U28 Combat Preview & Developer Update

Firstmep

Kolzki wrote: »

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.

Crit damage and crit resist doesn't scale the same way so they couldn't really just remove the same amount from both sides.

LexTheEvilOne

code65536 wrote: »

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.

Why is this necessarily bad? Yea, enemies don't have crit resist. They don't do crit damage to us. So what? Enemies in PvE also have hundreds of millions of health, which we don't see in PvP.

This was also combined with the overall goals to [...] decrease damage done, and increase damage taken.

You had better tread carefully, lest you forget that on the PvE side of things, there's content creep to go along with that power creep. Dungeon bosses with 20M health, trials bosses with 276M health, bosses with light attacks that can 1-shot tanks, etc.

Thats the point! If the overall damage is reduced, the bosses in the newer trials like vSS HM or vKA HM should get adjusted too. Dont forget that there are players on console and its already hard to get these things done in time.. atm its fine as it is, so please be careful with these adjustments.

gepe87

So new minor/major will have fixed values instead of %?

katorga

Langeston wrote: »

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.

You don't need proc sets for Malacath. Below a 50% crit rate and 50% crit damage, Malacath is more damage...so if they nerf pve crit mechanics too far Malacath will be superior for pve as well. Current crit mechanics are why proc damage sets are not used in endgame dps, so they could be a player too.

Which may be the point. Malacath is more "performant" than all those messy crit calculations, and casual players don't want to deal with rotations, just proc sets.

ManDraKE

Langeston wrote: »

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.

Not really, one of the most obnoxious malacath builds are magDKs with grothat+overwhelming surge. But malcalth is not just a problem with procs, even if you run no procsets is still overperforming.

Sahidom

Canned_Apples wrote: »

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.

I wouldn't say their destroying the game than they're just now beginning to address core issues of the game, where previous leads and executives wanted quuck, cheap patch fixes without foresight. These proposed changes are the prelude to the future changes to the Chanpion Point system, I suspect.

When any game allows their combat system to run broken, lopsided for too long players get accustomed to the combat state; its natural that once youve played in a broken, lopsided state for years than its the normal; where its known the game introduced unintended results.

I feel they need to be clear and precise in the intended changes than posting ambiguity statements. I feel, as one of thousands financing the game, as a subscriber, I'm a stakeholder on what their doing. Too far left, and it may push me to stop paying a subscription, as I'm already struggling to justify playing, as my interest gaming is falling elsewhere thats stealing their market share from me.

katorga

gepe87 wrote: »

So new minor/major will have fixed values instead of %?

Ooooh. Fixed values for major/minor will be broken.

Say major defile goes to reduces healing by 3000....it could zero out each tick of a hot. Effectively 100% healing reduction. If it is not scaled by battle spirit, its power will be magnified by the amount of BS healing reduction.

Say Major Berserk goes to add 2500 damage....it becomes over powered with multiple dots, and underpowered for big direct damage hits.

And so on.

JohnOfMarkarth

If you have read the patch notes...

We have been mislead. By this: "Give Frost Staff users more flexibility to fill the role of a tank, and also give Frost Staff users the opportunity to better fill the roles of support or DPS"

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

And if ye had yer hopes up for the DPS part? Ye will be disappointed too.

Kolzki

Firstmep wrote: »

Kolzki wrote: »

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.

Crit damage and crit resist doesn't scale the same way so they couldn't really just remove the same amount from both sides.

Last I heard, critical resistance works like this which suggests that yes they can move the base resistance across the the base crit damage stat:

crit_damage_modifier = attacker_crit_damage - target_crit_restistance / (target_level x 100)

For a max level character (effectively level 66) with 1320 base crit resist, we can reduce the base crit damage by 1320/ (66 x 100) = 0.2 and get exactly the same result as having 1320 base crit resistance.

Remove the base crit resist and set the base crit damage multiplier to 1.3 (instead of the current 1.5) and it wouldn't affect PVP balance (at max level) while nerfing the effectiveness of crits in PVE. There may be some tweaking needed if it influences lower level or no-CP (I'm not sure if no-CP treats players as level 50).

Caveat: some guides say that the scaling number should be 68 and not 66, but the above result exactly matches 20% base crit resistance that my UI mod is currently telling me.

JanTanhide

And here we go again with giant Yo-Yo changes! So sick of these "adjustments". First they buff up then they nerf and nerf again.

Come on ZOS. Enough of these Yo-Yo changes.

Major_Lag

[EDIT]
Screw this, I'm done with this forum and it's chronic overmoderation.

Sahidom

One of the new sets have +Offendive Penetration. Will this be a future change to penetrstion,?

