Update 31 Combat Preview

silvereyes

Ralamil wrote: »

All this will do is reduce their squishy-ness slightly, which I would bet good money won't actually make one bit of difference because it's going to boost the survivability of the groups that are farming them as well.

I see what you are saying, but I don't think the devs are trying to make it so that squishies survive. They said that they are trying to increase time to kill, period. I don't know why.

My theory is that they think surviving a little longer will make the entire experience more enjoyable for people who would otherwise quit PvP in frustration. I doubt it will work, though. 10% change isn't going to make squishy players not squish. They will still die relatively quickly and be left unsatisfied. I'm happy to be proven wrong, however.

Anasatsudo

Recently came back to the game and with my Nightblade, well, he feels useless. What is the point of stealth when everyone can see through it without any issues? Non-stealth classes that are crouching should be much more easier to spot (ie: crouching against a player should have no effect) than a NB using abilities. Not too mention that his survivability, even after getting re-geared, is non-existent; which also goes for his damage output? It literally makes me feel that the NB class is a glass cannon without the cannon, since even my heavy-attack / pet spec'd sorc that is wearing all level 10 training gear without glyphs (he [was] level 40) has much better survivability and can hit harder. BTW, these are just metrics from the battlegrounds, so CP level shouldn't be in effect, although I am nearing 500 CP.

So with all that said, here are some changes which I feel would benefit the game and should be looked at and discussed:

• Crouching does not effect players, however, it will still effect visibility against NPCs.
• Shadow Cloak and it's morphs should be a toggle ability which forces the player to crouch and depletes magicka at a rate of 1,350/s for Shadow Cloak and Dark Cloak, 1,260/s for Shadowy Disguise. Upon deplection of magicka, the NB will automatically drop the cloak but remain crouching.
• Upon activating Shadow Cloak and its morphs, any movement penalties should be removed (break-free + roll mechanics), however, it will have a ten second cooldown between uses.
• Non-damaging AOE abilities will not affect invisibility, however, the effect will still be placed upon the player.

Also, I do enjoy playing as a pet class, especially as an "evil pet user", so when I saw the necromancer? I went ahead and bought the crowns to purchase the character class. Can I get a refund? The necromancer is hardly a necromancer at all, but instead is just a wizard that has somehow polymorphed their spells to look like skeletons.

Make the pets a toggle ability and their special moves on a countdown when in combat - the same as companions are. There should also be an ability to resurrect dead enemies for a limited time for, say, 1 minute. As far as the pets go? Grave Lord should have the following abilities:

• Base: Skeleton -> Creates a skeleton which will engage the enemy in unarmed combat
• Morph 1: Skeleton Berserker -> Creates a skeleton with a 2h weapon
• Morph 2: Skeleton Knight -> Creates a skeleton knight with a 1h weapon and shield
• Base: Skeleton Mage -> Creates a skeleton that uses magic
• Morph 1: Wraith -> Summons a wraith that uses magic and debuffs
• Morph 2: Spiritual Defiler -> Summons a spirit which drains resources from the enemy (health, stamina, magicka) and gives it to the necromancer

(If the above is implemented, remove Spirit Mender from the Living Death skill line, and replace it with a Resurrection mechanic that will resurrect a player/companion, turn them into a ghoul for 3-5 seconds, then give control back to the player.. that would be awesome!)

Leave the mechanic of being attacked by guards in place, and even add in that normal NPCs should run (if unarmed) or attack (if armed) - while adding to a bounty.

p00tx

I'm not crazy about the changes to prismatic weapons, since more sustain shouldn't be needed and the current Prismatics provide a unique and interesting way to build for very specific fights. I'm not crazy about the changes to cloak, since AoEs were the only (useful) way to protect yourself from obnoxious gankers and bombers. The rest is interesting though! We shall see.

Ezorus

Firstly: Stealth and Cloak is the most unreliable bull s**t in the game. Its Soooo unreliable, everything breaks it, spamming it till you are out of magic and still not invisible.

Secondly: self healing is way too high, you shouldn't be able to out heal a byild purely built for damage or multiple people at once attacking you!

Thirdly: Werewolves, nerf that crap

Furthermore: leap, streak and toppling charge/jabs are over tuned

emilyhyoyeon

really excited to see what's coming for ice destruction magic!!!

