U28 Combat Preview & Developer Update

MrTrenbolone

Can you do seperate balance for PvE and PvP already? If crit is according to guys a problem in PvE, leave PvP outside of it.
Can you focus and fix the bugs already that've existed for years and people have been complaining about for years?
You are killing your own product with each patch you release, you are literally devolving your own game, no one wants this.
And why are you treating the game as if it's in a perma-beta state with these major balance changes every few weeks/months?
You can't do that, this is supposed to be an MMO, we invested a lot of time and resources into our builds and you give us 0 refunds on top of that?

[snip]

[Edited to remove Bashing/Baiting]

Shantu

Been around this block enough to know they are going to do whatever they want to do for whatever reason they want to do it. I understand the need to make things more performant, but all this back and forth development wears on credibility. It begins to feel like a fluctuating intellectual exercise that has little to do with entertainment value.

Thalmor-Nordmaster

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »
we’re shifting the buffs/debuffs system so they are calculated on the server much in the same way as Sprint and Block...they will be more performant

like Cyrodiil performant? So the plan is to degrade the PVE experience so that it matches the PVP experience. Thus no one will know the difference.

In six years the game has been in a state of constant change. Sometimes (rarely) for the better. 2020 was supposed to be about performance increase. So where is this performance. FPS is all over the place...Ping and latency wildly varies... Disconnected from solo dungeons and instances. No difference in 2020 still acts on a performance par with Nerfmire.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Bashing]

JohnOfMarkarth

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, it was being used as a back bar tanking weapon just fine.

Sorry but [snip]. A ton of people ... and i mean a lot of people didnt like it and did care. And did want ice staves to be better DPS

[Edited to remove Profanity]

Canned_Apples

I wish these devs @ZOS_BrianWheeler would stop actively destroying this game.

This game isn't difficult to master but they are still removing any/all skill this game requires.

Why do you @ZOS_BrianWheeler and @ZOS_Gilliam refuse to listen to feedback? We do not want a proc based game.

You might as well remove manual block and dodge and set it so that it works like early 2000 mmos...that's were this game seems to be heading.

MirkoZ

I'm disgusted

Magna_Chronos

ZOS_BrianWheeler 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.

Yee! Punish those damn *** who wasted time learning about the game. They deserve! LMAO

Canned_Apples

Magna_Chronos wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler 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.

Yee! Punish those damn *** who wasted time learning about the game. They deserve! LMAO

#devlogic

Thalmor-Nordmaster

Also the sets you are introducing that work on stacks and differentials are causing problems the more you add these items the worse your calculation load is going to get on the server. Holistic Change /Standards nice boiler room buzzwords.

Punishing those who spend hours a day working on bettering themselves IOT that's (In Order To) better their group is coming across as vindictive. Soloing 4 mans is becoming even more of a mess as your server services are not operating with consistency.

After previewing the new sets I begin to see that NMA was nerfed not because of abuse. But because nothing new that would be offered in the newer content would be better. After 6 years the wiser have learned not to gold any equipment or seek a sense of permanency in sets. And now core gameplay is up next.

A reminder ZOS that when this game starts to play and operate like others then your uniqueness will disappear then possibly players. I was in my discord with a few Beta players who left as they saw nothing new that caught either their fancy and the 2020 performance promises were empty promises. These Beta players were 10 star posters and class rep nominees. When they walk away you have to see that your words had weight and meaning and they have lost both now.

PVP since 2015 has become worse year after year. First it was the Deer* then you committed mass deer genocide and poofed them out. Then it was the Lightning bugs so you installed bug zappers at the keeps and now no bugs. Then it was AOEs and Vicious Death /proxy det high damage so we got battle spirit and caps then it was a grid system as seen on your eso stream. 1.4--1.5--1.6 I think the point is clear..
but before all of that it was the LIGHTING PATCH!!. I know you and some of the newer players may not remember all of these "Improvements" BUT PEPPERIDGE FARMS REMEMBERS !

Lighting Patch was first then Deericide.

