Some Major Issues and Solutions to Fix Them this Patch.

MashmalloMan

Issues:

1. Medium Armor vs Light Armor Imbalances.
   • Proc Set Scaling better with Medium Armor. Damage proc sets scale based on 1 stat, weapon/spell damage, to which you can stack easier on Medium Armor builds via the +14% weapon damage, giving stamina players an inherit, no cost, no investment boost to proc sets that Light armor, magicka builds have no chance of receiving. Another issue is Light Armor's main defensive abilities like shields and some heals only scale based on Max Magicka, further pushing the divide between these playstyles.
   • Stamina PVE Vet Compositions are dead. With CP 2.0, Stamina DPS players are only able to get 1400 penetration passively, now 700 with the CP nerfs, while Light Armor continues to get 6573 spell penetration + 700 for 7300 total. This makes building raid compositions easier for Magicka as they don't need to spend time on hitting the 18200 spell penetration cap, when with minor/major breach they're already at 16000 and the remaining 2000 is covered under an infused crusher enchantment.
2. Dual Wield as a back bar weapon for proccing enchantments suffers more than any other weapon. This patch, Deadly Cloak will only tick every 2 seconds instead of every 1 second. 1 tick from Blade Cloak can only proc 1 enchantment at a time (unless aoe where it technically can tick upwards of 1 time), this change will kill off DW back bar builds as they now have no way of proccing both weapons since an infused poison/flame enchantment shares a 2 second cooldown, you will only ever get 1 enchantment firing off every 2 seconds rendering the other weapon completely useless..
3. Proc sets can scale too high. Your solution was to raise the cap, while this makes it harder, it only pushes the ceiling farther away, while creating a larger divide for the bottom end of the spectrum, which frankly does not need it.
4. Proc sets suck in pve. They can't crit and they don't scale (on live), you noted some of your intent behind these changes was to buff pve while making it harder for pvp, where the real issue lies since in pvp, you typically spread out your stats evenly for defense/sustain/utility, etc, so anything that offers free damage has become meta.
5. Lowering the floor while barely effecting the ceiling. Most proc sets in pve are used by newer players or players that are less invested into min-maxing their dps for high-end vet content, these players already have lower dps by using proc sets since they aren't competitive damage options in pve without the ability to crit to begin with. By raising the cap even further, you've effectively nerfed already weaker players by 30-40% of their original live values. This is further highlighted by the fact that they're less likely to have gold weapons, all jewelry enchanted with gold damage enchants, bloodthirsty, minor/major brutality or group buff damage sets. To reach above 6500 damage, you need to be in an optimized group, so why is a playestyle that is clearly aimed at the lower end being nerfed further when the real issue is related to pvp?
   • Before anyone says it, Releuquen, Zaan and Maw of the Infernal are exceptions to the rule where they can actually be used in higher end content on live. Even so, a lot of builds are swapping away from using complete monster sets and instead using 1 piece monster set for crit and 1 piece mythic or 2 pieces of monster sets with crit.

Proposed Resolutions (Matching issue numbers above):