ApostateHobo

Why are you adding more slotted stars that's literally the last thing we need. You do realize we can only slot 4 of each color right? All this will do is maybe change the meta on which of those stars everyone has slotted. Add more passive stars instead PLEASE.

Abyssmol

Ezorus wrote: »

Firstly: Stealth and Cloak is the most unreliable bull s**t in the game. Its Soooo unreliable, everything breaks it, spamming it till you are out of magic and still not invisible.

Secondly: self healing is way too high, you shouldn't be able to out heal a byild purely built for damage or multiple people at once attacking you!

Thirdly: Werewolves, nerf that crap

Furthermore: leap, streak and toppling charge/jabs are over tuned

Ezorus wrote: »

Firstly: Stealth and Cloak is the most unreliable bull s**t in the game. Its Soooo unreliable, everything breaks it, spamming it till you are out of magic and still not invisible.

Secondly: self healing is way too high, you shouldn't be able to out heal a byild purely built for damage or multiple people at once attacking you!

Thirdly: Werewolves, nerf that crap

Furthermore: leap, streak and toppling charge/jabs are over tuned

Ezorus wrote: »

Firstly: Stealth and Cloak is the most unreliable bull s**t in the game. Its Soooo unreliable, everything breaks it, spamming it till you are out of magic and still not invisible.

Secondly: self healing is way too high, you shouldn't be able to out heal a byild purely built for damage or multiple people at once attacking you!

Thirdly: Werewolves, nerf that crap

Furthermore: leap, streak and toppling charge/jabs are over tuned

Ezorus wrote: »

Firstly: Stealth and Cloak is the most unreliable bull s**t in the game. Its Soooo unreliable, everything breaks it, spamming it till you are out of magic and still not invisible.

Secondly: self healing is way too high, you shouldn't be able to out heal a byild purely built for damage or multiple people at once attacking you!

Thirdly: Werewolves, nerf that crap

Furthermore: leap, streak and toppling charge/jabs are over tuned

This has to be a joke, right? Cloak is so unreliable that every NB and their mothers use it. You can use mist form or Race against time like most other classes, but no you choose cloak. It's so unreliable but so good! 😁

DoggedBark24

TempestM wrote: »

So NBs in stealth in PVP will be more annoying for no reason now? Thanks, I hate it

Yeah, "Let's buff the people who can easily run away and attack however many times they want because you are perma combat logged with them"

Destai

@ZOS_Gilliam I mean that's cool and all but, two things
1. When I press light attack will it fire 100% of the time now? Let's spend some time maybe getting combat lag fixed before adding more stars.
2. Maybe @ZOS_GinaBruno missed relaying this feedback to you, but: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/search?Search=Green+Tree People don't like how the green tree is handled. Mind taking a look?

I'm sure you're doing amazing work, and I appreciate you coming here and giving us really detailed info on what you're doing. I only hope you're also seeing that people are asking for more passives. Can you speak to why that approach isn't being taken?

James-Wayne

Balanced Warrior will give Weapon and Spell Damage plus Armor??? FINALLY!!!

Long overdue, my Dark Elf Templar even closer to hybrid play now...

MasterSpatula

So, umm, there's an issue of tankiness in Cyrodill being too............ weak?

Also, is a buff to 2-Handed coming for PVE only, or are you actually saying you plan on making 2-Handed stronger in PVP, too? It's a little unclear, and though the answer should be obvious, let's face it; it's not.

Red_Feather

I just got prismatic enchantment for my weapon and love it and now it's going to change into a resource enchant? That pisses me off a lot.

Milli_Rabbit

tonyblack wrote: »

Why add more slotted green passives despite overwhelming negative reaction to existing ones? It is not fun and hindrance to normal gameplay. I would rather prefer making all green tree just passives, since most of them don’t provide any combat advantage.

Fitness is Red Tree.

Parasaurolophus

I'm seriously encouraged that ZoS is doing something to balance pvp. This is a good signal that pvp is not forgotten in this game. As for the changes:

• Increasing mitigation is a bad idea in my opinion. PVP suffers so often because of the tank meta. Unkillable players who do a lot of burst damage are bad. I see no reason to increase the survival rate. The balance between damage and survivability looks good right now. Seriously. Any player can now be killed.

