U28 Combat Preview & Developer Update

Casterial

During this change, we also adjusted buffs/debuffs to bring them more in-line with our standards for item sets and abilities. This was also combined with the overall goals to increase sustain, decrease damage done, and increase damage taken. Players with builds that aren’t 100% optimized will see an increase in power, while players utilizing all Majors/Minors at once in coordinated efforts will see a decrease in power.

In other news you're nerfing the skill floor, skill ceiling and making horrible players good players? You aren't respecting players who take time to learn their builds, build their build, and take time to get good are being nerfed further while players who just went "Youtube said" or "Well it works in pve" can now be skilled?

Stop making your game dumbed down, this is the 4th or 5th patch you've directly dumbed down the skill ceiling.

techyeshic

As such, we’re shifting the buffs/debuffs system so they are calculated on the server much in the same way as Sprint and Block

Dude... Thats when things got worse.

I cannot be alone in saying that I am tired of the changes in general when they are not making the game better and we are in the middle of testing AOE cooldowns in Cyrodiil already. Don't you think its a bit much to be changing other things in the background in the meantime? You're moving the target. You lack a control in your lab experiment here.

Thor199389

The Major/Minor Buffs/Debuffs changes sound like they are going to change for example Major Sorcery from increasing your Spell Damge by +20% to increasing your Spell Damge by 500 Points...
Just like the Changes on Racial Passivs.

SpacemanSpiff1

this combat preview really doesn't fill me with confidence for the future of this game.

yikes

EyelessCZ

Yep, thats what I told here several times ago. Creating new content endlesly, creates new problem with game balance, so they need to adjust and adjust to the infinite, because there are so many mechanics to handle. Without reason. Those changes hardly do any good. I return to the Tamriel a week ago and found out its playable, everything is working, dungeons are pretty fast and lag is at its minimum, at least for me. Now more worries are at horizon.
And that help to the unskilled players is also another disballance which needs to be adjusted. So we will recieve update 29, 30 40...
I am sorry but I am not happy about it.

Casterial

EyelessCZ wrote: »

Yep, thats what I told here several times ago. Creating new content endlesly

They need to stop releasing content so damn fast, a new chapter....YEARLY???????? Why? To further unbalance this game?


You're right, update 29, 30,40...etc is just going to continue to make it so PVE players can just walk into pvp and be good.

Skjaldbjorn

I can't wait to see the host of Warden PVE DPS change there aren't. Riveting stuff. I am on the edge of my seat.

xaraan

1. Well, Frost staff changes are needed, unfortunately not these.

The snare from frost wall is actually useful as a tank, so that's gone and in its place only a small shield (vs. only projectiles?) isn't that great, especially when you are out of a dungeon and in something more spread out like some trials. And the reduction in damage makes the ability even less useful for a dps to use.

You could have left the snare, the damage, added the shield and it would still be not optimal to use on a dps.

Moving the taunt from heavy attack to an ability is good to prevent players that have no idea what they are doing from accidentally taunting the boss with a heavy and allows opposing tanks in a trial to at least heavy attack for resources without stealing taunt. But not sure why it even needs to be added to clench, we have a magicka taunt already, and seems like that's ripe for the chance to have some players continue making the same mistake of accidentally taunting, just with an ability instead of heavy attack now.

2. As for the crit changes, this, much like the HA/LA "testing" months ago, just sounds like another way to raise the floor and lower the ceiling, making less skilled players better artificially while lowering what a skilled player can accomplish. Not to say some adjustments aren't necessary, but if you make a statement like "Players with builds that aren’t 100% optimized will see an increase in power, while players utilizing all Majors/Minors at once in coordinated efforts will see a decrease in power." Then you are doing it wrong.

3. Last thing, I have to agree with Code. You guys constantly make game wide changes, but do not adjust content efficiently along with it. If you are nerfing overall player power, then overall content power (obviously in new content not base game) needs nerfed as well.

prof_doom

Yeah, gonna have to agree with everyone else posting and say that none of the combat related changes listed sound like good ideas.
Except moving the taunt off of heavy attack on Ice Staff and onto the power. That was good.
Though with the other changes to Ice staff, people are even less likely to use it after the update.