1. Armor Passives updated:
   • Medium Armor Agility passive - updated from 2% weapon damage per piece to 1% weapon damage AND 470 weapon penetration per piece.
   • Light Armor Concentration passive - updated from 939 spell penetration per piece to 1% spell damage AND 470 spell penetration per piece.
     • Equal opportunity at base level for proc set scaling.
     • PVE compositions will be easier to build for on both sides with a total base pen of 4000 via CP and Armor. With major/minor breach and infused crusher, total is 15000 penetration, leaving space for group optimization for the remaining 3200 pen. This much more managable than magicka groups doing nothing and stamina groups being forced to somehow find 6000+ penetration.
     • Crit/regen/cost reduction already match between the 2 armor sets, what exactly is the point of these passives being different from each other?
     • There is still a small difference of Stamina players getting an opportunity for more weapon damage via Fighters guild skills slotted or Magicka players getting more Magicka/Regen via Mages guild skills slotted, since these require active investment on your limited skill bar, I see little issue with the minor differences between the 2 builds. The major issue was the armor giving a passive buff to pen or weapon damage that created a larger devide in many aspects of the game.
     • Penetration is a useless stat for magicka healers, they're secondary focus is dps, not primary, so why are we giving them a useless passive? Spell damage will help their heals scale better.
     • With hybrids becoming more popular, having both armor weights give even stats is important to creating those builds so you don't over penetrate for magicka attacks or on the reverse side, feel punished for slotting more magicka skills vs stamina skills, because they have higher weapon damage scaling. ZOS continues to offer hybrid options patch to patch so this seems like the logical next step.
2. Dual Wield weapon enchantments updated - simple, just make it so 2 enchantments can proc from 1 tick of damage. This allows your change for Deadly Cloak to go through without effecting players since 1 tick of damage every 2 seconds would fire off both an infused poison/flame enchantment. This won't fix the issue of Weapon/Spell Damage enchants 5 second cooldown not lining up with the 2 second intervals, but an 83% uptime seems good enough if both weapons can at least proc enchants at the same time. This also allows Quick Cloak to become a viable option, Destruction Staff and Bows have an option of 10s or 14s rotations via the 2 morphs of their aoe dots. By fixing enchantments for DW this way, you open up build diversity for players, quick cloak has half the damage, but 40% more duration. Some people prefer that nerf to dps, but an easier 14/15s rotation lining up with other skills. Don't kill build diversity.
3. Introduce diminishing returns and front loaded damage proc set scaling - The beginning points of weapon/spell damage offer more than whatever you add after the given threshold. This will lesten the blow to the lower end of players that don't play in an optimized group or have absolutely every piece golded out and jewelry transmuted, while also lowering the absurdly high numbers proc sets should never be able to achieve. I'm sorry, but no one wants to be hit by 1 proc for 15k damage, thats why we have Global Cooldowns and costs to skills, to give players a chance to react and counter. Your changes are allowing ball groups and gankers to seek new avenues to 1 tap targets before they have a chance to do anything. This change also avoids a hard cap some people are asking for since after a certain point, your points invested would barely make a difference. Think about the health scaling sets for a second coupled with Bone Goliath or Vamp Lord where you're freely given 1.5 to 2x your original health. It doesn't make sense to allow health sets to scale that far.
4. Battle Spirit Debuff for Proc Sets - Stop trying to balance proc sets 1 way for both game types (pve vs pvp). Parity between the 2 is impossible. Introduce a Battle Spirit nerf directly to proc sets along with the above changes, this would put them in a good place for pvp, while allowing pve proc sets to thrive. With the new scaling and diminishing returns proposed, I'm not saying another -50% is justified, that would kill them off completely, but I could easily see -20% being reasonable, this is neccessary to allow proc sets to behave differently between the 2 types of content unless you plan to make proc sets crit again since crit rocks in pve, but sucks in pvp, but I don't see many people enjoying that solution either (although those days were fun :P).
5. I answered this one with point 3, but I'll add more to point 5 here. I keep seeing people say how easy it is to get 6500+ weapon damage, but they're looking at it from their 1% perspective. Trust me, this part doesn't effect me or most of us on here, but I've seen the complaints here and there. Think about the little guy for a moment. Proc sets aren't OP in pve, they're only a problem in pvp and the above solutions solve that, allowing a player with 3250 spell/weapon damage to get more than only 50% of a damage proc sets tooltip amount is more than reasonable. Without linear scaling, a player with 3250 damage should in theory get more than 50% of a proc sets power, they could get 70% for example. Than at 4500, 85%. 6500, 100%, and then dimishing returns kicks in hard and instead of a player getting +50% for another 3k weapon damage, they'd only get 15%. Potential for higher numbers check, reasonable amount check, lower end players not punished as severely check.

MashmalloMan

TLDR:

• Update Medium/Light Armor to give 1% weapon/spell damage and 470 weapon/spell pen per piece worn respectively.
• Update DW enchants to allow 2 enchantment procs from 1 tick of Blade cloak damage.
• Update damage proc scaling to be front loaded while also introduce diminishing returns, especially past the given thresholds.
• Update Battlespirit to include a small debuff to damage proc sets of -20% or whatever number is right (don't do -50% for the love of god, you've killed HP regen now) given the other changes I proposed. The idea is not to kill it off for pvp, but to allow them to thrive in pve where they're lacking, without destroying pvp balance like the changes they've proposed will do.

MashmalloMan

Side note about the Armor Idea, I prefer the multiplier for weapon/spell damage, but I have considered that ZOS would most likely take a different approach given the opportunity for change and judging by their previous decissions regarding weapon, racial and CP2.0 balance.

The more logical change would actually be a flat value of weapon/spell damage.

Balanced via 1-4 piece standards it would look like this:

939 pen (light armor passive) / 1487 pen = 0.6314
0.6314 * 129 (spell damage from 1-4 piece sets) = 81

Since my suggestion is for armor to include half the value as pen and the other half as damage, it would look like this:

Medium Armor: +40 weapon damage and 470 weapon penetration per medium armor piece worn.
Light Armor: +40 spell damage and 470 spell penetration per light armor piece worn.