• Rip Hakeijo. I don’t know why. This rune may have dealt too much damage to the Daedra, but its new effect is trash

• Buff NB. It's good. Yes, for inexperienced players, encounters with the NB can be unpleasant. But in fact, this is an extremely ineffective class and does not pose any threat to an experienced player.

RogueShark

Mr_Arce88 wrote: »

Also: "areas of the game we currently feel are lacking: Two Handed’s ability to stick in melee encounters and offer comparable sustained damage in PvE" 2H is strongest weapon in PvP, are you seriousely gonna buff it up more because it lacks in PvE? If you want to touch weapons, just give DW a proper Major Brutality like 2H has. That will give us a real choice of weapons, instead of locking every single class without native brutality sourcing to 2H...

Want to note that 2H is also a top weapon in PvE for stam DPS. DW is comparable with vatesharan but just look at ESO logs for stam DPS (what few are around, but that's another topic entirely) and you'll see plenty of 2H, more than DW maybe. Every single other stam DPS I've run with has been running 2H. Stampede, Executioner and Wrecking Blow are all very good. Even as a die-hard DW fan, I run 2H on trash because brawler with master's is just too good to pass up. I'm confused: do they not realize stampede is a gap closer? And slotted not only for being a gap closer, but because it does good damage? And that DW does not have a decent gap closer? But 2h is the one that struggles to stick to melee? Huh?

This is hilariously out of touch.

Tommy_The_Gun

BrownChicken wrote: »

• Buff NB. It's good. Yes, for inexperienced players, encounters with the NB can be unpleasant. But in fact, this is an extremely ineffective class and does not pose any threat to an experienced NB player.

Exactly. I know how to deal with NB's cloak and this change in stealth / invisibility mechanics will change almost nothing. I will still be able to pull them out of cloak reliably .

Tbh. I still don't know if it will be a buff or a nerf for a NB. I mean, if they indeed make cloak more reliable (personally I doubt that) then indeed it will be more friendly for newer players. On the other hand cloak will lose pretty much all dmg mitigation it currently has on live server - dot suppression and occasional projectile "miss". So, it seems that more experienced players who know how invisibility works will have yet easier job of removing nb's from cloak than it is now on live server. Also, NB will take much more dmg, meaning that a squishy class will get even more squishier.

Is it a buff or nerf then ? Personally I think it all depends on whenever self-heals will still cancel your own cloak. I mean on live server, if you are invisible / stealth, if you cast self heal or HOT then it breaks invisibility. And there is as reason for it. Cloak suppresses dots and single target dmg (if it was used after you cloaked). So it makes sense that it also prevents using heals. If you cast heal - cloak gets cancelled.

So, if after those changes cloak wont provide any dmg suppression, then it also makes sense that it should not be interrupted by your own healing abilities. If however, they will go with inconsistent changes (I got hit by DOT that deals dmg to me and does not break cloak, but my own HOT breaks my own cloak) then it is a huge nerf imho.

Red_Feather

Just want to point out that prismatic onslaught was using additive mixing theory to hone different elements into a holy light.

The upcoming change to prismatic to make it a vampiric enchant doesn't fit any lore better so don't write that it is being done to fit a theme.

Alendrin

Nothing about performance? Its worse than last update in cyrodil. I thought that was the priority?

Red_Feather

Alendrin wrote: »

Nothing about performance? Its worse than last update in cyrodil. I thought that was the priority?

They'll dumb down and kill every aspect of the game in an attempt to improve performance because I doubt they even know how with this game engine. This game's engine was probably not designed to handle large scales instances of player clients affecting each other.

paulychan

all those listing for pariah at like 20k for a girdle off trait... rip lol

FrancisCrawford

Fazuszek wrote: »

Its nice that u are giving more start in CP system, but u know what? I cant slot most of them. I just put my cp points for collections, and then i have to select ONLY a few of them

Give MORE SLOTS for cp bonuses. Thats the priority. We dont need more stars, that need to be slotted. Its just annoying.

Just suck it up and break the blue/green/red symmetery.

Green should have ZERO slottables.

VaranisArano

Red_Feather wrote: »

Alendrin wrote: »

Nothing about performance? Its worse than last update in cyrodil. I thought that was the priority?

