[Feedback] Racial Passive update - Bosmer Stealth

Ratzkifal

First of all, thanks for listening to the feedback on Hunter's Eye for the penetration and movement speed! It's also great to see Argonians got their Poison AND Disease Resistance back! I am sure our lizard friends will be happy to hear that.

But now that that is over, let's get back to giving more feedback. The title already gave it away.
Bosmer need their stealth back! It is part of their identity as a race. Detection is a pointless bonus. Item sets that grant detection effects are considered "decon trash". People who want detection so badly can already wear these sets if they want, but the Bosmer race was born as a Stealth race. Since The Elder Scrolls Arena they have always been a stealth race up until Wrathstone, which reduced the number of stealth races in ESO from 2 to 1, killing diversity instead of opening it up to more races. When I made my Bosmer Warden back in Morrowind I thought "I want to be stealthy. But I don't want to be Khajiit! So Imma take the other one and be a Bow Elf! Yeah, sneaky bow elf!" I did not race change my character to a Khajiit because I liked her just the way she was and wanted back what I had. The lore is very clear on this too. The Rite of Theft isn't called the Rite of Armed Robbery or The Rite of being a Guard. The "chameleon-like skin" might be an exaggeration but there is a kernel of truth behind that, which this game needs to acknowledge!

Please ZOS, return the Bosmer to their former glory! The racial passives are being updated again - the time is right.

EDIT: I just got onto PTS to check out the new CP system and found that "The Craft" has a star that can give you up to 3m of stealth, which is great for all the other races that want to engage with stealth, but that does not solve the core issue. The core issue is that Racial passives serve a narrative purpose. They are meant to tell players something about the race they are playing and a bonus to stealth would tell players that Bosmer are a stealthy people, which indeed they are in the lore. That's why it is appropriate for them to have a passive like that, regardless of whether they can get those 3m from anywhere else or not. And let's not forget that this is still an investment of 30CP for something that according to the lore Bosmer should have innately (after unlocking and spending 3 skill points in their racial passives). Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

BlueRaven

Yes! Please! This!

DreadDaedroth

Yes now that both argonian and wood elf races races have those two resistences there's no more the wrong excuse of having unique racial passive for each race and Bosmer and khajiit can share the same stealth passive.

Ratzkifal

DreadDaedroth wrote: »

Yes now that both argonian and wood elf races races have those two resistences there's no more the wrong excuse of having unique racial passive for each race and Bosmer and khajiit can share the same stealth passive.

Not only that. Orc, Dunmer and Altmer share the same passive too. They all get 258 Spell and weapon damage.

SodanTok

Detection Stealth is a pointless bonus. Item sets that grant detection stealth effects are considered "decon trash". People who want detection stealth so badly can already wear these sets if they want,

JobooAGS

After the changes, Redguard is still the most fragile race and is behind bosmer in terms of sustain, damage, and tankiness.

Major and minor endurance (obtained easily by equiping a 2h and casting momentum and from potions) has a modifier of 1.6 on your regen. This alone takes the 258 regen that bosmer has and makes it 413 regen. This doesn't include any other sources of stamina regeneration modifiers such as medium armor, class passives, weapon passives, continous attack and more all of which can scale that regeneration further to insane numbers.

redguard on cooldown is now 402 "regen" at max (1005/5*2) though the proc condition changes (now procs off of any damage) are nice and I thank you for that. Now if a redguard wants to take advantage of its martial knowledge passive, which is 8% to weapon abilities only he/she will have to utilize more weapon skill leading to a limitation of builds (which bosmer does not suffer from).

damage is obvious as both bosmer and redguard share the same 2000 max stamina but bosmer has its penetration passive now permament. 950 penetration (roughly 1.4% damage increase) > 0

The same with tankiness as 2310 poison and disease resistances are greater than the flat out 0 racial resistances (or even health) that redguard has. Though it is not obvious, but resistances translate towards sustain as if you take less damage you need less self healing/less resources spent on defence.

On the topic of speed, I did not list this eariler as there is a hard speed cap of 200% and this patch it is easier to get to it than before. However the snare resistance doesn't amount to much when practically every build (yes there are exceptions, as there are with every rule) has a snare removal tool (shuffle, race against time, snow treaders etc). This passive does not defend against roots, meaning there is little reason to not run a snare removal tool. With this infomation, the 5% permament speed boost that bosmers now have is subjective to its worth. (Though it can mean you can drop 1 swift in favor of another trait like infused).