Joy_Division

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Today, we’d like to present to you what the Combat team has been focused on for Update 28! As always, please be aware these are just the current proposed adjustments and are subject to change during the upcoming PTS cycle. On top of a substantial amount of new item sets coming with this patch, the team has been focused on making the Major/Minor system more performant, as well as some adjustments to Frost staff and Critical calculations.

First off, let’s talk about the Major/Minor system. Originally, buffs and debuffs were designed as standard abilities, meaning they had to go through the same calculations as all abilities. As we have been moving towards making combat more performant, we identified this as a key area where we could get better performance due to how prevalent buffs/debuffs are in battles. 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. With Major/Minor effects no longer being standard abilities, they will be more performant per calculation as they won’t go through the same process as other abilities do in a fight. This “hardcoding” of Majors/Minors will also make them less prone to incorrect stacking and mismatched values.

Gonna be perfectly honest here. Having read so many of these "this will improve/streamline calculation and performance" posts, I just tune them out. I mean after 6 years and hundreds of adjustments that improved performance, why is performance so bad ZOS is desperate enough to devote 6 weeks of tests on the Live server?

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.

Since ZOS is once again increasing sustain, does this mean in 3 patches we will one again be hit with Morrowind 2.0 with huge nerfs because of PvP whining about players having too much staying power or the logic that ESO values resource management?

I really don't get this constant back and forth cycle between buffs and nerfs. Is the goal to force me to use up every transmute stone in my inventory to change to and from precise? When people complain that ESO lacks direction, this pattern is a big reason why

For Frost Staff changes, we looked at the prior goals where Magicka users could tank in PvE and PvP scenarios. We found that many of the tools provided by Frost Staff abilities either did not hold up to other tanking abilities, or directly conflicted with other Destruction Staff abilities and created some pain points in dungeons. This, in turn, led us down the path to give the Frost Staff greater viability for doing things other than tanking. The end result was a focus on two changes: Give Frost Staff users more flexibility to fill the role of a tank, and also give Frost Staff users the opportunity to better fill the roles of support or DPS.

Aside from the heavy attack taunt (who thought that was a good idea?), my biggest issue with the whole Frost Staff DPS/tank thing is the Tri-Focus passive that makes magicka a blocking resource.

This is incredibly frustrating because sometimes I want to use a staff for damage (i.e. please gimme that passive) but still use stamina while equipping a frost staff. If you really want to make frost staff friendly for both DPS and tanking, then please separate the damage and blocking form a single passive so I dont have to waste my time and money at the respec shrine just to play the game.

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).

Slowly creeping up in power? Back when I was a semi-serious raider in 2014, crit was king and my PvE mundas of choice has pretty much either bounced between Shadow and Thief depending on which ZOS nerfed.

If ZOS thinks that crit is too strong, then ok, but crit is not the reason we "just stack X." We "just stack X" because gear, not classes, has become the defining aspects of our power and the classes have become homogenized to such a degree that they don't really bring anything distinctive that warrants their inclusion if their damage parse isn't a high as whatever X is.

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.

Just as an aside, I really think the whole 106 Critical Chance is unnecessarily confusing and obfuscating. The end-game meta, which is the listed concern here, I'm guessing does not care that using simple and easy to read flat critical percent chance, i.e. +5% critical, will slightly impact the performance of low Champion Point builds. If the goal is making tracking the effects on our character easier, getting rid of the 106 Critical Chance mechanic would go a long way here.

Lastly, as a little bonus not mentioned in the beginning of this post, let’s talk about Battleground queues. Over the past several updates, we’ve been running a test where the only available queue is the Solo queue. While we have seen Battleground participation fluctuate from update to update, we’ve not seen a considerable change in overall population.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and hypothesize the reason ZOS did not see a considerable change in the overall population of BG ques is because most of the BG mechanics discourage actual PvP, and that is the primary reason people who don't que up opt not to participate. I mean, I could not stand being put against a top tier premade while in a group of uncoordinated PuGs, but I still played them occasionally before I got tired of knowing that my team's score would be better off if I avoided combat and sat at an uncontested flag or avoided combat because dogpiling on the other two teams that were fighting each other was the best strategy.

KingShocker

I wonder if dual wielding daggers on a mag build will be viable since crit will be universal. i kinda missed the old spell blade meta.

Langeston

KingShocker wrote: »

I wonder if dual wielding daggers on a mag build will be viable since crit will be universal. i kinda missed the old spell blade meta.

Not unless they also combine spell/physical penetration. They'd also need to make some significant changes to the CP trees.

This is a step in the right direction though.

