Better logic than nerfing new moon

Fawn4287

New Moon Acolyte: Reduced the Weapon and Spell Damage granted from this set’s 5 piece bonus to 401, down from 481. This was done to make up for the fact that the resource cost increase penalty can be easily alleviated in group settings by having allies supply you with sets or synergies.

Another great example of ZOS dancing around the issue, rather than tackling it head on. If groups and group play benefit so greatly from the resource gain of synergies and sets, why not just implement a cost increase based on the number people in your group In PvP? New moon is currently a great set and incurs a penalty for the hefty stats it provides, but groups do not experience this because of the benefits that being grouped provides. This is a far better approach than cherry picking an equal trade off sets to hit with the nerf hammer. Currently dedicated group players need little to no regen anyway with someone else doing the bulk of healing and damage for you, plus their damage comes nearly entirely from coordinating ulti dumps. these players also get the bonuses from sets like hircines, worm cult and ebon that solo and small scale players do not. If group play isn’t dealt some negative trade offs, what reason is there to not play grouped other than AP gain, which is a minimal difference when these groups get the same defence as offence ticks that don’t scale off your contribution? ZOS will turn this game in to a minecraft style turn based gameplay weather its from being too lazy to implement a proper large group scaling system or from being afraid to step on the toes of large group players who directly cause all performance issues.

ebix_

their logic is flawed and they dont even listen , many people in forums already talked about how this change will hurt solo players only and still no change.

MurderMostFoul

The truth is ZOS benefits by forcing players to re-gear. Tons of players/characters have been running NMA for while. Nerfing it makes players try new gear, which requires playtime. It's simply a way to boost player traffic.

ZOS should have said:

"NMA, due to its strong power budget, has had high use prevalence for an extended period since its release. In order to promote gear diversity, we are slightly reducing NMA's power budget to give it greater parity with other gear choices."

I would have accepted this. Not the BS cover they tried to sell us.

Playboy_Shrek

not a good change at all considering the penalty on the cost. theres absolutely 0 situation where its good now.

Tommy_The_Gun

Worst part is that you can copy-paste their argument about synergy use in group... to pretty much everything...

Dark Elf can have infinite sustain in group, but race does not have a sustain passive ? Nerf it.
Argonian can wear 2 damage sets in group ? Nerf it.
Werewolf does not have problem with sustain in group, despite having more expensive skills ? Nerf it.

I mean ffs, it is mind boggling. You don't even know what to say to such a dev comment. It is so bad, that it simply feels fake. It must have been like:
"Jeff, we need to push new set in next update, to increase sales. We have to nerf set XYZ, so people will buy new DLC. Just tell the players... something, it can be anything. They are dumb anyway, and they will not understand, so don't worry if you will not have any good argument"

This is exactly how I feel like when I see ultra-unbelievable Dev comment like this. I feel like I am being treated like an idiot. Nerf does not hurt. It is that dev comment that hurts more. I hate to be lied to. Devs said they will be transparent. This is the total opposite, and it seem that I am not the only one seeing it.

zvavi

I am a sorc and I can barely sustain I'm a group with 2 healers while wearing perfected false god (which is sustain set) buff sorcs more.

Strider__Roshin

The fact that they nerfed this set but buffed procs to an absurd degree really shows how little they care for the health of PvP. If they wanted to change it so damaging proc sets had no effect in PvP I'm sure many players would appreciate it.

precambria

It's over tuned and literally everyone knew it was going to get nerfed, has nothing to do with groups vs solo players because anyone can use it, NMA has been pushing out all other sets and unbalancing PvP for a good while there should be no surprise at this.

Emma_Overload

precambria wrote: »

It's over tuned and literally everyone knew it was going to get nerfed, has nothing to do with groups vs solo players because anyone can use it, NMA has been pushing out all other sets and unbalancing PvP for a good while there should be no surprise at this.

LOL, this is competely false. The set was perfectly balanced from the beginning, as many experts proved mathematically when the set was released. Why do people like to pretend the 5% cost increase means nothing? If your build is truly min-maxed, that 5% definitely needs to be accounted for, and that's true in both PvP and PvE.