Nothing has been done that works on a permanent basis to improve PVP we went from many pvp servers to one cp alliance locked, one standard, one no cp, and a 7 day that's it.

Now PVE is on the blocks to meet "Our Standards" Funny thing about standards whether they be CE or ISO they are open for review. Closed systems are not standards they are policies.

I know i don't have to be here but like that annoying neighbor I am. This game should be running better year after year but it is not. What fun escaped BRP Nerfmire was hunted down in Vvardenfell and dispatched by the four horsemen of the Nerfpocalypse.

So ZOS reduced damage toned it down but added more crown store particle effects, and particles on top of particles this takes hits on gamers performance client side so now they want to turn them off but the tools provided under video settings are crude and inefficient. RTX and Vulkan anytime soon?

Occam's Razor can apply to design as well.

and fixing the ability bugs would be a great start for a Performance push like Undo bugging out. Or gap closers putting us into either the netherworld or making us a part of the terrain while a boss melts us down. For once do something that benefits the quality of game play and use logic instead of Feelings. Please that is all many of us ask for.

Thank you for reading my post.

Langeston

When it comes to Critical Damage, Critical Chance, and Critical Resist, we’ve started to get a tighter grip on these bonuses in our efficiency standards and have begun sourcing more of them in the game to counter each other. While this naturally balances itself in PvP scenarios, that is not the case in PvE situations; this already powerful stat is slowly creeping up in power with each update and global increase in damage.

You say crit damage/chance/resist is balanced in PVP but it's unbalanced in PVE. (I disagree, by the way, seeing as Malacath beats out crit in no CP pretty handily in most cases.)

Your solution to this is to implement across the board nerfs, thereby unbalancing crit damage/chance/resist in PVP, thus further cementing Malacath as "must have" for PVP?

WTF kind of solution is that? Am I missing something here?

Langeston

Onefrkncrzypope wrote: »

kindred wrote: »

Once again magicka users get screwed. ALL HAIL STAM TOONS!

They are nerfing crit. You know the thing that stam relies on.. it like taking away mags free penetration.

Gotta learn who actually is getting nerfed here.

In PVP, stam toons are all running Malacath. Mag toons are too, but to a lesser extent because mag proc sets aren't as ubiquitous. Thus in PVP, I think it's safe to say that mag will feel this nerf more than stam will.

It'll be the worst for the few people left who main Magblades (of which I am one) but we're used to being at the bottom of the barrel by now.

mb10

BG changes are great, very much needed


The wall of frost projectile shield does sound quite OP though

Merforum

JohnOfMarkarth wrote: »

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, it was being used as a back bar tanking weapon just fine.

Sorry but [snip]. A ton of people ... and i mean a lot of people didnt like it and did care. And did want ice staves to be better DPS

It seems like with Frost staves, they were envisioning a way to allow Mag DPS to have some good defense on back bar and NEVER creating an equivalent DPS weapon to fire/shock. But if they remove all defense from ice staves and just make another DPS weapon who will that actually help. Be careful what you wish for.

But I think everyone can agree the proposed changes makes it worse for DPS AND Tank so no one will be using it if this goes through. BTW don't make rude comments to people, next time I'll report it.

Major_Lag

Youyouz06 wrote: »

Hi there community,

I think we all need more clarification before this comes out (Please stream your detailed intentions to your community)

---

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.

---

What does this mean essentially? Does it force players who have a 'better' knowledge of the game to limit their playing style by removing some 'unique' sets or skills which give them an advantage, an advantage which they spent time either levelling up and understanding and also sets which they spent time gathering.

My understanding is that it means a change from % based Major/Minor de/buffs to flat value modifiers.
So, for example, Major Sorcery would increase spell damage by +500 instead of +20%.

Of course this is just an assumption on my part, because it was not clarified in the OP. But if you apply Occam's Razor, this is the simplest and most obvious change which would have the effect ZOS has described.