Not sure what your thoughts are on this.


Edit: this is not a "NERF BOSMER" post, but rather a buff Redguard one.

BlueRaven

JobooAGS wrote: »

After the changes, Redguard is still the most fragile race and is behind bosmer in terms of sustain, damage, and tankiness.

Major and minor endurance (obtained easily by equiping a 2h and casting momentum and from potions) has a modifier of 1.6 on your regen. This alone takes the 258 regen that bosmer has and makes it 413 regen. This doesn't include any other sources of stamina regeneration modifiers such as medium armor, class passives, weapon passives, continous attack and more all of which can scale that regeneration further to insane numbers.

redguard on cooldown is now 402 "regen" at max (1005/5*2) though the proc condition changes (now procs off of any damage) are nice and I thank you for that. Now if a redguard wants to take advantage of its martial knowledge passive, which is 8% to weapon abilities only he/she will have to utilize more weapon skill leading to a limitation of builds (which bosmer does not suffer from).

damage is obvious as both bosmer and redguard share the same 2000 max stamina but bosmer has its penetration passive now permament. 950 penetration (roughly 1.4% damage increase) > 0

The same with tankiness as 2310 poison and disease resistances are greater than the flat out 0 racial resistances (or even health) that redguard has. Though it is not obvious, but resistances translate towards sustain as if you take less damage you need less self healing/less resources spent on defence.

On the topic of speed, I did not list this eariler as there is a hard speed cap of 200% and this patch it is easier to get to it than before. However the snare resistance doesn't amount to much when practically every build (yes there are exceptions, as there are with every rule) has a snare removal tool (shuffle, race against time, snow treaders etc). This passive does not defend against roots, meaning there is little reason to not run a snare removal tool. With this infomation, the 5% permament speed boost that bosmers now have is subjective to its worth. (Though it can mean you can drop 1 swift in favor of another trait like infused).

Not sure what your thoughts are on this.

Speaking for myself, I just want the stealth passive returned.

Ratzkifal

SodanTok wrote: »

Detection Stealth is a pointless bonus. Item sets that grant detection stealth effects are considered "decon trash". People who want detection stealth so badly can already wear these sets if they want,

Stealth sets have a higher value on the market than detection sets, so I don't think your point applies.
Besides, you can always make use of stealth in PvE when sneaking through delves towards a skyshard and PvP pretty much all the time.
You can never make use of detection unless you are in PvP and even if you are in PvP, the effect kind of doesn't even work properly. There are no spaces tight enough that regular stealth detection would not work but the added 3m just barely cover that ground so nobody can escape your detection radius. The base detection is enough. On the other hand when there is enough space to avoid you, even those 3m will not actually help. Detection potions already do a much better job with that.

And then there is the argument of habit. Bosmer have been stealthy for 25 years but the detection hasn't been around that long and isn't even supported by the lore in any form whatsoever.

YandereGirlfriend

Redguard is objectively the most under-powered race now.

Ratzkifal

JobooAGS wrote: »

After the changes, Redguard is still the most fragile race and is behind bosmer in terms of sustain, damage, and tankiness.

Major and minor endurance (obtained easily by equiping a 2h and casting momentum and from potions) has a modifier of 1.6 on your regen. This alone takes the 258 regen that bosmer has and makes it 413 regen. This doesn't include any other sources of stamina regeneration modifiers such as medium armor, class passives, weapon passives, continous attack and more all of which can scale that regeneration further to insane numbers.

redguard on cooldown is now 402 "regen" at max (1005/5*2) though the proc condition changes (now procs off of any damage) are nice and I thank you for that. Now if a redguard wants to take advantage of its martial knowledge passive, which is 8% to weapon abilities only he/she will have to utilize more weapon skill leading to a limitation of builds (which bosmer does not suffer from).

damage is obvious as both bosmer and redguard share the same 2000 max stamina but bosmer has its penetration passive now permament. 950 penetration (roughly 1.4% damage increase) > 0

The same with tankiness as 2310 poison and disease resistances are greater than the flat out 0 racial resistances (or even health) that redguard has. Though it is not obvious, but resistances translate towards sustain as if you take less damage you need less self healing/less resources spent on defence.