UppGRAYxDD

It’s 80 less dmg... this will not stop many from running it... took tips will barely move

Tammany

UppGRAYxDD wrote: »

It’s 80 less dmg...

This "less dmg" miltipled by damage increased instances turns into "decent dmg"

UppGRAYxDD

Tammany wrote: »

UppGRAYxDD wrote: »

It’s 80 less dmg...

This "less dmg" miltipled by damage increased instances turns into "decent dmg"

Still very low even with 100% uptime on ever dmg buff in the game. You might notice if all you do is dps parse, but not really in PvE or PvP. All this nerf does is actually make many PvP dps characters think about what sets to wear...

JobooAGS

UppGRAYxDD wrote: »

Tammany wrote: »

UppGRAYxDD wrote: »

It’s 80 less dmg...

This "less dmg" miltipled by damage increased instances turns into "decent dmg"

Still very low even with 100% uptime on ever dmg buff in the game. You might notice if all you do is dps parse, but not really in PvE or PvP. All this nerf does is actually make many PvP dps characters think about what sets to wear...

The damage difference is more than enough to change my entire gear. New combo provides more sustain and very similar if not more damage. If the NMA changes remain and the changes to the set I'm after remain the same or get better, goodbye NMA. I'll give you a hint. This set I'm talking about is not a free damage proc set.

MincVinyl

What is funny is i feel when i 1vX I tend to die to proc sets, most abilities players do only hit for light attack damage..... doubt many group players are abusing their group strength to be able to run sets that require them to actually use their stats. If the issue with the set is that groups can abuse it, don't you think that it is the issue of group dynamics?

The only downside to proc sets is the lack of healing a player can do, but they get free guaranteed damage that alot of the time is uncounterable by some degree. Which in a group environment who cares if their heals are slightly low, you will have 5-10 rapid regens stacked on you most of the time anyways. Why aren't proc sets nerfed because they are abused by groups?

---

We see zos repeat the same thing over and over, where there is a problem but they fail to properly address what the cause is. Then make some random attempt at a change that hurts the game in some way without solving the issue.
For example:

• Zos adds swift to the game.....next patch everyone is running around with speed builds......What is the issue?......swift obviously......what did zos gut?....... Maj exp pots, sets, abilities, snare immunities........oh look swift is still too strong....nerfs swift, doesn't fix unnecessary changes
• Healing in groups is too strong......What is the issue?......How heals work in group play?.....zos nerfs all healing across the board......Now solo play is hurt, but groups are hardly phased by the change.
• Zos changes a unique ult onslaught into a copy of corrosive......Turns out it is too strong who would have guessed?....Zos proceeds to gut dizzy over and over......Onslaught is still too strong.....nerfs onslaught

Tommy_The_Gun

precambria wrote: »

It's over tuned and literally everyone knew it was going to get nerfed, has nothing to do with groups vs solo players because anyone can use it, NMA has been pushing out all other sets and unbalancing PvP for a good while there should be no surprise at this.

If NMA is over tuned then why they are buffing Shacklebreaker ? It is literally the most used set... It just does not make sense to "pretend" that NMA does not have a "kiss-curse"... and ZOS did just that...

ManDraKE

Is the best performing stats-base damage set in the game, there is a reason why 99% of the stam pvp builds use NMA, because is plain better than sprigans/hundings/briarhart/etc. It was obvious that a nerf was coming, there shoudln't be an universal set that is better than others in every single situation.

Fawn4287

ManDraKE wrote: »

Is the best performing stats-base damage set in the game, there is a reason why 99% of the stam pvp builds use NMA, because is plain better than sprigans/hundings/briarhart/etc. It was obvious that a nerf was coming, there shoudln't be an universal set that is better than others in every single situation.

It was always going to be the best because it was the only set that has such a hefty negative effect, 5% cost increase is a substantial downside, the only good thing about it now is that it has no downtime as opposed to other sets like truth and stuhns

Fawn4287

MincVinyl wrote: »

What is funny is i feel when i 1vX I tend to die to proc sets, most abilities players do only hit for light attack damage..... doubt many group players are abusing their group strength to be able to run sets that require them to actually use their stats. If the issue with the set is that groups can abuse it, don't you think that it is the issue of group dynamics?