Consider these example values:

• Players with well optimized damage-oriented builds will generally have no less than 3000 spell damage, so currently they are getting at least +600 (or more) SD from Major Sorcery (+20% buff). So receiving a flat +500 instead means that they are effectively nerfed.
• An inexperienced player with green or blue gear, no potion use, and suboptimal choice of sets+enchants will generally have SD in the 1000-2000 range. That means they are currently gaining only +200...+400 SD from Major Sorcery, so if they receive a flat +500 instead they will be significantly buffed.

Merforum

Merforum wrote: »

JohnOfMarkarth wrote: »

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, it was being used as a back bar tanking weapon just fine.

Sorry but [snip]. A ton of people ... and i mean a lot of people didnt like it and did care. And did want ice staves to be better DPS

It seems like with Frost staves, they were envisioning a way to allow Mag DPS to have some good defense on back bar and NEVER creating an equivalent DPS weapon to fire/shock. But if they remove all defense from ice staves and just make another DPS weapon who will that actually help. Be careful what you wish for.

But I think everyone can agree the proposed changes makes it worse for DPS AND Tank so no one will be using it if this goes through. BTW don't make rude comments to people, next time I'll report it.

BTW what you are saying is the equivalent of people whining about making Sword/board into full DPS skills like 2hand/dual and removing defense from it.

Also PVPer have whined so much that all classes have to be 'balanced'. But I have the solution for all these problems, just have 1 class, 1 race, a few armor/weapon sets, 1 weapon skill line for all PVP, then everything will be perfectly balanced and they can leave everything else alone for PVE.

VaxtinTheWolf

The Ice staff heavy attack increased shield for yourself makes sense since it's already there, however Wall of Frost granting damage shields sounds weird to me. It feels as though this effect should be added to "Blessing of Restoration", the ugly sister morph of Combat Prayer instead.. Also, the damage of Frost Wall is already lower on Live to begin with, there is no reason to lower it even further.

Qbiken

The proc fiesta in PvP (especially NOCP) needs to be adressed ASAP. Sheer Venom, Venomous Smite and skills like snipe destroys any resemblance of fun that PvP has. Literally every encounter in nocp is filled with DoT procs.

Remember when people abused Torugs Pact in Murkmire with single target DoTs proccing enchantments? That got fixed within a few weeks. The current proc sets on live are abused in the same manner and is overperforming in a similar way.

Malacath's band of brutality is also in dire need of nerfs. Has been overperforming since day 1 of Greymoor release.

The 35k+ HP stamt toons (stamdens and stamcros) are also in need for adjustments

Thalmor-Nordmaster

Major_Lag this is spot on

My understanding is that it means a change from % based Major/Minor de/buffs to flat value modifiers.
So, for example, Major Sorcery would increase spell damage by +500 instead of +20%.

Of course this is just an assumption on my part, because it was not clarified in the OP. But if you apply Occam's Razor, this is the simplest and most obvious change which would have the effect ZOS has described.

Consider these example values:

• Players with well optimized damage-oriented builds will generally have no less than 3000 spell damage, so currently they are getting at least +600 (or more) SD from Major Sorcery (+20% buff). So receiving a flat +500 instead means that they are effectively nerfed.
• An inexperienced player with green or blue gear, no potion use, and suboptimal choice of sets+enchants will generally have SD in the 1000-2000 range. That means they are currently gaining only +200...+400 SD from Major Sorcery, so if they receive a flat +500 instead they will be significantly buffed.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!!!

This lines up with the Morrowind Double speak if you have less than it is a buff if you have more than its a nerf

along with Kiss-Curse and other Orwellian graduate newthought.

Kolzki

Langeston wrote: »

When it comes to Critical Damage, Critical Chance, and Critical Resist, we’ve started to get a tighter grip on these bonuses in our efficiency standards and have begun sourcing more of them in the game to counter each other. While this naturally balances itself in PvP scenarios, that is not the case in PvE situations; this already powerful stat is slowly creeping up in power with each update and global increase in damage.

You say crit damage/chance/resist is balanced in PVP but it's unbalanced in PVE. (I disagree, by the way, seeing as Malacath beats out crit in no CP pretty handily in most cases.)