On the topic of speed, I did not list this eariler as there is a hard speed cap of 200% and this patch it is easier to get to it than before. However the snare resistance doesn't amount to much when practically every build (yes there are exceptions, as there are with every rule) has a snare removal tool (shuffle, race against time, snow treaders etc). This passive does not defend against roots, meaning there is little reason to not run a snare removal tool. With this infomation, the 5% permament speed boost that bosmers now have is subjective to its worth. (Though it can mean you can drop 1 swift in favor of another trait like infused).

Not sure what your thoughts are on this.

My thoughts on that are that Redguards are in quite the pickle because the game doesn't really let pure sustain races shine. Bosmer used to be in that boat too and we've been telling ZOS to fix it by making the penetration a permanent effect which they finally did. I feel like Redguards could use some love like this as well.

My biggest concern right now is the stealth passive though, because without stealth Bosmer just don't feel right. When Bosmer still had their stealth they weren't viable as damage dealers, so people made their Bosmer specifically to be stealthy (or because they just wanted to be cute), even if they wouldn't be as effective as damage dealers because of it. Now Bosmer still aren't in a favorable spot in the meta but the only thing they had going for them before was taken away.
I am used to playing a race that isn't the strongest, but I don't like it when their identity was messed with for no good reason.

GrumpyDuckling

SodanTok wrote: »

Detection Stealth is a pointless bonus. Item sets that grant detection stealth effects are considered "decon trash". People who want detection stealth so badly can already wear these sets if they want,

If stealth is as pointless as you claim, how about just giving it back to Bosmer so they don't need to rely on equipping sets to be sneaky like their lore suggests?

Tommy_The_Gun

Argonian potion passive... whyyyyyy ZOS ?

Ratzkifal

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Redguard is objectively the most under-powered race now.

Indeed. Sadly. Perhaps Redguards could gain a variable bonus depending on the weapon they have equipped to compensate. They are the weapon masters of Tamriel after all, so I feel that would be quite fitting and make them more versatile.

YandereGirlfriend

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Argonian potion passive... whyyyyyy ZOS ?

I know, right! I'd trade that Stamina right back in order to get the old values again.

Starlight_Knight

I think ZOS keep trying to bury this.
Remember the last post that got to 99 pages then shut down. lol

GrimTheReaper45

Really happy about this change think it finally puts woodelf on par with other races.

Nord changes im not so happy about. I think nord turned out really good after the last racial changes. It got me using and enjoying them. Seems like were going backwards.

Machete

Why? RP? Stealth as a bonus was such a wasted spot. If anything I love the changes to Wood Elf, makes the Bosmer I've been playing for near 7 years more viable for content in both dungeons, trials and PvP. Wish it was 1k pen flat, but I'm not upset with 960. Movement speed is never bad. Stam sustain arguably the best in game. Plus 2k stam and both resistance to poison and disease. They are outstanding changes.

Now to just give them stam and mag regen... and let Bretons reduce Stam and Mag costs. (Pipe dreams.)

BlueRaven

Starlight_Knight wrote: »

I think ZOS keep trying to bury this.
Remember the last post that got to 99 pages then shut down. lol

An easier way to stop these posts is to just return bosmer stealth. 😆

Ratzkifal

Machete wrote: »

Why? RP? Stealth as a bonus was such a wasted spot. If anything I love the changes to Wood Elf, makes the Bosmer I've been playing for near 7 years more viable for content in both dungeons, trials and PvP. Wish it was 1k pen flat, but I'm not upset with 960. Movement speed is never bad. Stam sustain arguably the best in game. Plus 2k stam and both resistance to poison and disease. They are outstanding changes.

Now to just give them stam and mag regen... and let Bretons reduce Stam and Mag costs. (Pipe dreams.)

@Machete I love the changes too, but you are forgetting that Bosmer still have detection as "such a wasted spot". Keep the rest as it is, but replace detection with actual stealth. Stealth is just neat when you want avoid combat while detection never actually feels impactful because you never know if you just noticed that guy in sneak because of your standard detection or just because you have those extra 3 meters. And let me tell you, as someone who thoroughly tested this passive and discovered a few bugs with it, this passive is not actually useful even on the best of days. 3meters is a lot IRL but not in ESO.

Erelah

Yes please return Stealth to the Bosmer.