The only downside to proc sets is the lack of healing a player can do, but they get free guaranteed damage that alot of the time is uncounterable by some degree. Which in a group environment who cares if their heals are slightly low, you will have 5-10 rapid regens stacked on you most of the time anyways. Why aren't proc sets nerfed because they are abused by groups?

---

We see zos repeat the same thing over and over, where there is a problem but they fail to properly address what the cause is. Then make some random attempt at a change that hurts the game in some way without solving the issue.
For example:

• Zos adds swift to the game.....next patch everyone is running around with speed builds......What is the issue?......swift obviously......what did zos gut?....... Maj exp pots, sets, abilities, snare immunities........oh look swift is still too strong....nerfs swift, doesn't fix unnecessary changes
• Healing in groups is too strong......What is the issue?......How heals work in group play?.....zos nerfs all healing across the board......Now solo play is hurt, but groups are hardly phased by the change.
• Zos changes a unique ult onslaught into a copy of corrosive......Turns out it is too strong who would have guessed?....Zos proceeds to gut dizzy over and over......Onslaught is still too strong.....nerfs onslaught

This is the issue, many good players will forgo the use of proc sets, especially 1 and 2 vX players but essentially will force every small scaler to run a self cleanse and kill off solo play for builds without one. The zerg and ball groups hitting you with 20 light attacks and their proc sets applying 250,000 damage over x seconds with a dozen proc aoe, snare, root and CC effects will be unbearable on anything that can’t cleanse that garbage.

Even this update group healing has been shown to be indifferent with the healing nerfs and builds like tanks don’t notice the difference either, its the small scale damage oriented builds that suffer, has ZOS done anything to nerf large group healing and purge spamming? No, they’ve decided to make AOEs turn based instead of targeting the problem causing groups. To be fair If this is the road we’re going down and gameplay mechanics have to suffer I would be happier if ZOS just removed grouping in PvP zones, you are of course in an alliance already, the game would play exponentially better for it.

WhyMustItBe

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

The truth is ZOS benefits by forcing players to re-gear. Tons of players/characters have been running NMA for while. Nerfing it makes players try new gear, which requires playtime. It's simply a way to boost player traffic.

I don't understand how this is supposed to be a good thing. What good is increasing playtime if that time is spent in tedium and frustration constantly rebuilding or switching characters because ZOS does game balance like Game of Thrones does character development ("KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!")?

The amount of money people spend is directly proportional to the fun they are having and the identity they have built with their characters. If you flip gear and class abilities on their head every 3 months you are undermining that identity and subtracting from the fun factor.

Both negatively impact the bottom line.

/confused

MurderMostFoul

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

The truth is ZOS benefits by forcing players to re-gear. Tons of players/characters have been running NMA for while. Nerfing it makes players try new gear, which requires playtime. It's simply a way to boost player traffic.

I don't understand how this is supposed to be a good thing. What good is increasing playtime if that time is spent in tedium and frustration constantly rebuilding or switching characters because ZOS does game balance like Game of Thrones does character development ("KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!")?

The amount of money people spend is directly proportional to the fun they are having and the identity they have built with their characters. If you flip gear and class abilities on their head every 3 months you are undermining that identity and subtracting from the fun factor.

Both negatively impact the bottom line.

/confused

Personally, I would play a lot less if I didn't need to dedicate a chuck of playtime now and then to changing gear set ups when new gear comes out or old gear is nerfed. It takes awhile to acquire and test the gear. And the process can actually add some enjoyment to the game.

I'm sure this applies to many other players as well. If everyone don't have to spend time changing things up occasionally, the cumulative effect would be a lot less total play time.

All of this is fine. What's not cool is ZOS trying to obfuscate thier motivations.

ManDraKE

Fawn4287 wrote: »

ManDraKE wrote: »

Is the best performing stats-base damage set in the game, there is a reason why 99% of the stam pvp builds use NMA, because is plain better than sprigans/hundings/briarhart/etc. It was obvious that a nerf was coming, there shoudln't be an universal set that is better than others in every single situation.