Your solution to this is to implement across the board nerfs, thereby unbalancing crit damage/chance/resist in PVP, thus further cementing Malacath as "must have" for PVP?

WTF kind of solution is that? Am I missing something here?

An alternative could have been to remove the passive crit resist that we got in Greymoor and reduce our base critical damage stat by the same amount. That would have zero effect on PVP while reducing the effectiveness on criticals in PVE (and would indirectly reduce the effectiveness of stacking crit chance). I'm not saying that I'd prefer that over what we currently have, but it would be a logical approach.

Suddwrath

For all of the talk about wanting to address pain points, ZOS sure seems like they enjoy creating pain points.

JSlayer211

Personally I think the Werewolf needs dire attention as it's broken af in pvp. People complain about procs and malacath, but atleast people using those can be killed. Takes a LOT of team coordination to kill these invincible werewolves with hella huge self heals.

With regards to the BG matchmaking, I do not think this is a good implementation of group Q's. The team Q will be a ghost town. It's hard enough trying to fill up a team to full in the solo Q without being 3v4v4. Add into that equation a bunch of randomly sized teams trying to be mashed together and I think you see the incomplete team potential.

Solo with Duo's allowed would be preferred imo and keep the ability to pick your game types. There's just too much variation in builds for different BG types to not allow picking of a type imo. PC players will atleast be able to change builds with the press of a few buttons, console players...good luck.

More importantly for BG teams, add something in to even out the number of nightblades on a team. When you land on a team with 3 NB's, you just know you're doomed and people quit out. Maybe put one on each team and then repeat as needed to keep them spread out. I'm sure they think they're helping the team somehow, but honestly the style of play in general is a detriment to teams. If you picked teams, I'm sure NB's would always be picked last.

Demonhunter

Guys I can see it coming now, there going to eventually take away the CP system and replace it with something else. It was the plan all along, so all the changes happening now is to accommodate what is going to replace the CP system or lack there of.

Thanks for listening ...

JSlayer211 wrote: »

More importantly for BG teams, add something in to even out the number of nightblades on a team. When you land on a team with 3 NB's, you just know you're doomed and people quit out.

Again, that's cause of the lack of knowledge or the mental laziness of how to play against NB's. Even if you play against a "RARE" NB tank, I say "RARE" cause of my experience playing against NB's they usually optimize for most burst DPS and their very squishy.

So if I use mage light and run lots of AOE's on them they melt very quickly and die. Cause in my experience, when people enter BG's, no one ever changes their skill bar and dive in with what they have.

Hymzir

Don't mess too much with crit system. That's all I have to say. Well that and stop trying to make a destro staff into a tanking option. It's a destro staff for crying out loud! Just add Alteration staff into the game. You don't even have to worry about motifs and models since it's still a staff. Alteration staff could then be a dedicated defensive magicka option to counterbalance sword and board. You even have cool TES spells to load it up with. Oakflesh and it's more advanced iterations, Paralyze could be a stun of some sorts, And Telekinesis could work as some sort of chain to pull mobs. Oblivion oldies like Burden could give a snare, and Feather could give a speed boos or something. Alterations staff would also give a pure magicka damage staff option to fiddle with. It would be so much better than trying to force destro staff act like a defensive weapon. But anyway, back to crits...

The thing is, ridiculous crit chance has been in the game since launch. Back in 2014 and 2015 I complained about it, about the fact that in many cases you are more likely to crit than to not crit. That maybe it would be more sensible to speak about your fumble chance, since crit damage was kinda the default assumption.

I no longer worry about it, it's still dumb of course, but it is what it is. And it is what this game was build around. You go and change how crits work in any sort of fundamental way, and I tell you you are gonna invalidate countless builds, and you are going to *** of majority of your player base. For 6 years we have lived with super high crit chances, and that is how we have learned to play the game. That is what the combat is build around. You go and lower the crit rate in any significant manner and you will make the whole game a lot less enjoyable and tedious. If you do this then you will also need to refactor base health values, you will need to re-balance base damage and resistances. You will essentially have to recalculate everything from scratch. My advice: Don't do it.