NeillMcAttack

First off I want to say that it must be a nightmare for the devs to constantly hear that game balance lacks direction, and then get slated when clear directions begin to materialise. Big ooof!

My take on the overall Meta in PvP I will hold judgement toward after we begin to see how the re-addition of grp BG’s starts to define the meta, as I predict these powerful Proc dots will see less efficiency in a group PvP environment where one purge every ten seconds can simply remove a players 5 piece bonus or both 5 piece bonuses. Where the player is then left with weak heals and low sustain.

I mostly want to talk about crit in PvP, and note I am strictly talking about No-CP. Yes, crit builds are strong on the offence, and when the crit build has the initiative, but I disagree that crit in PvP is balanced. For example, if I wear some crit gear, let’s say two sets, making 4 pieces, in medium armor, I end up with less than 50% crit. Add 2 precise daggers and I may get to 60% crit.

If I have no-crit on my gear, and use sharpened swords, in heavy armor, I will still have close to 20% crit. This is not balanced, I am only getting 40% increases chance. But look at the trade off, the amount of health, weapon damage, sustain, I could be getting, far outways building for crit.

People in heavy armor, with malacath guaranteeing 25% increased damage on all attacks, or a 60% chance to deal an extra 40% damage (at the most) where the crit build lacks penetration, health or raw damage/stats. How is this even close to balanced. What is more imbalanced is malacath band wearers still receive the 20%chance at a crit heal, in a build with more healing received. This is not balanced.

I would suggest removing base crit chance completely and buffing crit chance wherever it appears on gear. But I guess this may result in even less variation in PvE as it will be crit chance or go home. Perhaps we could look at tweaking the formula for Max Stat as damage also to find balance in that area. Whereas at the moment it is something like 10% or your max stat is equal to weapon/spell damage, maybe increase this and reward building for stats as an almost equivalent to building for crit chance....

Firstmep

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

First off I want to say that it must be a nightmare for the devs to constantly hear that game balance lacks direction, and then get slated when clear directions begin to materialise. Big ooof!

My take on the overall Meta in PvP I will hold judgement toward after we begin to see how the re-addition of grp BG’s starts to define the meta, as I predict these powerful Proc dots will see less efficiency in a group PvP environment where one purge every ten seconds can simply remove a players 5 piece bonus or both 5 piece bonuses. Where the player is then left with weak heals and low sustain.

I mostly want to talk about crit in PvP, and note I am strictly talking about No-CP. Yes, crit builds are strong on the offence, and when the crit build has the initiative, but I disagree that crit in PvP is balanced. For example, if I wear some crit gear, let’s say two sets, making 4 pieces, in medium armor, I end up with less than 50% crit. Add 2 precise daggers and I may get to 60% crit.

If I have no-crit on my gear, and use sharpened swords, in heavy armor, I will still have close to 20% crit. This is not balanced, I am only getting 40% increases chance. But look at the trade off, the amount of health, weapon damage, sustain, I could be getting, far outways building for crit.

People in heavy armor, with malacath guaranteeing 25% increased damage on all attacks, or a 60% chance to deal an extra 40% damage (at the most) where the crit build lacks penetration, health or raw damage/stats. How is this even close to balanced. What is more imbalanced is malacath band wearers still receive the 20%chance at a crit heal, in a build with more healing received. This is not balanced.

I would suggest removing base crit chance completely and buffing crit chance wherever it appears on gear. But I guess this may result in even less variation in PvE as it will be crit chance or go home. Perhaps we could look at tweaking the formula for Max Stat as damage also to find balance in that area. Whereas at the moment it is something like 10% or your max stat is equal to weapon/spell damage, maybe increase this and reward building for stats as an almost equivalent to building for crit chance....

Yes, and the change to shadow wasn't enough, IMHO they should reintroduce crit healing to crit dmg sources, but maybe make it 50% less effective.
That way if you want to be built like an absolute unit fully clad in heavy armor, your healing won't also be much better than people runn light/medium.

Qbiken

I´m not sure if the right thread to bring this up, but the overuse (borderline abuse at this point) of proc-sets in PvP, especially NOCP, needs to come to an end. Every given fight in NOCP is filled with multiple stacks of poison injection, sheer venom, venomous smite and Syvarra´s Scale (which is bugged and functions in a way that´s not intended). I´ve started to see magicka builds running sheer venom and venomous smite due to how overperforming they´re.

All these sets takes no effort to utilize and is almost on the same level of abusiveness as the "Torug´s Pact enchant meta" back in Murkmire. These DoT procs are making PvP incredibly unfun and ruins the PvP experience more than the horrendous lag at this point.

