Piercing change 1,400 -> 700 pen: is that really necessary?

DinoZavr

Dear Zenimax,

Further penetration nerf 1,400 → 700: is that really necessary?

I had already made a post in General Discussion, wondering why 5,280 pen has been reduced to 1,400 with CP2.0 introduction.
With that change stamina classes struggle with reaching the pen cap (and the most affected are non-Bosmer stamDKs and stamplars).

Further pen decrease suggests the classes in question simply MUST wear Spriggan’s Thorns (and the second set for stamplar is to be Deadly Strikes) – otherwise DPS losses become noticeable.
Soloing contents, playing with PUGs – you cannot rely on group buffs and the gear options become way too limited to keep a reasonable DPS.

Stamplars would have to respec into magplars (as Light Armor passives resolve pen issues completely) or convert into healthplars tanks. StamDKs could respec into magDKs.

Why? These two most affected by the pen nerf specs are currently not the top tier neither in PVE, nor in PVP. Also, with further pen decrease all the stamina classes would not be very welcome in trials groups.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
Could you, please, reconsider and instead of decreasing pen down to 700, provided by the blue “Piercing” increase the maximum value it provides from 1,400 to 2,800 ?

CP1.0 offered 5,280 pen and this was enough to keep gear selection freedom. Neither 1,400, nor 700 are not enough and the proposed change, in my opinion, noticeably restricts the playstyle freedom.
Link to my older post: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/564985/penetration-cp2-0-question

Thank you

AyaDark

They just want abuse tanks with alkosh again in mana groups.

merpins

2,800 pen instead of 1,400 would be nice on my stam builds. But I doubt they'll listen to the community. I really hope they do, 1,400 is difficult enough to build around, but 700 makes all the stam builds I have not work anymore for end-game content. As you said, it's kinda making it so stam builds have to use specific sets just to get enough pen, which makes them inherently weaker than magicka dps.

TwinLamps

Seems devs dont play stamina at all.

Oakmontowls_ESO

AyaDark wrote: »

They just want abuse tanks with alkosh again in mana groups.

They killed alkosh for tanks though, you need to build weapon damage to make it work and you just don't get much in the way of weapon damage from any sets you'd wear in pve tanking.
In actually looking at the current tool tip, it isn't too bad as I would have a tool tip of ~2300 with a set up of ebon and alkosh but in order to get the full 3k I would have to sacrifice a blue cp slot and either 1 infused and one normal jewelry or all 3.

etchedpixels

It just means that every stamina toon now uses maul and lover and yet more choice has turned into a 'only one model works'.

It's already the case that a lot of trial groups are 'magicka only'

Chilly-McFreeze

TwinLamps wrote: »

[snip]

[snip]

I really don't like the changes to passive CPs at all. Neither of them. Even if they someday decide to add a slottable penetration star it becomes a must-have for stamina while losing out on something different.

Only way this makes sense in the grand sheme of things is if they merge martial and magickal stats like penetration, crit chance and damage so you could make up with a piece of light armor without loosing crit. But that's just pure speculation.
Even if, they should hold back the CP pen changes until then.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

Oakmontowls_ESO

They really should just double the effectiveness of each stage of the stars they just nerfed. That way the damage will be the same as it is on live currently

ResidentContrarian

Is it necessary?

Not really.

If it is because the star is a "free star" then maybe it shouldn't be and buffed and moved to a slottable one like players asked for when CP changes initially dropped.

Will they keep it?

Probably, just to play contrarian.

There are worse CP stars out there if they want to talk balance for damage or lack thereof, including a bugged one.

On my setup it won't make a difference either way, but then again maybe that's because I am the ResidentContrarian.

DinoZavr

Thank you for opinions, friends.

Well… I could justify “lowering ceilings” if it was balanced and all classes/specs suffer relatively equal losses. With pen this is entirely different. Stamina DPS noticeably nerfed, magicka not affected at all.

Before CP2.0 the typical solo builds had to invest like approximately 70 (or such) points into CP1.0 Piercing which was equal about 4,800 pen. Of course for the price of taking this points from crit and damage.