Canned_Apples

Qbiken wrote: »

The proc fiesta in PvP (especially NOCP) needs to be adressed ASAP. Sheer Venom, Venomous Smite and skills like snipe destroys any resemblance of fun that PvP has. Literally every encounter in nocp is filled with DoT procs.

Remember when people abused Torugs Pact in Murkmire with single target DoTs proccing enchantments? That got fixed within a few weeks. The current proc sets on live are abused in the same manner and is overperforming in a similar way.

Malacath's band of brutality is also in dire need of nerfs. Has been overperforming since day 1 of Greymoor release.

The 35k+ HP stamt toons (stamdens and stamcros) are also in need for adjustments

That was back when @ZOS_Wrobel was in charge. He made mistakes but he didn’t buy into this whole p2w let’s buff all proc sets every patch approach and avoid balancing the game the current devs seem to be in love with.
These guys talked about build diversity and giving each class a unique feel but ended up going the proc proc proc p2w route and abandoning their previous statement.

People keep leaving because of their changes. And things are getting worse.

This game used to be fun, but these guys.....

peacenote

I am very happy to hear that group BG queuing is coming back! THANK YOU!!!

I haven't stepped foot in one since it was removed... was the "game type choice" something that was added with the solo queue? I don't remember having that when I played or even wishing for it, but maybe I just didn't use it. I liked all the game types.

Either way, I'm not sure why it has to go. Why not leave it and remove it if it doesn't work out? For Dungeon Finder, anyone who has been around for more than five minutes knows that the queue will go faster if a) you're a tank, b) you play during peak hours, and c) you're willing to run any content. Queue up at 7am as a DPS for vet Depths of Malatar and you might be waiting a bit. Seems like the same concept would apply here. Lots of people, myself included, would join all game types if I wanted a faster queue. It's an obvious trade-off. Sometimes I will queue for five minutes or so in DF for what I want exactly and expand my choices if no one's biting. I am certain PvP folks are as capable of figuring this out as PvE folks are.

As for the rest of this... idk. Except for the fact that it would be another entry in the loot table, I'd rather see a tanking staff be introduced over more odd tweaks that "split the baby" and make no frost staff users happy.

I agree with many of the other commenters that the changes to combat are too frequent. I just farmed my Medusa set. Can't you let me enjoy it for a little while? Only the hardcore people who play ALL THE TIME can keep up with these changes. The casuals won't even try. Everyone else in the middle is left with half farmed sets, abandoned alts, useless mythic items, cured vampires, and more as we try to check out the changes and but see them phased out before we can get a handle on them.

I 100% understand that an MMO needs to grow and evolve to give players something to work towards, but these massive, constant, often contradictory changes are frustrating. I got kicked of our Cyrodiil a bunch of times this morning. Maybe leave crit alone until you finish that experiment? In fact, won't all of the data you gathered be irrelevant if you change things as core to combat as, you know, crit and major and minor buffs before analysis?!?

Also, while lowering the ceiling and raising the floor are, in theory, something that may be needed, it shouldn't be done in a way that punishes experienced players. I am not sure why you wouldn't instead invest in better tutorials and tools that help newer players catch up, and better ways to help people of various skill levels identify each other for more rewarding experiences when grouping. More sophisticated systems for ramping up punishments for people who abandon groups, to better encourage people to leave when they are over their heads while still penalizing the toxic players, could also be helpful. Power creep is normal in MMOs; isn't the trick to help new players with the learning curve, instead of eliminating the curve? Penalizing well informed and well optimized players just eliminates all sense of accomplishment for all of us at all skill levels.