WreckfulAbandon

L_Nici wrote: »

"Players with builds that aren’t 100% optimized will see an increase in power, while players utilizing all Majors/Minors at once in coordinated efforts will see a decrease in power."

Yeah that makes sense, why should someone who invests more thought in build be rewarded the thought alone is ridiculous, thats almost like people who learn will have better grades, how insane is that.

I'm sick of always being dragged down to the lowest common denominator, have enough of that in real life and can't escape it in ESO either...

Apox

so who exactly was complaining about crit in pve? i personally enjoy my medusa mother's sorrow setup for dungeons.

i like the ideas of reintroducing group queue but i dislike the idea of removing specific queue. i dont want to play chaosball, i dont want to capture a flag or chase down zones. i wanna go stomp a mudhole in someones ***. and im not going to stop that to PTFO.

the change to wall of frost is also interesting. dont know how viable it will be compared to other things but interesting still. going to need further work if you want to make frost staff tanking actually viable. im not complaining that 1h/shield is "too good" because i wouldnt trade my sword and board on my tank for anything, but frost staff will need more love.

i also got a chuckle out of this line

Players with builds that aren’t 100% optimized will see an increase in power, while players utilizing all Majors/Minors at once in coordinated efforts will see a decrease in power.

Casterial

SDKTJ

SpacemanSpiff1 wrote: »

this combat preview really doesn't fill me with confidence for the future of this game.

yikes

Did the lack of endgame content not do that already? 1 trial a year, but 2 damn mediocre story zones? The chapter system was solid at first, but it's now gone to crap with the pure catering to players who won't stick around to feel the effects of the combat changes that are being made to cater to them.

Cinbri

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

As such, we’re shifting the buffs/debuffs system so they are calculated on the server much in the same way as ... Block.

You DO understand that Block performs worse and most clunky ever after this change than in 6 years before that?

Aluna

So in summary
) Frost Staffs are even worse and bad on all roles now
) We will get a bunch of new performance problems or bugs with casting buffs
) Everyone needs to change their builds and rethink group setups again
) The BG problem moved from Robbing us of group queues to Robbing us of game type choice

sooo.... are there plans on when you want to start improving the game? Not giving us a new bug every week would actually be an improvement already, not even talking about fixing some

RampenSau324

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

During this change, we also adjusted buffs/debuffs to bring them more in-line with our standards for item sets and abilities. This was also combined with the overall goals to increase sustain, decrease damage done, and increase damage taken. Players with builds that aren’t 100% optimized will see an increase in power, while players utilizing all Majors/Minors at once in coordinated efforts will see a decrease in power.

So basicly if you put time and effort into ur builds u get punished and everyone with the proc sets will not ? Lowering the Skillcap every patch

Merforum

TRANSLATION: to satisfy all the PVP whiners we will be once again nerfing a lot of PVE and tanking capabilities.

Nobody really cared about making frost staff a better DPS weapon, it was being used as a back bar tanking weapon just fine. Removing a little damage from wall is ok (but how does that making better for dps) and removing the snare is just plain stupid. Also requiring tank to slot an additional skill just to get the taunt is beyond stupid, having to heavy attack was already hard enough. We'll see but these frost staff changes will most likely REDUCE not increase use of ice staves.

SidraWillowsky

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

So if I understand this correctly, the top vet trial teams will probably notice the major/minor buff changes more than anyone else...? (It's a lot easier for the best players to notice a decrease in performance than it is to notice a buff, which is easier for lesser players to put down to luck or "I finally got gud".)

Somehow, I see it playing out this way:
1. The more casual players or ones not interested in min/maxing will get a buff. But it won't be enough to make them any more competitive or their builds any more viable in the more difficult endgame stuff, so in terms of harder vet content, they'll remain where they are now. Maybe dungeons and overland will be easier, and if so, that's great (not sarcasm). But one of the reasons they're not still going to struggle to find endgame vet groups willing to take them is because...
2. The mid-tier players will end up being hit the hardest. My main, mostly social, guild has been working on vMoL for a while now. We don't always time our War Horns correctly, not everyone has all-gold meta gear, and we're not pushing people to use certain builds. We've got a 40k/6 mil or 60k/21 mil DPS requirement (4 of the 8 DDs are 80k+) and are going to be able to finish it with those numbers... but if we lose DPS due to these changes? Not sure what's going to happen. Clearly we'll adapt but I'm sure it will feel like a significant and random setback.
3. The Hodors and 4Ds of the world will somehow be able to turn this all into a buff.

