT NOW!!! (Oh but by the way we've also made it so that being a vampire doesn't really make sense for lots of different builds anymore... especially healers. That's ok, though, because if you want to be an evil creature you can always go werewolf... oh, wait... nvm. And... what's that? Vampires are SOO 2014 and you were hoping our chapter would give you a new way to fight? Nope, we just updated something we had already. Sorry about that.)

-We've made VDSA and VMA better! Now normal mode drops weapons! Veteran mode drops perfect weapons! They will make you more powerful! (Oh but by the way, if you've already run veteran mode a million times, and sunk tons of time and money into your current BIS weapons, they won't be converted. Wait, you'd like a new challenge? New content? You don't want to run the same arena 5000 more times? Oh well, sorry about that.)

It's just a trend I've been noticing...

Alinhbo_Tyaka

Since this appears to be a change to allow a weapon drop in normal why not upgrade all existing vMA weapons to Perfected and give a blue non-perfected out in nMA? It makes absolutely no sense not to. They have completed the work to get the weapon and deserve the differentiator from those who will get the normal level weapon and upgrade it to gold.

Banana

A new low

hackdrag0n

Iron_Blurr wrote: »

Imagine feeling so entitled that you believe you deserve perfected weapons you did not earn. You think your situation is bad? Let me remind you all that before transmutation came out there were players that actually had to farm for the perfect trait on their needed weapon in vMa.

I'm actually happy for these changes. Now I want perfected master architect, war machine, moondancer, IA, alkosh etc. That might actually liven up some old content for a lot of people.

vMa is not hard to do at all. You can clear it with 15-20k dps. I'm not a god tier player but I've gotten multiple flawless no sigil runs on my dps and even tank. And yes I mean an actual tank with 7 heavy, sword and shield front bar using pierce armor as a spammable and using an infused crusher lightning blockade back bar and silver leashing adds into it. It's really NOT hard to do vma.
Zos wants to get more people to play these old arenas. If everyone had their old weapons upgraded to perfect ones there would be no reason to run these arenas which would not achieve the intended goal zos has of getting more people to play it more often.

If people need help doing vMa I have some advice that may help you.
Generally there are two main strategies to doing vMa.
1 Have high enough dps that you can kill things before they damage you.
2 Play the long game by doing consistent damage and being tanky enough to survive a screw up or two. There are only 2 stages that are actually a dps race and even those stages can be beaten with 15-20k dps. If your rotation is not perfect and you cant light attack weave you can still surpass this dps threshold by wearing proc sets like vipers sting or whatever.

Your advice is meaningless. Everyone who is upset with the changes alrealy knows how to clear vMA. We've all done it dozens or hundreds of times. What we don't want is to do it another 200 times and meanwhile meanwhile new players get the same rewards in much less time.

Many of us will have to do it again. We want to be able to perform at our best and we need the best gear to do that. I don't think it's a sense of entitlement, more a sense of annoyance that our achievements are being devalued.

PackJamers

Picture this, the day before Greymoor drops, people go out and flawlessy clear vMA, no sigils and get that infused inferno/bow. The next day, a guild mate who has never gone in and completed vMA goes in to nMA when the patch has finished, dies a handful of times and uses sigils in those hairy situations. On completion they get the exact same drop...

This boils my water.

Don't get me wrong though, it's brilliant to make the weapons more accessible to all players. I 100% agree with that aspect of it. It's just the kick in the teeth to vet players that have done their time. Players that have used their mats to gold these weapons and since transmutation, their crystals to get the perfect trait. A lot of people have done this with several different weapons.

I don't wanna gold/transmute again, after farming... again. It's not the difficulty of doing vMA again that's the problem for me. I'd rather be playing Greymoor and checking out the new content. Nope, I will be Force Pulse spamming my way through vMA, wondering what a great job you guys have done with Blackreach. Why would you want to push people towards old content with Skyrim coming to ESO? Wouldn't you want everybody nostalgic and swooning about how great the new chapter is on social media? Not sounding off about feeling devalued, disrespected etc. It seems non-sensical.

