Update 31 Combat Preview

Fried_Fowl

Please Disable Recoveries while in Shadow Cloak like Mist Form for fairness!

Full Details Here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580542/shadow-cloak-vs-mist-form-vs-streak/p1?new=1

Dayhjawk

Looking forward to seeing these changes, however, something I will say that's on top and not on top.

When you que to do a BG, the default allows for premade groups to do, while the drop down option is solo BG. As someone who solo Ques for BGs, it's totally horrible to que into a game with a premade group and being with a team, in some games, two groups, not able to do anything against the third group who is premade. Could we swap these in the BGs que option. Have solo BG as the default and the drop down option for premades. For a lot of guild members that do BGs for the daily rewards and are PvE and not PvP, its confusing and many don't even know there is a solo que option.

SkaraMinoc

You need to increase Time to Kill (TTK) without buffing tanks.

Paulfood69

What about the ps5 version and the crashing when's that gonna get fixed and will we ever be able to transfer our psn achievements.

DarcyMardin

This sounds mostly PvP oriented. A lot of the recent changes have seemed primarily oriented in that direction. So here’s yet another (apparently useless) plea for PvP and PvE to be balanced separately.

The only things that reassure me are the claims that these will be small changes rather than the usual every-three-month sweeping changes. And that you might finally be giving some love to frost Mages. Fingers crossed.

Elo106

Hope the 2 handed buff is pve only, making 2 handed even stronger in pvp would be unhealthy, elevating it even further beyond all other weapons

Alucardo

DarcyMardin wrote: »

This sounds mostly PvP oriented. A lot of the recent changes have seemed primarily oriented in that direction. So here’s yet another (apparently useless) plea for PvP and PvE to be balanced separately.

If you read, the damage mitigation is tied to Battle Spirit, so it already only affects PvP environments. Which part do you think they changed to benefit PvP while affecting PvE?

Ishtarknows

Alucardo wrote: »

DarcyMardin wrote: »

This sounds mostly PvP oriented. A lot of the recent changes have seemed primarily oriented in that direction. So here’s yet another (apparently useless) plea for PvP and PvE to be balanced separately.

If you read, the damage mitigation is tied to Battle Spirit, so it already only affects PvP environments. Which part do you think they changed to benefit PvP while affecting PvE?

Not the OP, but the whole fighters guild skill line applying only to enemy *players* will be the final nail in the coffin for stamina pve.

xHotguy6pack

Increasing TTK....lol this game is becoming a bigger joke every patch.

Brrrofski

Girl_Number8 wrote: »

Are you also going to address Boosting in PvP to promote healthy gameplay....?

I mean, all these changes are not going to do much if some core issues are not looked at and resolved.

During MyM in a campaign that several sister guilds pop-locked they took boosting to new heights. Had all colors in one keep with no PvP going on for the entirety of the event.

I can explain how and what they did to you, plus give you vids and screenshots. Any sort of balance goes out the window if this is allowed to get worse and it is.

@ZOS_Gilliam

So they boosted in anew campaign that was added that nobody was really PvPing in?

Who cares? What's difference does that make to you?

Brrrofski

Smaxx wrote: »

While I've seen a few people drop almost instantly in PvP during Midyear Mayhem, I don't think time to kill overall is an issue. For me the biggest issue are solo (or sometimes) duo players somehow unkillable "tanking" 10, 20 or even more attackers (simply ignoring Meatbag catapults and the like with more than 50% mitigation). And here I'm not talking about people just running around some border tower or similar, some seem to be able to do it in the open field, while still dealing out enough damage to kill people.

Maybe I'm totally missing something (and I'm really just bad at PvP, not going to hide that), but that always feels very fishy to me balance wise.

I don't see the TTK as being that low either to be honest. I think it's pretty ok.

Yes, people in MYM were falling order in gusts of wind, but they do every year.

Damage is high, yes, but I think that's good. Nobody wants 10 minute stalemates.

Alucardo

Ishtarknows wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

DarcyMardin wrote: »

This sounds mostly PvP oriented. A lot of the recent changes have seemed primarily oriented in that direction. So here’s yet another (apparently useless) plea for PvP and PvE to be balanced separately.

If you read, the damage mitigation is tied to Battle Spirit, so it already only affects PvP environments. Which part do you think they changed to benefit PvP while affecting PvE?

Not the OP, but the whole fighters guild skill line applying only to enemy *players* will be the final nail in the coffin for stamina pve.

Sure, but that has absolutely nothing to do with pvp. That was just a choice that ZOS made. Perhaps people were doing too much damage to undead/daedra in pve so they wanted to nerf it.

(I don't agree with it either. I think it's a stupid change, along with the prismatic change)

NylAR

Girl_Number8 wrote: »

But everything already breaks cloak....🤦🏻‍♀️

Girl_Number8 wrote: »

But everything already breaks cloak....🤦🏻‍♀️

Exactly, he's saying that won't happen anymore.

They're trying to fix cloak breaking not make it worse.

Xandreia_

Fried_Fowl wrote: »

Please Disable Recoveries while in Shadow Cloak like Mist Form for fairness!

Full Details Here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580542/shadow-cloak-vs-mist-form-vs-streak/p1?new=1

[snip] Mist form allows you to be invincible for the duration, streak allows you to get far away fast, cloak on the other hand has a 2 second duration and doesnt work a good 80% of the time and almost everything gets you out of it! Why on earth would they disable recovery on cloak 😂 it's the thing that makes a night blade a night blade! I wish people would quit trying to change the identity of classes just because they [snip] at the abilities that make the class what it's supposed to be!

[edited for baiting]

Idinuse

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...