They'll dumb down and kill every aspect of the game in an attempt to improve performance because I doubt they even know how with this game engine. This game's engine was probably not designed to handle large scales instances of player clients affecting each other.

Ironically, that's exactly what ESO was designed for: large scale PVP combat in the style of Dark Age of Camelot. In the beginning, Cyrodiil was explicitly intended for groups of 8 to 24 players, the player cap was much higher, and there were much larger, longer battles.

Performance has degraded over time for various reasons to the point that now Cyrodiil can't handle much smaller population caps at primetime and our group size has been reduced to 12 across the board.

p00tx

Ezorus wrote: »

Firstly: Stealth and Cloak is the most unreliable bull s**t in the game. Its Soooo unreliable, everything breaks it, spamming it till you are out of magic and still not invisible.

Secondly: self healing is way too high, you shouldn't be able to out heal a byild purely built for damage or multiple people at once attacking you!

Thirdly: Werewolves, nerf that crap

Furthermore: leap, streak and toppling charge/jabs are over tuned

You act like jabs actually work reliably in PvP Those haven't worked properly in years.

Ganondroid

I don't feel that prismatic changes are warranted at all personally, but the direction this is going isn't really going to be useful after the change. Sustain is good right now, so much so that sustain sets aren't even really being used in trials anymore. Health is high so it's a lot easier to swap to sustain food than it is to swap out an enchant and lose out on all the damage your other enchant could provide. Supports don't have sustain issues either as they have plenty of other sustain tools readily available to them.

My propesed idea for a useful prismatic enchant would follow the tri-effect theme still, but continue to do damage. Instead of returning resources, when the glyph procs it could deal x flame, frost, and shock damage to the target. This would be useful for providing extra debuffs without the need for extra skills, or giving up both enchants to do so.

As an example, a tank running double ice staves and encratis behemoth could use this enchant on one bar to proc brittle and encratis while still keeping a crusher enchant or whatever else the situation calls for on the other bar.

This could be useful for providing extra debuffs from a support DD when doing a portal mechanic similar to Nahviintaas Hard Mode. If you're group comp doesn't allow for a warden/magblade to provide minor vulnerability, then this enchant could be used to proc burning and concussed at the same time.

Tyreal1974

ZOS_Gilliam wrote:

Likely the biggest adjustment to an existing set is to Pelinal’s Aptitude, which will be changed to Pelinal’s Wrath, which now focuses on the blood lust this hero of lore succumbed to in their legacy left in Tamriel!

By Molags Bal and Vivecs floating jewels...please do not mess with Pelinial's weapon/spell bonus! I have finally built up a FUN TO PLAY Hybrid Battlemage using build info I found from Hack and am once again enjoying my Sorcerer main since you screwed with Shields and Bound Armor. Please do not make me rebuild this toon yet again.

blkjag

I’m pretty sure what everyone wants are better servers and performance improvements. Let’s tackle the real issues

ThePainGuy

@ZOS_Gilliam

It appears with some of the changes to armor sets in the past there is an attempt to provide both spell and physical resistance to reduce large discrepancies between spell resistance and physical resistance (introduction of armor stat). It appears you are doing that with some passives too as you mentioned in post where we will get armor instead of spell resistance. Will some type of change similar to this apply to light armor passive spell ward? Instead of getting 726 spell resistance per light armor applied, we get 363 armor for each light armor applied. On the flip side on medium armor agility passive, instead of 2% weapon damage for each medium armor piece, will it provide 2% weapon/spell damage for each armor piece?

Im just curious how extensive these changes you mentioned will be. Is it just being adjusted to class passives or armor passives etc.

Faulgor

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Prismatic Weapon enchants, however, have been completely changed to better fit their theme of Tri Resource seen from the other Prismatic enchants. They now operate similarly to a Drain Life or Magicka weapon enchantment but grant all three resources!

Leave it to ZOS to find the one thing I'm excited to create a build around, and completely remove it.
There goes my Witchhunter.

ealdwin

...we’re also adjusting all player passives to grant hybrid versions of their stats...

At last

FrancisCrawford

Odd that companion Fighter's Guild skills are still focused on daedra/werewolves/undead, if there's a move away from that focus otherwise. I conjecture they'll change too.