Something needs to be done asap. Either make the proc conditions much, much harder to achieve or make it so that you can´t have more than one stack of Sheer Venom, Venomous Smite and Syvarra´s Scale (and all other DoT procs as well) on you at the same time.

Firstmep

Qbiken wrote: »

I´m not sure if the right thread to bring this up, but the overuse (borderline abuse at this point) of proc-sets in PvP, especially NOCP, needs to come to an end. Every given fight in NOCP is filled with multiple stacks of poison injection, sheer venom, venomous smite and Syvarra´s Scale (which is bugged and functions in a way that´s not intended). I´ve started to see magicka builds running sheer venom and venomous smite due to how overperforming they´re.

All these sets takes no effort to utilize and is almost on the same level of abusiveness as the "Torug´s Pact enchant meta" back in Murkmire. These DoT procs are making PvP incredibly unfun and ruins the PvP experience more than the horrendous lag at this point.

Something needs to be done asap. Either make the proc conditions much, much harder to achieve or make it so that you can´t have more than one stack of Sheer Venom, Venomous Smite and Syvarra´s Scale (and all other DoT procs as well) on you at the same time.

There are a lot Magicka sets as well that IMHO over perform, like winterborn, calurion, oblivions foe(yes its not mag specific but mostly run by mag toons).
Brp destro is also very powerful, can give you more dmg than oblivions soul trap, and can be applied to more than 3 targets.
Anyway what I'm trying to say, is that they need an overarching overhaul for these sets, or specifically need to make changes to no cp pvp, like easing up on the healing debuff more than in cp.
No cp definetly didn't need the crushing 60% heal debuff, and it's there where procsets dominate so hard.
They could easily peg the battle spirit debuff down to 40% and it would make no cp pvp much more enjoyable.
Don't forget we have less sustain and resources in no cp to begin with, nothing wrong with treating it differently.

TheAlphaRaider

BohnT2 wrote: »

How about looking into the big PvP issues right now?

Proc builds and malacath
HP above 30k on every build
Stamina necromancer and warden

really, just kill bow ganking. Please. procs ok, malacath ok. I don't need a bunch of d-swinging elitists out there.

Mr_Nobody

The PvP balance patch notes are kind of similar to EP zone chat in Cyrodiil.

"Not sure if serious or trolling".

prof_doom

Sahidom wrote: »

I feel they need to be clear and precise in the intended changes than posting ambiguity statements.

I fully agree.
One of the bigger issues in my mind is that the content, especially as they've added new dungeons/trials/ect, is built around the current state of the game. It's all well and good for them to say they're gonna "adjust" the numbers, but what you don't hear is whether they're going to "adjust" the content that currently expects you to pull the numbers that we're currently doing.

Eormenric

ZrZone wrote: »

It really sounds like they're nerfing crit to the point where malacath + proc sets is gonna be the only way to go. With this, they're essentially killing two birds with one stone.
1. raising the skill floor and lowering the skill ceiling for pvp
2. Making the p2w ring like malacath even more p2w.

Honestly at this point, I'm fine with doing away with every damage proc set in the game. Flat stat sets like spriggans or new moon would actually lower the amount of calculations needed inside of cyrodil.

I agree with your first point, making PvP a non-crit environment is just stupid. For your second point, you don't seem to understand what Pay-to-Win means. Must you own Greymoor to get the ring? Yes. That's $16-40+ dollars for access to that ring, but that's not the intended purpose of purchasing that content. Once you own Greymoor, you must then level Scrying and find all the pieces of Malacath and then you finally own it. That is not pay to win. That is buying an expansion, experiencing the content, and using that content in the game. Pay-to-win would be if they put the ring on the crown store and that was the only convenient way to get it lest you invested dozens if not hundreds of hours into something.

ESO_Nightingale

Eormenric wrote: »

ZrZone wrote: »

It really sounds like they're nerfing crit to the point where malacath + proc sets is gonna be the only way to go. With this, they're essentially killing two birds with one stone.
1. raising the skill floor and lowering the skill ceiling for pvp
2. Making the p2w ring like malacath even more p2w.

Honestly at this point, I'm fine with doing away with every damage proc set in the game. Flat stat sets like spriggans or new moon would actually lower the amount of calculations needed inside of cyrodil.

I agree with your first point, making PvP a non-crit environment is just stupid. For your second point, you don't seem to understand what Pay-to-Win means. Must you own Greymoor to get the ring? Yes. That's $16-40+ dollars for access to that ring, but that's not the intended purpose of purchasing that content. Once you own Greymoor, you must then level Scrying and find all the pieces of Malacath and then you finally own it. That is not pay to win. That is buying an expansion, experiencing the content, and using that content in the game. Pay-to-win would be if they put the ring on the crown store and that was the only convenient way to get it lest you invested dozens if not hundreds of hours into something.