New CP2.0 restricted pen and it does not offer making decisions where should I invest my precious CP.
I thought CP was designed to help players, to make characters better, provide freedom of choices and greater flexibility.
Please let me decide if i would like to raise pen up to 2,000 or 4,000... the hard limit of 700 is way too restrictive (as well as 1,400).

With current iteration CP2.0 restricts players’ freedom and the green tree brings a nightmare of micromanagement.
Hard Limits offered are too strict and do not provide any flexibility of trade-offs: raise this for the price of that.
All of these and thats are nerfed down to insufficient levels.

Each every day I try to make my characters better, to reach more ambitious goals. Each week game-makers release patches making my characters worse. Hope game-makers fine tune trials to match changes (which are mostly nerfs) in the CP2.0.
So the concept of "progress" becomes questionable.
Yes i know: adapt and such.. already respeced into magicka and developing skills and morphs. But, frankly, why?

Dear Zenimax, you can do it better. It would be logical if CP rewards players for invested efforts and progress. Please, reconsider. At least, buff the Piercing star. Please. It is like 4x nerf, compared top CP1.0. Nerfs of such the tremendous scale should be justified and explained.

edit: typos

Jaimeh

Apparently reps have raised this issue and they are still letting it go through... I don't get why they are nailing the coffin on pve stamina... if the new chapter gets released like that, there goes my favourite spec for dps, I'm so frustrated about that nonsensical nerf.

Edited to add: if you are playing on PTS, please use the feedback feature there as well, it might help if more of us ask for this constellation to be spared.

Zand3rs

I really love how gimped my stamina classes have become. My magicka classes are so much easyer to do higher dmg with and being able to stay at range things never get close to me either.

Stam classes are dead!

RogueShark

I've been running lover and that + a sharpened dagger gets me to cap in my otherwise all mag groups. This leaves my crit below 50% even with weapon crit pot running, which sucks with how nerfed crit has been lately.

I think it's the better alternative to maces or a pen set tho, but I could be wrong.

OneWingedAnge7

I posted on another thread about what I use right now on my stamsorc. I have 5.8k before cp is applied so the nerf won't affect me much. But alas it is a problem.
I use a precise 2h maul, 1 piece Kraghs and crystal weapon. I have no idea how other classes would make up the extra 1k that I have from crystal weapon aside from mundus changes or being forced to run sharpened.
They should bake pen into the medium armor passives, not much, but enough to cover the drop off from cp. Whether it's 100 per medium piece worn or whatever I don't know, but something has to be changed.

Fhritz

700 Pene isn't that much, and keep in mind that with set scaling stam can easily buff some proc set (For example, on pts i can easily reach +400 dmg per stack of relequen, so more than 10% dps increase on this set), and I think this'll balance this pene loss

And master at arms is back ! Some build this'll be a great damage boost !

karekiz

Member when they boosted Pen values on Pierce armor and included major/minor with increased numbers?

Yeah we bout to 180 on dat.

Shantu

Simple, direct communication on why they do things would be very helpful and minimally courteous. While some may not like the answer, the resentment that festers from feeling your not even worth an explanation is far worse. I'll never understand why ZOS takes this route.

DinoZavr

@Shantu, i still hope for the "Developer Comment:" remarks in further Patch Notes.

kojou

Short answer: No. No it wasn't.

Purereality

I'm convinced that the developers making these changes either don't play stam or don't play stam in end-game content. It's such a shortsighted decision and hurts so many players who are already struggling to make stam work in end-game content in the first place. I really hope they realize they're making a huge mistake and start making changes that allow stam and mag to coexist and work well together in end-game content, rather than that content being reserved for mag only.

DinoZavr

@Purereality i strongly hope developers communicate with class representatives and read forum at least sometimes.
The changes are massive and most of good players, theorycrafters, Stream Team members - all are aware about stamina players struggle to reach the pen cap.
Still, we don't know is the second nerf 1400 -> 700 will go live, as Developers remain silent about their vision & the grand scheme of things.