It was always going to be the best because it was the only set that has such a hefty negative effect, 5% cost increase is a substantial downside, the only good thing about it now is that it has no downtime as opposed to other sets like truth and stuhns

the downsite is easily compensated, 2 pieces of medium armor give 4% cost reduction. Is just putting a little bit more sustain, or just managing your resources better. That 5% is negible compared to the damage boost it offers vs other sets, specially considering that NMA has 100% uptime, is upfront damage that doesn't require a proc condition, and it also buffs healing. The cost increase is only relevant on non-cp, but well, non-cp is already a proc fest so no point in trying going that route, the extra 5% cost increase is meaningless on CP-enabled pvp.

This set is plain superior to everything else we have, or you nerf NMA or you buff ALL the other sets, either way a change is required. I have pretty much every single staming DPS for PvP set fully gold, and they are all sitting in the bank because there isn't a single build where they perform equal/better than NMA, that should tell you something ...

wild_kmacdb16_ESO

If they insist on reducing NMA effectiveness, I would have expected them to reduce the cost increase penalty by a proportionate amount since its apparently 'not a factor' anyway.

ManDraKE wrote: »

Fawn4287 wrote: »

ManDraKE wrote: »

Is the best performing stats-base damage set in the game, there is a reason why 99% of the stam pvp builds use NMA, because is plain better than sprigans/hundings/briarhart/etc. It was obvious that a nerf was coming, there shoudln't be an universal set that is better than others in every single situation.

It was always going to be the best because it was the only set that has such a hefty negative effect, 5% cost increase is a substantial downside, the only good thing about it now is that it has no downtime as opposed to other sets like truth and stuhns

the downsite is easily compensated, 2 pieces of medium armor give 4% cost reduction. Is just putting a little bit more sustain, or just managing your resources better. That 5% is negible compared to the damage boost it offers vs other sets, specially considering that NMA has 100% uptime, is upfront damage that doesn't require a proc condition, and it also buffs healing. The cost increase is only relevant on non-cp, but well, non-cp is already a proc fest so no point in trying going that route, the extra 5% cost increase is meaningless on CP-enabled pvp.

This set is plain superior to everything else we have, or you nerf NMA or you buff ALL the other sets, either way a change is required. I have pretty much every single staming DPS for PvP set fully gold, and they are all sitting in the bank because there isn't a single build where they perform equal/better than NMA, that should tell you something ...

5% to all costs (magicka skills, stamina skills, sprint, block, dodge, sneak, breakfree, ultimates) is not negligible. And after the buff other sets are receiving next patch, people would have shifted away from NMA anyway without this nerf.

WhyMustItBe

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Personally, I would play a lot less if I didn't need to dedicate a chuck of playtime now and then to changing gear set ups when new gear comes out or old gear is nerfed. It takes awhile to acquire and test the gear. And the process can actually add some enjoyment to the game.

Yeah, but I still don't feel that all "time played" is created equal. Re-gearing is time played doing tedious things that aren't particularly fun. I wouldn't say that is as enjoyable and good for the game as adding exciting new content and game systems.

Also, I have a maxed bank space, max bags on all characters, and all the housing storage boxes, and all of it is already completely full. ZOS can't just keep playing pinwheel with all the gear sets in the game without giving us more storage so we actually have some place to put them all, if constantly re-gearing our characters is going to be adopted as some sort of game design philosophy moving forward.

MincVinyl

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Personally, I would play a lot less if I didn't need to dedicate a chuck of playtime now and then to changing gear set ups when new gear comes out or old gear is nerfed. It takes awhile to acquire and test the gear. And the process can actually add some enjoyment to the game.

Yeah, but I still don't feel that all "time played" is created equal. Re-gearing is time played doing tedious things that aren't particularly fun. I wouldn't say that is as enjoyable and good for the game as adding exciting new content and game systems.