Over and over it reminds me of a book I read as a kid where a boy finds a genie who's a bit too literal. The guy is awful at basketball and one of his wishes is to be the best player in the school. The genie ends up making everyone WORSE than the kid. Sounds like the strategy being used here too!

Corellon Thromorin

Merforum wrote: »

TRANSLATION: to satisfy all the PVP whiners we will be once again nerfing a lot of PVE and tanking capabilities.

Nobody really cared about making frost staff a better DPS weapon.

Lies.

ManDraKE

Can we address the really bad state of the PvP?

- NonCP PvP is a procfest meta, as we said during the PTS that was going to happen.
- CP PvP has become a 30k+ HP land, we are all HP bags with burst damage.
- Malacath is the most unbalanced thing i ever seen in this game, EVER. I dont think that even during the worst times of viper+tremorscale or sloads we had something as broken as malacath. And it exacerbates the two previous problem i listed by buffing procs and by allowing high HP - Heavy armor builds to pack insane burst.

Tbh is a bit frustrating seeing the team so focused in something as niche as Taunting with the Frost staff, when PvP beetwen the lag and absurd meta is unplayable and un-enjoyable.

Cinbri

I have ugly feeling that overhaul of minor buffs system with intent to increase damage taken means nerf to Spear Wall passive that will kill it same way as Potentates 2pc bonus was killed after tweaking jsut couple %.

CaffeinatedMayhem

ManDraKE wrote: »

Tbh is a bit frustrating seeing the team so focused in something as niche as Taunting with the Frost staff, when PvP beetwen the lag and absurd meta is unplayable and un-enjoyable.

I have to agree. I went to running high penetration builds on all my PvP toons, 9k is the lowest and the builds with Balorgh can go up to 25k pen.

Guess what... none of that even touches health on CP builds. And I'm a glass cannon. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but every mag build I know is being wrecked by high armor, high health, high damage stam PvP builds left and right. Death recap says the two hits I saw were 2k... yet there are 6 other attacks I don't see.

My damage log says I did more damage than I received, yet I never see attackers health drop at all, while I"m getting 2 shot. Great balance there.

VaranisArano

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

DustyWarehouse wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In terms of reducing some pain points that Frost Staff users and their groups, we’ll be removing the Auto-Taunt from Tri-focus. The taunt from Frost Staff will instead reside in Frost Clench, and will taunt the enemy for 15 seconds.

People who didn't read Tri-Focus won't read Destructive Touch either.
Are people using Destructive Touch so little that they can move Frost Staff taunt there?

RIP anyone using a Master's frost staff in PvE. Not that anyone does anyway...

Whatever specific staff they were using is irrelevant. The point is people were clearly using a Frost Staff but not intending to tank. That means dps. So apparently frost staff is actually being used for dps. Otherwise taunt accidents wouldn't be such an issue.

Now people genuinely using a Frost Staff to taunt have to sacrifice a skill to put in Destructive Clench or some other taunt.
And people who were using Frost clench for the immobilize (were there people doing that?) now have to watch out for the taunt in case they accidentally hit the boss. Fewer accidents maybe but legit frost staff tanks having to shuffle their skills because people can't be bothered to read the tooltip for Tri-Focus. Sheesh.

Most accidental taunts I see are from leveling players, who I can only assume picked up Trifocus when they had a fire or lightning staff, then picked up a new ice staff as they leveled but didn't remember the taunt.

Cinbri

Can we get some buffs combined into one, similarly to Armor and Critical. For example minor sorcery and minor brutality combined into minor power. Same for major buff. It will help alleviate problem with situativeness of buffs, like it would help stampalr to actually get benefit out of Illuminate.

FrancisCrawford

They need to do something REALLY good (and heretofore unannounced) for frost DPS to balance against:
-- The fact that it's always been bad.
-- The new nerf in the Wall of Elements change.

Ironically, the most obvious avenue would be in the area of crit.

That's because:
-- Crit is not a thing for other elements.
-- Crit kind of fits with the metaphor of frost damage shattering the target.