I also strongly hope, nerfs would not happen, as they simply kill the very idea of horizontal progression (e.g. allowing players to trade of benefits, provided by a vertical progression), as if the initial vertical progression leaves players in the "dire shortage" of stats cucumstances, the "horizontal" stage dergades into "vertical continues" - to fill the gaps, left by the initial "vertical" phase and to achieve more-or-less playable stats. Months or years of progress to result in barely no freedom of play?

Still, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst i had already respeced many of my characters into magicka and now developing skills and morphs.

Tannus15

They should add a slottable pen CP which gives a heap of pen. like, 5k. either in stages or all or nothing, 75 points. doesn't matter as long as it's an option.

Stam shouldn't get all the pen they need for "free", they get other benefits to compensate this lack, but they should have a relatively easy option to allow them to enter PvE groups without expecting the entire support system change to make it possible.

Chilly-McFreeze

Tannus15 wrote: »

They should add a slottable pen CP which gives a heap of pen. like, 5k. either in stages or all or nothing, 75 points. doesn't matter as long as it's an option.

Stam shouldn't get all the pen they need for "free", they get other benefits to compensate this lack, but they should have a relatively easy option to allow them to enter PvE groups without expecting the entire support system change to make it possible.

Which slottable would you switch out for that pen without losing out on too much extra damage?

WrathOfInnos

First I want to say that I agree Piercing should give at least 1400 penetration, if not 1750 or 2800. 700 is simply too low to have any impact.

That being said, stamina reaching PVE pen cap is organized groups seems achievable. Did I miss a recent change? Or does something like this still work?
- 5948 Major Breach
- 2974 Minor Breach
- 3000 Alkosh
- 2395 Tremorscale
- 2108 Crusher
- 700 Piercing
- 1000 Crystal Weapon
Total 18,125

So with no Lover, Sharpened, Bosmer, Maces, Torugs, Nightblade/Necro passives, or individual penetration sets (not even Kraghs 1pc, which is easy to run with 5-5-1 using a mythic), everyone can get within 75 of the pen cap. That missing pen technically results in a 0.15% DPS loss, but I imagine that 99.85% feels a lot like 100% of damage.

Comparing to mag is pretty straightforward. Stam groups need Alkosh and Tremorscale for a combined 5395 physical pen, while mag groups use 6 light armor to obtain a similar 5634 spell pen (7 light seems unlikely with the new mythics). A lot of mag groups are also using Tremorscale because support monster helms are lacking, and it helps dual wield and hybrid skills.

DinoZavr

@WrathOfInnos
yes, i have listed most of pen sources in my old post which is linked.
my question is: what about the non-organized groups, what about soloing a hard content?
organized groups should not be the the only viable playstyle, otherwise no freedom offered.
of course, i can not solo vet/HM trials without an organized group, but there are normal dungeons, vet dungeons, world bosses..
a requirement to use the high caliber when it is not that necessary seems rather illogical for me.
Also with CP1.0 no such questions even arose.

TL/DR; i play mostly solo and i am doing my best to be heard by the game-makers to prevent my playstyle from being crippled.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

Oh trust me, this change hurts badly for magicka too, especially with Alkosh effectively being off the table for tanks, and making solo content much harder. It's a mind-numbingly awful decision all around for every dps of every spec. Zos needs to STOP balancing the game around what an ultra-optimized, S tier group can do, because the vast majority of players aren't playing in those groups. It's not enough to justify hurting literally everyone else.

phantasmalD

I'm sorry, but 'Stamina struggles to reach pen cap' is not a compelling argument for buffing Piercing.

And it shouldn't even be concidered a CP issue in the first place. If stamina is weaker than magicka than that's something that needs to be tackled separately from the CP system, addressing that issue with CP 2.0 would just be a bandaid fix; wouldn't solve anything, the problem would be merely swept under the rug.