Finally, I think if we the community are going to be treated as an ongoing experiment, you should introduce some mechanisms into the game that make it less painful for the middle tier players. Let us earn a new type of currency that functions like the Undaunted key system for dungeons and trials, where every x number of runs I can choose a flame staff or a necklace or at least buy a container with a chance to only drop of weapons and jewelry for certain sets. Give us dual specs so we can more easily experiment. Give us a monster helm and shoulder bag (since furniture bag isn't technically feasible) and a bigger bank to ease the inventory burden a little and make it easier to share things across characters. Give us more guild slots so we can more easily group with like-minded players for certain goals without having to abandon longtime friends. And do all of these things before going back to the regular combat system overhauls that we're seeing almost every patch.

My two cents. :P

JohnOfMarkarth

Merforum wrote: »

JohnOfMarkarth wrote: »

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, it was being used as a back bar tanking weapon just fine.

Sorry but [snip]. A ton of people ... and i mean a lot of people didnt like it and did care. And did want ice staves to be better DPS

It seems like with Frost staves, they were envisioning a way to allow Mag DPS to have some good defense on back bar and NEVER creating an equivalent DPS weapon to fire/shock. But if they remove all defense from ice staves and just make another DPS weapon who will that actually help. Be careful what you wish for.

But I think everyone can agree the proposed changes makes it worse for DPS AND Tank so no one will be using it if this goes through. BTW don't make rude comments to people, next time I'll report it.

O brother, i know eeexactly what i wish for. And that is... a dps-capable ice staff. I hold no regrets on that wish.

And sidenote. Do it. I will continue to be overly straightforwards. They will edit it out if they see it as you do. (Which they did. which is fine. Even tho that word aint in no way "rude to people" as much as ive seen around the forums without being edited). Stop tryin to threaten around. Aint workin

MajorDomeShot

interesting proposal for changes to frost staff and interested to see how it plays out. i don't think that it should cause less damage compared to fire and lightning and the snare was a unique and cool feature for the frost staff and made some good gameplay for the staff and gave it a use. no one is going to be cast wall of elements on their fellow teammates tho so giving it something that should maybe be a resto staff ability shouldn't be a thing IMO.
also please don't take away being able to Que for a specific type of gamemode when most of the time people don't focus on the main game mode at all. i can't tell you how many times i've gone into a random BG and my whole team is playing TDM and not focusing on capturing relics or capturing and maintaining points. i'm super happy to see that they are bringing group Q's back bc i can't tell you how many times when cyrodiil didn't work me and my friends had to go duel or go just not pvp or disband group and just go play our own games, not fun.
i know this is going to be hard to hear but SOLO Q's NEED TO GO AWAY!
if you want to Q solo that is perfectly fine it fills the game if we have a team of 3 think about that for a sec. if i have a group of 3 and we group Q then we aren't going to be able to get a fill, and if you're a solo player you run that risk yourself of going up again pre made groups. but thats their own fault for only wanting to play solo.
Also start giving players a BG rating that will be the first step into Esports and making this game competitive. this will also seperate the players a little better.
here is my suggestion: make Arena gamemode (TDM) with solo and group Q's, then make a objective gamemode for the capture games Solo and Group.
but for the love of god please don't take away being able to choose a gamemode that we would like to play and force us into only playing random gamemodes.
thanks

Finedaible

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

[...]

When it comes to Critical Damage, Critical Chance, and Critical Resist, we’ve started to get a tighter grip on these bonuses in our efficiency standards and have begun sourcing more of them in the game to counter each other. While this naturally balances itself in PvP scenarios, that is not the case in PvE situations; this already powerful stat is slowly creeping up in power with each update and global increase in damage.

The main cause of this imbalance is the ease of access to gain Critical Chance in our game; we have a large amount of passive Crit enabled from passive abilities (Armor, Champion Points, Base Chance). On top of this, the raw standard of Crit Chance is higher than other DPS stats which results in stacking Crit being incredibly powerful. Due to this, certain classes scale more effectively in group content, resulting in “just stack X” in our end-game meta. While this is somewhat mitigated in PvP with Critical Resistance, we still hear a large number of complaints about the line certain classes teeter on in terms of balance in PvE as a result (either too strong, or we nerf them and they become too weak in other areas).