Machete

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Machete wrote: »

Why? RP? Stealth as a bonus was such a wasted spot. If anything I love the changes to Wood Elf, makes the Bosmer I've been playing for near 7 years more viable for content in both dungeons, trials and PvP. Wish it was 1k pen flat, but I'm not upset with 960. Movement speed is never bad. Stam sustain arguably the best in game. Plus 2k stam and both resistance to poison and disease. They are outstanding changes.

Now to just give them stam and mag regen... and let Bretons reduce Stam and Mag costs. (Pipe dreams.)

@Machete I love the changes too, but you are forgetting that Bosmer still have detection as "such a wasted spot". Keep the rest as it is, but replace detection with actual stealth. Stealth is just neat when you want avoid combat while detection never actually feels impactful because you never know if you just noticed that guy in sneak because of your standard detection or just because you have those extra 3 meters. And let me tell you, as someone who thoroughly tested this passive and discovered a few bugs with it, this passive is not actually useful even on the best of days. 3meters is a lot IRL but not in ESO.

I admire you formal approach and positivity on both matters.

Personally I'm quite a fan of the detection, as I've done testing against it with NBs in PvP. It's not amazing by any regards, I agree, but it has saved me from gankers from time to time, or aided me in a duel vs NBs who like to get up close or sneak through you. But it is lack luster at best. Personally I still favor the stealth detection but as long as they don't touch other stats, neither are super great in anything but open world PvE and ganking in PvP.

nqvarihs

its a nerf btw

Ratzkifal

Machete wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Machete wrote: »

Why? RP? Stealth as a bonus was such a wasted spot. If anything I love the changes to Wood Elf, makes the Bosmer I've been playing for near 7 years more viable for content in both dungeons, trials and PvP. Wish it was 1k pen flat, but I'm not upset with 960. Movement speed is never bad. Stam sustain arguably the best in game. Plus 2k stam and both resistance to poison and disease. They are outstanding changes.

Now to just give them stam and mag regen... and let Bretons reduce Stam and Mag costs. (Pipe dreams.)

@Machete I love the changes too, but you are forgetting that Bosmer still have detection as "such a wasted spot". Keep the rest as it is, but replace detection with actual stealth. Stealth is just neat when you want avoid combat while detection never actually feels impactful because you never know if you just noticed that guy in sneak because of your standard detection or just because you have those extra 3 meters. And let me tell you, as someone who thoroughly tested this passive and discovered a few bugs with it, this passive is not actually useful even on the best of days. 3meters is a lot IRL but not in ESO.

I admire you formal approach and positivity on both matters.

Personally I'm quite a fan of the detection, as I've done testing against it with NBs in PvP. It's not amazing by any regards, I agree, but it has saved me from gankers from time to time, or aided me in a duel vs NBs who like to get up close or sneak through you. But it is lack luster at best. Personally I still favor the stealth detection but as long as they don't touch other stats, neither are super great in anything but open world PvE and ganking in PvP.

Thanks. I like that you are being constructive about the whole subject even if we disagree on this.

Honestly I feel like the stealth detection isn't supposed to reveal people in invisibility. Usually what I like to call truesight has this eye icon above your head and lets people know that cloak or invis pots will not work. Hunter's Eye also only reveals invisible NBs in a 3m radius without an icon, which sounds an awful lot like an unintended side effect, especially because invisible NBs are still untargetable even though you can clearly see them when they are standing on top of you. But the range of surprise attack is greater than 3m anyway, so the protection it offers is negligible.

And then there is the fact that the detection is actually detrimental to your own stealth and warns enemies of your presence.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Basically recreating/reposting my old post, because I can't quote it thanks to the thread being locked.

Test1: No medium Armor on both, the one with the red orbs has 3/3 Hunter's Eye.


Without wearing any armor, the "danger" indicator is nonexistant for the person being revealed. You go from completely hidden straight to full reveal. However there is some very wonky behavior as I am constantly going "hidden" again since no combat is happening, only to be immediately detected as soon as the indicator goes to "hidden" without any of us moving. This is when sneaking face toward face. The fennec fox pet was friendly enough to not go into stealth, so you can still tell where my sneaking Bosmer friend is. Note that he is not standing on top of the flag but slightly behind it (there is room for about another crouching Bosmer between him and the flag).