Also, I have a maxed bank space, max bags on all characters, and all the housing storage boxes, and all of it is already completely full. ZOS can't just keep playing pinwheel with all the gear sets in the game without giving us more storage so we actually have some place to put them all, if constantly re-gearing our characters is going to be adopted as some sort of game design philosophy moving forward.

What really should happen is zos to stop with the quota concept that they need to keep adding in X amount of new sets each patch. Much like how pokemon ran out of ideas a long time ago, zos ran out of set ideas a while ago. Yet they still try to meet their quota of sets. At a certain point it is the issue of appealing to the masses to keep selling the game.

---

Sadly the "tedious" nature of the game probably will never go away since that is what drives daily player numbers. Logging in and out of 18 characters to do daily crafting/pledges/bgs/quests all sucks after a week of doing it.

ManDraKE

wild_kmacdb16_ESO wrote: »

If they insist on reducing NMA effectiveness, I would have expected them to reduce the cost increase penalty by a proportionate amount since its apparently 'not a factor' anyway.

ManDraKE wrote: »

Fawn4287 wrote: »

ManDraKE wrote: »

Is the best performing stats-base damage set in the game, there is a reason why 99% of the stam pvp builds use NMA, because is plain better than sprigans/hundings/briarhart/etc. It was obvious that a nerf was coming, there shoudln't be an universal set that is better than others in every single situation.

It was always going to be the best because it was the only set that has such a hefty negative effect, 5% cost increase is a substantial downside, the only good thing about it now is that it has no downtime as opposed to other sets like truth and stuhns

the downsite is easily compensated, 2 pieces of medium armor give 4% cost reduction. Is just putting a little bit more sustain, or just managing your resources better. That 5% is negible compared to the damage boost it offers vs other sets, specially considering that NMA has 100% uptime, is upfront damage that doesn't require a proc condition, and it also buffs healing. The cost increase is only relevant on non-cp, but well, non-cp is already a proc fest so no point in trying going that route, the extra 5% cost increase is meaningless on CP-enabled pvp.

This set is plain superior to everything else we have, or you nerf NMA or you buff ALL the other sets, either way a change is required. I have pretty much every single staming DPS for PvP set fully gold, and they are all sitting in the bank because there isn't a single build where they perform equal/better than NMA, that should tell you something ...

5% to all costs (magicka skills, stamina skills, sprint, block, dodge, sneak, breakfree, ultimates) is not negligible. And after the buff other sets are receiving next patch, people would have shifted away from NMA anyway without this nerf.

on CP it is, is just adding one more heavy attack here and there, or just slotting one well-fited, maybe a food with more regen if you struggle, etc. A thousand options withouth sacrifing much in other aspects, sustain on CP-enabled is already very easy, you wont run our of resources unless your are bad at managing them or your build is terrible, i dont recall one instance of running out of resources recently, except for situation where i was chased by a zerg for 10mins straight, or simply because i just played bad and wasted my resouces in a dumb way

Red_Feather

Strider__Roshin wrote: »

The fact that they nerfed this set but buffed procs to an absurd degree really shows how little they care for the health of PvP. If they wanted to change it so damaging proc sets had no effect in PvP I'm sure many players would appreciate it.

Do you think it will be worse that the DoT patch disaster.

YandereGirlfriend

@JobooAGS My official guess is Perfected Yandir's as it's basically NMA (at least if the patch goes through) with the Critical Chance line swapped out for a line of regeneration. I was looking at it myself as a replacement for some of my Stamina characters.

JobooAGS

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

@JobooAGS My official guess is Perfected Yandir's as it's basically NMA (at least if the patch goes through) with the Critical Chance line swapped out for a line of regeneration. I was looking at it myself as a replacement for some of my Stamina characters.

Good guess, was considering it, but no

Strider__Roshin

Red_Feather wrote: »

Strider__Roshin wrote: »

The fact that they nerfed this set but buffed procs to an absurd degree really shows how little they care for the health of PvP. If they wanted to change it so damaging proc sets had no effect in PvP I'm sure many players would appreciate it.

Do you think it will be worse that the DoT patch disaster.

Not sure, I left after playing the PTS for that patch. I've been trying to get back into the game, but it's hard when the combat feels worse than when you left it.