As such, we have created a new combined stat for Critical Chance which is a combination of Spell and Weapon Crit. This means if you see an item that grants 106 Critical Chance, it’s giving you both Spell and Weapon Crit. With this change, we are adjusting many sources of Critical Chance so they grant the new stat. This also results in fewer effects you need to track on your character. We’re making several other adjustments to individual stat faucets, such as reducing the amount of Critical Chance you can get from Champion Points and lowering the value of the Thief Mundus and Precise trait. We know this is only a small step in the larger picture of combat regarding Criticals, which we plan to continue in U29. We believe these changes will bring about better experiences, from the moment-to-moment combat to formulating your groups for Trials and PvP.

[...]

So, critical hit changes won't even be finalized in U28 but will continue to be tampered with at least until U29? When will these changes be finalized? If it's going to take half a year that is an awful long time to wait for changes which will have a deep impact on the game. The player base is already exhausted by changes they can't keep up with. What will you do with sets like Mother's Sorrow which specialize in spell critical? What will you make then of skill buffs like major/minor Savagery/Sorcery?

Starlock

A few preliminary feedback thoughts on this:

• Buff System. I'm glad this is being looked at. Long term, I hope more changes are coming. If there are a couple aspects of the combat system I had to cite as its weakest points, it'd be the buff/debuff system and the damage typing system. Granted, that's a bias of mine coming from more traditional cRPGs, tabletop RPGs, and aRPGs that are far more tactical and complex in this department. It probably isn't casual or performant-friendly.
• Frost Staff. Also glad this is being looked at. Overall should be an improvement, but I still feel tanking with a staff is better served by an entirely new skill line (e.g., alteration staff). This would allow frost staff to be a proper destruction (damage-focused) staff again.
• Criticals. Yet again glad this is being looked at. The ways of stacking crit in this game struck me as kind of nuts (bias reminder - imagine a D&D session with 50% or even a 20% crit rate. Just... no). It'll be interesting to see how this is handled. Main concern right now is lightning mage, as I stack crit on him is because it's the only way he can heal himself. -_-
• Merging Crit Types. I don't know that I agree with this. It removes a certain element of characterization, and I don't see the logic in merging this but not also merging weapon/spell damage. If you're going to merge the one, merge both. Just have crit, and just have damage. And add penetration to the character sheet, please. ^_^

Sahidom

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.

This is an ambiguous statement with an under toned threat that does not define nor explain the last statement how this impacts players; this statemrnt further delves into ambiguity without explanation how Major/Minor buffs/debuffs with interact, in cases where their both active. One presumption would be ZOS is eluding the greater buff/debuff overrides the lesser; very similar how DDO handled bonuses from single sources, where you could not have multiples of the same source bonus. With this example, would partially explain the later statement that threatens to remove coordinated Major/Minor buffs/debuffs; hence, aligning single sourcing of buffs/debuffs, and concluding the power decrease in coordinated Marjor/Minor benefits, meanwhile, an increase in unoptimized scenarios. Is this the direction ZOS is moving towards?

When it comes to Critical Damage, Critical Chance, and Critical Resist, we’ve started to get a tighter grip on these bonuses in our efficiency standards and have begun sourcing more of them in the game to counter each other. While this naturally balances itself in PvP scenarios, that is not the case in PvE situations; this already powerful stat is slowly creeping up in power with each update and global increase in damage

This was not an unexpected change. As they recognize critical naturally balance itself with critical resistance in PVP; while PVE parses does rely heavily on critical damage to push parsed stats. This statement, along with the following paragraphs, targets PVE.

ZOs, you are on a slippery slope here that would further endorse the tanky-hard-to-kill meta builds circulating in PVP when critical chance/damage begins to be nerfed. Almost forcing players into the Brutality Band mythic item; hence turning any nerf into a pay to win scenario at the expense of the player base. I strongly encourage ZOS to tread lightly on how their approaching Critical Chance and Critical Damage, as changes on the PVE side to reign in damage ceilings or lifting floors will have a notable impact in PVP gameplay.