All of that said, if these changes are to be set in stone, can I offer up an idea to make this a little easier to stomach?

Recently BL3 upped their level cap. To coincide with this they had increased legendary drops as well as vending machines rammed with legendary weapons. This was exciting and people actually enjoyed re-farming these weapons, and didn't focus on the annoyance of having to farm again. Maybe consider this? I'm not saying make everything purchaseable (the undaunted key idea that somebody suggested is one option) but perhaps a double drop event.

That said, just skip all that and perfect our veteran weapons already!!!!!

Alienoutlaw

i have a sinking feeling the VMA weapon mess is a red herring to mask much bigger and harsher nerfs, ZOS have a nasty history of the bait and switch approach to patch notes and so called improvements.
i predict they will appear to back down and allow the current VMA/DSA/BRP to be upgraded but not until closer to the live launch this will be done so we all relax our guard and they can slide in the real pain nerf

Jakx

50 pages of changes, a ton of unpopular combat changes. Tons of inevitable bugs.

Literally, the best content update is the one where the game can actually work and performance doesn't suck. We've gotten to that point where 50 pages of changes and these aforementioned changes here are just looked upon with sadness because the game doesn't work.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Your current VMA and DSA Weapons will not be automatically upgraded to Perfected versions.

I am officially disgusted with ZOS. This is a horrendous decision. You should do some of that “listening to your player base” you guys keep talking about.

Boooooo!!!!!

Yiko

Iron_Blurr wrote: »

Imagine feeling so entitled that you believe you deserve perfected weapons you did not earn. You think your situation is bad? Let me remind you all that before transmutation came out there were players that actually had to farm for the perfect trait on their needed weapon in vMa.

I'm actually happy for these changes. Now I want perfected master architect, war machine, moondancer, IA, alkosh etc. That might actually liven up some old content for a lot of people.

Entitlement? It's about player expectations and how they have been betrayed.

The car analogy is stupid and irrelevant because it presupposes that there's going to be a new BEST every year. That's not the case for content (especially old) in ESO. Even if the car analogy DID fundamentally work, it doesn't acknowledge the IMMENSE discrepancy between player investment for the model bought last year and how absurdly dirt-cheap it is this year. People who paid the initial price would feel absolutely cheated/scammed/betrayed. Basically, the car analogy fails in multiple regards.

Anyways, people cleared vDSA and vMA not solely for the items but for the implicit idea attached to the items - that they would have some level of permanency/longevity as Best-In-Slot (BIS) for that specific content.
People didn't clear the content for a reward that would be sub-optimal relative to a reward FROM THAT VERY SAME CONTENT. My vDSA and vMA weapons will effectively become nDSA and nMA weapons. Would you *really* make the argument that what I earned was normal mode weapons?

I cleared VMA on release when it was much more difficult (due to scaling and lack of CP/powercreep). It's funny that the items back then had passives on them, had them removed, and now they're being added back BUT NOT TO THE VERSIONS THAT ORIGINALLY HAD THEM... from the "same" content when it was actually more difficult and demanding.
I also farmed a Medium Armor Bloodspawn Helm with Impenetrable trait back in Orsinium. This was when monster helms were not guaranteed to drop, were actually quite rare, were not tradeable between party members, and could not have their traits changed. It was miserable. Essentially I was just waiting for RNG. How is that content? How is that fun or fulfilling? This applies to both vDSA and vMA, except these are more difficult relative to vet Spindle 2. I have no desire to go back to vDSA and vMA and put in the same time and effort for rewards I've already proven myself to be worthy of.

Imagine how silly it would be if 6 months from now (after everyone was done with their farming runs for the new perfected gear) they released a PERFECTED perfected version of veteran DSA and VMA weapons that gave ANOTHER line of stats and/or bonuses to the weapon effects for the SAME EXACT CONTENT?? Would you be standing there and applauding how brilliant that would be for ZOS to bring life back to old content?