This amount is of course increased by multipliers on passives or major/minor buffs so in theory, you'd get about 400-500 weapon/spell damage and 3290 penetration from 7 pieces of light or medium.

SgtNuttzmeg

I like your ideas. Well put. Front loading procs and establishing diminishing returns seems to be the best bet going forward. The only other thing I would look at doing is reducing the cost reduction of block granted by medium armor and reducing the additional aoe mitigation.

Amottica

Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the weapon damage passive from medium armor and make it penetration instead nerfing the related passives for each and combining them? If penetration is such a big issue then that is clearly the best solution.

YandereGirlfriend

As always, @MashmalloMan supplies the devs with what should be considered required reading.

I agree with basically everything listed except that I do not believe that you actually need diminishing returns on proc set damage if you tune the Battle Spirit debuff more aggressively.

Proc sets (excepting Relequen) are already pitifully weak on Live in PvE and allowing them to scale only modestly over their current values would not do anything to vault them into viability for anything other than Overland questing.

Typically, they are tuned to be only ~2k tooltip DPS and that ends up being perhaps a few hundred damage more with full raid buffs/debuffs. That is simply not enough, especially for single-target, non-burst sets such as Icy Conjuror.

The only other alternative, as you say, is to allow proc sets to Critically Strike again. I am open to that option but, as you further relate, it would likely not be widely popular.

TLDR; Set the scaling target back to 5500 and aggressively tune their damage in PvP via Battle Spirit. Allowing proc sets to linearly scale with a 50% Battle Spirit debuff would allow proc sets to be useful (if you built for them...) in PvE while being no more dangerous than before in PvP.

ExistingRug61

As always a well structured and thoughtful post @MashmalloMan
I think you have identified some of the major issues well and quite like a lot of the suggestions as described.

There are a few things I would pick up on which I think could be further refined or have other alternatives.

Penetration
This is a difficult one. Having things be the same for light/medium as you suggest would simplify building for PvE as far as I can tell, however there are a few things a bout it that aren't ideal

a) Its kinda...boring? Not really a proper criticism, but I think we lose some of the uniqueness of the armour types. But this sort of opinion probably shouldn't stand in the way of better gameplay.

b) While ok for PvE, balancing pen between magicka and stamina it as suggested may open up another problem that light armor's excess pen has been masking in PvP: the prevalence of higher spell resistance than physical resistance. As far as I am aware, there is no way to get pure physical resistance anymore, but there are still a multitude of sources of spell resistance (DK, Templar, Breton, Light armour) which all result in your average PvP opponent having higher spell resistance than physical. The Pen passive light armour has (which in isolation is probably actually stronger than medium's weapon damage) is often more than half countered by this alone. But this is only in PvP. So balancing pen means that more frequently magicka characters would still be up against higher effective resistance than stamina. That said, this effect could be addressed by balancing out those player resistance sources to actually have some purely physical resistance sources, maybe change one of the class passives and/or change the heavy armour resolve passive to be physical only (at a higher amount perhaps?)

I do agree it would be nice for light armour to have a passive that may be more useful to healers though.

The other suggestion I had for this issue (but this is WAY more effort on ZOS's part so its very unlikely) which I think I suggested in another thread where you made a similar suggestion would be to simply hybridise out the bonuses of the armour (including the regen ones - could make it so light is mag and stam cost reduction, medium is mag and stam recovery to keep them different) in addition to making it possible to either change or recreate dropped sets in other weights (this is where it's a lot of work). If this was done, then a player could simply choose a mixture of light and medium depending on how much pen vs damage they want, probably resulting in a different mix depending on your group composition, whether your class has a passive pen source, and your weapon choices.

I doubt my suggestion will ever happen due to the work it would require and the huge change it would have to gear builds, but I do like it conceptually so am tossing it out there. Realistically, what you propose would still be quite good and a lot simpler (although I would at least like some balancing done to player spell/physical resistance sources in that case).

Procs
Diminishing returns would likely be reasonable, but ZOS seem unwilling to implement such measures.

I would probably be happy to see them scale from damage + max resource, as this would probably bring up the low end for off meta builds while making it a bit harder to push them out to crazy values.

You mentioned it in your post, but I would be interested to see what happens if proc's could crit again (with a bit of a decrease in their raw power to balance), and would prefer it to some sort of arbitrary battle spirit debuff on procs. It just seems more, i don't know, elegant. Plus its better for PvE.