Test2: One has full medium armor with passives, the other with the red orbs has 3/3 Hunter's Eye


This time the Bosmer without the Hunter's Eye passive put on 7 pieces of medium armor, none of which interact with detection nor stealth beyond the medium armor passive. As you can clearly see, the Bosmer without Hunter's Eye is made aware of a nearby enemy through the "danger" indicator - the half opened eye. The Bosmer with Hunter's eye is still hidden and has no idea an enemy even exists in the area. This time the helpful fox behaved and went properly into hiding. The duel flag is touching the Hunter's Eye Bosmer's heel this time.

In Imperial City you will often find yourself in situations where both players are sneaking, so exactly this scenario. Fixing detection takes time and effort and making it actually useful is going to cause unintended problems (for example a third of the Dominion becoming immune to NBs). It's just not worth to go against the lore for that in my opinion.

As a side note, the only race that was stated to be observant in the lore is actually Orcs, because the Woodorcs constantly have to deal with sneaky Bosmer and have gotten good at spotting them. Still, I wouldn't wish detection as a racial passive onto anyone.

anadandy

Stealth is not only for RP. There are several main story quest lines - especially in recent DLCs (I made a list in the original thread) that use stealth. "Sneak into X, get Y, don't kill/alert anyone." Of course they can be done without but why bother making it a quest mechanic.

Detection is 100% useless trash in PvE and broken in PvP. It was tested to show it actually alerts people they're being detected. I'd "waste a slot" on Stealth instead of Detection in a heartbeat.

Araneae6537

I’m glad that Argonians got their poison resistance back, but why do Bosmer have it at all??? It is against lore, even if less flagrant than their lacking any kind of improved stealth.

BlueRaven

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I’m glad that Argonians got their poison resistance back, but why do Bosmer have it at all??? It is against lore, even if less flagrant than their lacking any kind of improved stealth.

Bosmers are losing poison and getting disease resistantance. Much more lore appreciate.

XomRhoK

I am agree that if Wood Elfs had sneaky, thievery specialization from TES: Arena it must be returned to them, and now is the perfect time, because ZOS touched the passives again anyway.
In my opinion best way to do it is to adjust Hunter’s Eye passive as: gain 5% movement speed and 10% movement speed while sneak.
It can be with or without detection bonus, can be 3% and 15%, but you get the idea. It will bring back sneaky, thievery specialization to the race, will be differ from Khajiits, but still usefull in both PvP and PvE, Khajiits will be safer when picking chest at one place, Bosmers will faster change their position vs patrolling guards or in thief guild quests. Also it close to already existing passive in the game, so it close to devs vision of this race and will be easier for them to accept this change, as i think.

dave_harter_ESO

Even after the changes, Bosmer will still be pretty suboptimal. However, a slight improvement is better than none. I do like the stealth speed increase idea.

SEINTDARKNES

But why they nerf pen and movement velocity?

The orc get a buff when they deal any kind of damage they heal for more and get spell dmage too, feels kinda unfair

Araneae6537

BlueRaven wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I’m glad that Argonians got their poison resistance back, but why do Bosmer have it at all??? It is against lore, even if less flagrant than their lacking any kind of improved stealth.

Bosmers are losing poison and getting disease resistantance. Much more lore appreciate.

Oh, yes, that is better. Sorry I misread — thank you for the correction! I don’t know that there’s any precedent for them being immune to disease, but at least I am not aware of a reason they shouldn’t be.

But it baffles me that ZOS didn’t take this opportunity to return Bosmer’s stealth bonus. All of lore supports it and pretty much everyone wants it.

YandereGirlfriend

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I’m glad that Argonians got their poison resistance back, but why do Bosmer have it at all??? It is against lore, even if less flagrant than their lacking any kind of improved stealth.

Quite right, Bosmer ought not have Poison resistance. It cuts against most of the precedent set in the games.

In Morrowind: Bosmer have no Poison Resistance. Argonians have both it and Disease Resistance.

In Oblivion: Bosmer have no Poison Resistance. Argonians have both it and Disease Resistance.

In Skyrim: Things get weird and Bosmer suddenly have Poison Resistance and Disease Resistance. Argonians now only have Disease Resistance.

So it seems clear that the ESO devs never actually played any of the older ESO games and instead copied the passives from Skyrim directly. They didn't understand that those passives were aberrations from the lore rather than examples of it.