You do realise that you need to purchase greymoor in order to get access to malacath right?

regime211

BohnT2 wrote: »

How about looking into the big PvP issues right now?

Proc builds and malacath
HP above 30k on every build
Stamina necromancer and warden

Hp over 30k? You can just build into that using Attribute, gear, Mundus, Glyphs, Jewelry, no need to nerf that.

regime211

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Today, we’d like to present to you what the Combat team has been focused on for Update 28! As always, please be aware these are just the current proposed adjustments and are subject to change during the upcoming PTS cycle. On top of a substantial amount of new item sets coming with this patch, the team has been focused on making the Major/Minor system more performant, as well as some adjustments to Frost staff and Critical calculations.

First off, let’s talk about the Major/Minor system. Originally, buffs and debuffs were designed as standard abilities, meaning they had to go through the same calculations as all abilities. As we have been moving towards making combat more performant, we identified this as a key area where we could get better performance due to how prevalent buffs/debuffs are in battles. 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. With Major/Minor effects no longer being standard abilities, they will be more performant per calculation as they won’t go through the same process as other abilities do in a fight. This “hardcoding” of Majors/Minors will also make them less prone to incorrect stacking and mismatched values.

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.

For Frost Staff changes, we looked at the prior goals where Magicka users could tank in PvE and PvP scenarios. We found that many of the tools provided by Frost Staff abilities either did not hold up to other tanking abilities, or directly conflicted with other Destruction Staff abilities and created some pain points in dungeons. This, in turn, led us down the path to give the Frost Staff greater viability for doing things other than tanking. The end result was a focus on two changes: Give Frost Staff users more flexibility to fill the role of a tank, and also give Frost Staff users the opportunity to better fill the roles of support or DPS.

A good example of this is the following upcoming adjustments to Wall of Frost/Flame/Shock:

• Lowering the damage done by Wall of Frost compared to Wall of Flame and Shock
• Removing Snare from Wall of Frost
• Casting Wall of Frost will create a Damage shield on you and up to 5 other nearby group members that absorbs projectiles
• Unstable Wall of Frost will apply a weaker version of the Damage Shield when the ability ends

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. We believe these changes, along with several others in the Destruction skill line, will help bring some parity between the three damage options for staff users and give greater flexibility to that weapon choice.

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.

Lastly, as a little bonus not mentioned in the beginning of this post, let’s talk about Battleground queues. Over the past several updates, we’ve been running a test where the only available queue is the Solo queue. While we have seen Battleground participation fluctuate from update to update, we’ve not seen a considerable change in overall population.

We also have heard you loud and clear that playing with your friends in a Battleground is sorely missed, and we are going to test re-introducing the Group queue with Update 28. This means there will still be a Solo option, where you only fight players who queued as solo, and we will also be adding in a Group queue option! However, the Group option has a twist: you don’t have to be in a group to queue for it. You can be solo, duo, trio or have a full group of 4 and join the Group queue. When you do, be aware that you will be at the mercy of other players joining as pre-made groups as well. Due to this change in our Battleground queue options, we will be limiting the queue choices to just these two. You will also no longer be able to choose a game type; this is to reduce the risk of further splintering the queue on top of the Group or Solo options. We look forward to seeing you all back in groups in the Battlegrounds, and we will continue to monitor the feedback and participation after this change goes up with U28.

Thank you all for reading this preview and update! We look forward to having everyone playtest these changes and on the PTS and reading your feedback when it launches.

Serious question? Where do you guys base your data and changes off of? Because as I read the forums almost daily and majority of the changes made seems like they aren't even requested by the community, and the majority of changes normally handicap the game instead of improving it! So please explain to community on where you're getting the data from on altering things on this game. The changes to frost staff doesn't seem to give ANY for of increase to DPS.

lolzbuckets

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

😢 going to need more space to farm frost staves for support.

I can't decide if this comment aged poorly or well, but either way, it made me laugh, and I hope re-reading it makes you laugh now, too.

Integral1900

How come combining critical never happened, my templar just has spell crit?

Sanguinor2

Integral1900 wrote: »

How come combining critical never happened, my templar just has spell crit?

Asked the same in week 1 of pts. Guess which answer I got. (Spoiler: None)

JayKwellen

Integral1900 wrote: »

How come combining critical never happened, my templar just has spell crit?

I asked the same question regarding penetration. Now that breech encompasses both and 'offensive penetration' is a thing, are physical and spell pen going to be combined too or kept separate for whatever reason?

As expected, also received no answer.