Now, if you want Piercing to be buffed you'd have to answer the following question and preferably provide mathemathical proof: Is one stage of Piercing weaker than 10 points of Untamed Aggression? In other words, is 350 penetration less of a power boost than +30 damage?

CP 2.0 was clearly balanced so one CP offers the same amount of power no matter where you put it, with slottable and specialized stars having a very slight advantage over passive stars.

That's why they only cut stages instead of merging the benefits. Because if, let's say, one stage (10 points) of Eldritch Insight gave you 520 magicka that would clearly be better than 10 points into Untamed Agression (30 damage).
You can't buff one star without needing to buff everything else as well.

As for not being able to easily reach pen cap, consider this: maybe they don't want 0 armor to be viewed as the default state for mobs.

DinoZavr

@phantasmalD,
the issue as i see it: magicka players have barely no pen issues, while stamina players suffer a noticeable lack of pen
may be resolved in many ways. if the "clearly balanced" CP2.0 makes stars totally untouchable, then the removed pen might be returned by the Medium Armor passives (as magicka players get some pen from the Light Armor passive, at this is OK).
Also, CP1.0 offered 5,280 pen and it was quite balanced until CP2.0 arrived with 1,440 which is planned to be cut in half.

phantasmalD

DinoZavr wrote: »

the issue as i see it: magicka players have barely no pen issues, while stamina players suffer a noticeable lack of pen
may be resolved in many ways.

Which should be counterbalanced by the fact that medium armor gives %damage buffs.

I don't see this as an issue, more like flavour difference; light armor boosts damage output with better penetration while medium does it with more raw power.

If light armor users have higher damage output than stamina players then the armor bonuses needs to be looked at, otherwise it's prob working as intended.

Again, I think maybe we should stop considering 0 armor as the default state of monsters and accept that building for penetration is a valid way to boost your damage.

Also, CP1.0 offered 5,280 pen and it was quite balanced until CP2.0 arrived with 1,440 which is planned to be cut in half.

Yes. In a system that offered you 15/25% damage buff stars.

For 4CP Mighty gave you 1.20% increased Phy, Disease, Poison damage while Piercing gave 413 pen.
Now for 10 CP you can get +30 damage or 2% better DoT damage or 350 penetration.

It's pointless to point back at CP1.0 and say 'but we had more penetration' because everything was more. I can't say whether it was balanced or not, but that 5280 pen had a completely different competition.

Now we have more raw stats but CP is less impactful.

master_vanargand

Need at least 1000pen to stage 2.

FangOfTheTwoMoons

phantasmalD wrote: »

I'm sorry, but 'Stamina struggles to reach pen cap' is not a compelling argument for buffing Piercing.

And it shouldn't even be concidered a CP issue in the first place. If stamina is weaker than magicka than that's something that needs to be tackled separately from the CP system, addressing that issue with CP 2.0 would just be a bandaid fix; wouldn't solve anything, the problem would be merely swept under the rug.

Now, if you want Piercing to be buffed you'd have to answer the following question and preferably provide mathemathical proof: Is one stage of Piercing weaker than 10 points of Untamed Aggression? In other words, is 350 penetration less of a power boost than +30 damage?

CP 2.0 was clearly balanced so one CP offers the same amount of power no matter where you put it, with slottable and specialized stars having a very slight advantage over passive stars.

That's why they only cut stages instead of merging the benefits. Because if, let's say, one stage (10 points) of Eldritch Insight gave you 520 magicka that would clearly be better than 10 points into Untamed Agression (30 damage).
You can't buff one star without needing to buff everything else as well.

As for not being able to easily reach pen cap, consider this: maybe they don't want 0 armor to be viewed as the default state for mobs.

But that's the argument in its entirety. Unfortunately for complete optimization full pen is required and as long as Mag has it (along with a plethora if other amazing tools all while playing at range) stam will never truly be competitively viable.

If the devs didn't want mobs at 0 armor than Mag wouldnt have so much built in pen or they'd raise the pen cap.

Honestly, with how everything is being nerfed(not referring to the proposed changes only), they didn't just rein in horizontal progression. They basically got rid of it lol.