In my mind, crits and crit resistance is one of the best things ZOS already has available to them in terms of adjusting relative power in PvP and PvE, as the difference is already there and can be tweaked quite easily by adjusting player's base crit resistance if needed.

Also again means you need a better stat spread to get the most out of procs making building a bit more balanced and less min/max into just damage. Hopefully this would cut into the "ceiling" but maybe it doesn't do enough to bring up the floor for casual PvE, not sure.

A possible downside as you allude to with making proc's able to crit is PvP players getting annoyed at seeming oneshot proc combos that only worked because the attacker just got a lucky sequence of crits, dunno. I don't think I'd mind but obviously pthers may disagree. Also, in PvE it might send Relequen damage through the roof, and while I'm sure stamina wouldn't mind as they need the help, it might not be the best to be so dependent on one set for damage.

Elydros2015

Excellent post, I really hope the developers are keeping an eye on this forum. And thank you for sparing a thought for the more casual players, who stand to lose the most from the proposed changes. Collecting and playing around with proc sets is part of what I enjoy about ESO; I will never run high-end PVE content which means I'll never have monster sets, gold jewelry, any of that. And I am okay with that, I don't run the hardest content so I don't need the best gear.

I mostly play one character, a CP 600-ish warden. I've been running the Defiler set because it's fun and I like the extra bit of control from the Hunger, and the 7150 poison damage was nice. But on PTS that same character was only getting 4,950 damage from the set. That's a 30% decrease and I will never be able to hit the target numbers to get back to the original values. So I'll probably retire that set and change to a non-proc set, but there goes however many thousands of gold I spent on Defiler, as well as using my scant number of transmute crystals (I literally had enough of them to transmute TWO traits on my Defiler set). That effort now feels like it was all wasted.

Part of my gameplay is based on getting a new proc set item drop, reading up on it, then thinking "well it might be fun to try that one" so I spend time, in-game gold and upgrade materials to assemble and upgrade a new set. If these changes go through I won't bother doing that anymore, and at least one avenue of interest in ESO will be gone, for me and probably for other players as well.

Abyssmol

Amottica wrote: »

Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the weapon damage passive from medium armor and make it penetration instead nerfing the related passives for each and combining them? If penetration is such a big issue then that is clearly the best solution.

Agree! The justification stamina players have for defending the new changes to proc damage is damage would balance out because light armor has penetration. Well if penetration is so important to stamina players, then make light and medium armor have the same penetration and remove the scaling of WPD on medium armor. That would solve a few problems with imbalance in pvp. It would never happen...

relentless_turnip

Great post man👍
Question: I was pretty sure that both glyphs are in fact triggered by blade cloak. I could be wrong, but I'm sure I have tested this on a target dummy. Can anyone confirm this? I almost exclusively only play PvP so you'll have to excuse my ignorance.

OlumoGarbag

relentless_turnip wrote: »

Great post man👍
Question: I was pretty sure that both glyphs are in fact triggered by blade cloak. I could be wrong, but I'm sure I have tested this on a target dummy. Can anyone confirm this? I almost exclusively only play PvP so you'll have to excuse my ignorance.

Im pretty sure they dont both proc. I played alot of torugs builds with dw backbar.

relentless_turnip

@OlumoGarbag Yeah I use BRP DW back bar a lot and I was under the impression both proc'd. I can't test until tonight, if anyone else knows the answer that would be cool.

ResidentContrarian

There is no equal opportunity scaling between WD and SD no matter how much this unbalanced suggestion is reposted and that fact ignored.

cheemers

Abyssmol wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the weapon damage passive from medium armor and make it penetration instead nerfing the related passives for each and combining them? If penetration is such a big issue then that is clearly the best solution.

Agree! The justification stamina players have for defending the new changes to proc damage is damage would balance out because light armor has penetration. Well if penetration is so important to stamina players, then make light and medium armor have the same penetration and remove the scaling of WPD on medium armor. That would solve a few problems with imbalance in pvp. It would never happen...

Sure, then also give:

• +12% stamina for slotting a siphoning ability on NB,
• +15% stamina after activating northern storm on warden,
• +5% stamina for slotting evil hunter,
• DK scaled armour +3.3k phys resist as well as spell resist,
• Templar balanced warrior +6% wep AND spell DMG and +2.6k spell AND phys resist,
• Sorc daedric protection +20% health, stam AND mag recovery,
• Sorc capacitor +10% mag AND stam recovery

If we're going for boring watered down homogeneity. In fact it might be better just deleting all unique passives so we're all running exactly the same builds just with different coloured attacks.