CleymenZero wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

Also, please make sure someone ups the drop chance for fire/shock staves of Medusa. This is ridiculous.

Don't worry, after they're done gutting crit, you'll never want to use that set again.

Wish I could click both "Agree" and "Awesome".

Also, they react to feedback made a year ago now. The battleground queues have been a request for a long time and samr for frost staves, thing is it doesn't even seem like frost staff changes are gonna help dps at all so not only do they react wayyyy too late, it's not even a proper reaction...

Kittytravel

While this is just a preview it's hard to be too harsh on it without knowing the host of other changes coming. But here's my thoughts for anyone who cares.

1. Really glad to hear Frost Staff finally gets some love to allow DPS to use it. I still don't entirely understand the need for Frost Clench to have a taunt on it when, as many others have said, we already have Inner Fire as part of Undaunted which is a magicka taunt. It seems much more rational to me to grant Frost Clench an additional capability with frost staves and remove the taunt capability entirely; then move Inner Fire to where Blood Altar is and vice versa. This allows Magicka tanks to start with their Magicka taunt while getting Blood Altar later down the line which while useful isn't a critical skill in early on tanking.

2. The crit changes sound like it can be a good thing. Moving the meta away from crit-dominated builds and instead allowing people to possibly use off-scale builds to nearly the same degree is healthy for the game but it shouldn't be overly damaging to the crit builds that high-end players currently use. This seems like more of an issue with crit damage scaling being too high rather than a crit-chance problem but that's my take.

3. Major/Minor buffs sound rather lackluster and shouldn't be what's affecting your ceiling. In fact utilizing and maintaining up time on these buffs should be what defines your ceiling; the impeccable teamwork of rotating abilities to maintain these in a complete cycle should be kept as what separates your players. I'd rather see a change made in the sources of these buffs so that a wider class-group diversity is required to obtain the same affect rather than seeing clusters of the same class being run as seems to be a more pressing issue.

4. Crit combining into one stat is a massive step forward for build diversity as it's always been a sore spot in encouraging hybrid builds. It's hard to maintain a consistent damage when your Stamina abilities have a 47% crit chance and your Magicka has a 16%. I look forward to more things like this that won't punish players for using top-end-meta builds but won't punish others for using more niche fun type builds.

FrancisCrawford

casparian wrote: »

relentless_turnip wrote: »

Anyone understand what they're actually doing with buffs/debuffs 😂

It sounds like they're saying if you have less buffs and debuffs in your build you will equate to the same damage as someone that does!? What!? I understand them trying to simplify the game, but from a logical perspective this is lacking...

What they're saying is they are rebalancing the value of minor and major debuffs. Compared to someone who is totally optimized right now, the resulting rebalance will be a nerf. Compared to someone who is relatively unoptimized right now, the resulting rebalance will be a buff.

That can't be exactly true as written, unless they're buffing some buffs and nerfing other buffs.

As an alternative, they could be nerfing (or leaving unchanged) all buffs, along with nerfing crit, while buffing some other things.

FrancisCrawford

DustyWarehouse wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

In terms of reducing some pain points that Frost Staff users and their groups, we’ll be removing the Auto-Taunt from Tri-focus. The taunt from Frost Staff will instead reside in Frost Clench, and will taunt the enemy for 15 seconds.

People who didn't read Tri-Focus won't read Destructive Touch either.
Are people using Destructive Touch so little that they can move Frost Staff taunt there?

RIP anyone using a Master's frost staff in PvE. Not that anyone does anyway...

Or, even more directly, a Maelstrom one.

Cryptical

If frost clench is going to be a weapon based range taunt then how about reducing the cost to be more in line with the weapon based melee taunt.

SidraWillowsky

Kittytravel wrote: »

While this is just a preview it's hard to be too harsh on it without knowing the host of other changes coming. But here's my thoughts for anyone who cares.

1. Really glad to hear Frost Staff finally gets some love to allow DPS to use it.

But it didn't; all of its functionality for DDs has been stripped... nerfing the WoE damage and adding a shield means that there's not really a reason to run this as a PvE DD, unless one wants a support/DD hybrid role. Which most don't. I see the frost staff becoming a tank/healer weapon and trash to be deconstructed for DDs.