Regarding the healing changes on Battle Spirit: this doesn't address core issues within the game and will effectively hurt small scalers much more than groups. In practice, this will essentially be a global 2/3 Major Defile. Remind me, why did ZOS remove the formerly ubiquitous Major Defile form Cyrodiil (outside of p2win Necro eks dee)? It was oppressive, and it forced people to group up and be tanky. People are just going to crutch over harder on overperforming heals (like Twilight Matriarch), cross-healing in general, and passive mitigation stacking. THOSE are what should actually be addressed - not global healing

silvereyes

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Your current VMA and DSA Weapons will not be automatically upgraded to Perfected versions.

Not cool. Not cool at all.

Everybody and their brother is going to have non-perfected versions now, which is fine. I don't care what someone else has, even if I had to work harder for the same. I think this is actually a good change, both for consistency and to open up more viable builds to more people.

But if vet clears are what earn a perfected version after the patch, and vet clears are what earned *any* Orsinium or Craglorn arena weapons pre-patch, then all pre-patch weapons should be upgraded to perfected when the patch drops, plain and simple.

Mix

I have not personally done vMA (seen too many frustrated players and I don't need that in my game time!), but I see how long it took them to learn (pre-quest stage saving) and how long to get the weapon and trait (pre-transmute) and even with transmute I have seen players run it over and over and somehow not get the weapon type they need!

Since all of the current vMA and vDSA weapons were obtained on veteran modes - they should be automatically upgraded to perfected versions. It can't be too hard to update the existing item codes to the Perfected stats and then add "new" item codes for the normal versions.

Casul

Really...? You're not going to upgrade my vMA weapons. And you wonder why I stopped my sub Nov 2017.

Sanctum74

To the 2 people saying entitlement vs 17 pages of complaints i think you have it reversed. Entitlement would be being able to complete the same content others have already completed and expecting a better reward from those before you that already did it and get less. How can the 2 of you seriously defend this decision?

Oreyn_Bearclaw

code65536 wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Your current VMA and DSA Weapons will not be automatically upgraded to Perfected versions.

I expect most people will not like this.

I can clear vMA in about half an hour. If I'm forced to re-farm my weapons, I can and it won't be that painful.

But I don't want to. There are things that I'd rather do than to re-run content that I've ran literally hundreds of times over the past 4.5 years.

Thank you for articulating this in a meaningful way. I am holding back a lot of expletives at the moment. As usual, I agree with Code.

ThorinOakenshield86

Sanctum74 wrote: »

To the 2 people saying entitlement vs 17 pages of complaints i think you have it reversed. Entitlement would be being able to complete the same content others have already completed and expecting a better reward from those before you that already did it and get less. How can the 2 of you seriously defend this decision?

I bet they never completed vMA and vDSA. And now bcs they can't play good, wanna see those who farmed their weapons for months to suffer.
But if ZOS have little brain, they won't do this. This game has so many old players like u and me who spent so much time to farm. Old subscribers who will now get pissed of this and unsubscribe or just stop playing. Yes, many players can stop playing this game now, just because this is disrespect against their hard work and a spit on their face. If ZOS want, they can upgrade our weapons. There are many ways for this - for example next patch they can remake these weapons to perfected, in the same way they nerfed them before and removed the extra stat and make em drop in game. Then after next chapter is up, they can make non perfected version to drop in normal arenas. They can do this in many ways, but it's up to them to screw up their old players with spitting on their faces or not.

BennyButton

So basically @ZOS_BrianWheeler is saying that having completed the achievement for vMA "Maelstrom Arena Conqueror" is not enough to earn the weapons that are now being attached to completing that achievement.

How can one team (combat) make so many mistakes? It's ineffable.

Ramber

I cant believe this. If they stick with this it better be a significant damage bonus not just a lowly 129 damage stat... pffft.

Also, I bet the normal weapons wont even be any better then the 5 piece set bonuses, same as not even having one. I farmed vMA hundreds of times, sometimes for sport but i will not do it hundreds more for a crappy stat that won't even matter more then even 1 percent damage.