Cause that's what they play themselves, or majority of "Content Creators" do. It's ZOS after all...

fred4

Blanket damage reduction in PvP will just bring back a tank(ier) meta without fixing much of anything. It may fix a few outliers, e.g. those stamsorc and nightblade (but mainly stamsorc) gank builds that truly kill you in a single GCD and therefore have no counterplay. That's about it.

Something that's been ringing in my ears is reading a comparison with another MMO, but I can't remember which one. Basically healing in ESO PvP may be way too high. If you can heal up full in one or two seconds, then it must be allowed that you can be burst in one or two seconds. You want longer TTK? You would have to substantially reduce damage, and I mean drastically to 50% of current values, let's say, but you would have to reduce healing even more. This should result in a more strategic playstyle where you would be forced to rely on movement and LoS for your healing to catch up. I have NO idea whether that would make for a more enjoyable game, however. I love ESO's fast-paced combat. Feeling that you are doomed for lack of healing, that you are gradually dying and it's inevitable, that can be as frustrating as being insta-killed.

What can you really expect from damage reduction? If everyone is wearing Pariah or something else from a small number of defensive sets right now, it might fix that and result in more variety. I am not sure whether that statement is true, though. Playing in CP I suspect many people solely use offensive stars from the blue tree, as Gilliam mentions. If that's the case, it may point to a failure of the playerbase to adapt to CP 2.0 and might sort itself out naturally in the long run.

DarcyMardin

Alucardo wrote: »

DarcyMardin wrote: »

This sounds mostly PvP oriented. A lot of the recent changes have seemed primarily oriented in that direction. So here’s yet another (apparently useless) plea for PvP and PvE to be balanced separately.

If you read, the damage mitigation is tied to Battle Spirit, so it already only affects PvP environments. Which part do you think they changed to benefit PvP while affecting PvE?

My concern is that often when the dev team discusses balance, they seem to focus on making changes that stem from objections PvP players have to what’s happening on their turf — adjustments to armor, to shields, to healing, to cloaking, to how proc sets work, to what stats high damage builds focus on, etc. While I’m glad PvP is getting some love, given all the performance issues that affect gameplay in Cyrodiil and add to PvP’ers misery, I sometimes feel as if PvE builds suffer because PvP must be constantly fine-tuned. Short burst-oriented, fast-movement based PvP play is inherently different from the slower, steady damage, resource-hungry PvE play, so it makes sense that balancing both playstyles is hard to achieve. If PvE and PvP could somehow be separated (and tinkering with Battle Spirit alone doesn’t seem to be enough to do this), maybe everyone would be happier.

Tommy_The_Gun

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

You need to increase Time to Kill (TTK) without buffing tanks.

That is actually very hard and I would imagine kinda impossible.

The reason people make tanky build is a direct consequence of TTK being to short. So they build tanky, to be able to take some beating to increase TTK so that they have more time to react and play actively. Especially if you consider poor server performance & health de-syncs. No one likes to PvP just to die in a split second due to lag & de-sync and then have to play "horse riding simulator" to go to a fight again. Current tanky builds are "ok" since they do not have much dmg output. It is not like i previous dmg proc set meta, when tanks also had decent dmg.

Casul

Sentry buff. Heck yeah. Now my snipes will pull them out.

VaranisArano

DarcyMardin wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

DarcyMardin wrote: »

This sounds mostly PvP oriented. A lot of the recent changes have seemed primarily oriented in that direction. So here’s yet another (apparently useless) plea for PvP and PvE to be balanced separately.

If you read, the damage mitigation is tied to Battle Spirit, so it already only affects PvP environments. Which part do you think they changed to benefit PvP while affecting PvE?

My concern is that often when the dev team discusses balance, they seem to focus on making changes that stem from objections PvP players have to what’s happening on their turf — adjustments to armor, to shields, to healing, to cloaking, to how proc sets work, to what stats high damage builds focus on, etc. While I’m glad PvP is getting some love, given all the performance issues that affect gameplay in Cyrodiil and add to PvP’ers misery, I sometimes feel as if PvE builds suffer because PvP must be constantly fine-tuned. Short burst-oriented, fast-movement based PvP play is inherently different from the slower, steady damage, resource-hungry PvE play, so it makes sense that balancing both playstyles is hard to achieve. If PvE and PvP could somehow be separated (and tinkering with Battle Spirit alone doesn’t seem to be enough to do this), maybe everyone would be happier.

To be honest, yes, it sounds like the Devs are constantly hearing from PVP players about what adjustments are needed.

I mean, have Molag Kena, Domihaus, and the coalition of trial bosses every invited you or me to their monthly gripe session to the Devs about how certain gear is overused or how certain classes/skills are overperforming? I think not.

Unlike us, the Devs see all that data from the PVE side as well. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Devs aren't constantly fine-tuning PVE for PVE reasons based off the PVE data from bosses and group content that only they see. They are. It's just that Saint Olms and the rest of the trial boss crew don't have forum accounts, so we don't see their side of the story.

JoSePHRiNG

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!

Finally, man do you know how much sense this makes when you think about it.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

So things like Balanced Warrior will give Weapon and Spell Damage plus Armor, rather than Weapon Damage and Spell Resistance.

I hope you guys also add Armor into DK's Scaled Armor passive, also please add plus %HP too so it could be really useful to have.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

In addition to this, we’re reworking a few older item sets that had an incredibly low amount of player engagement: Sithis’ Touch will focus on zipping around from successful battles quickly one after the other, Nikulas’s Heavy Armor will improve its ability to shrug off incoming attacks, and Crusader will receive a fitting shift to grant something more appropriate of an enabling bruiser. 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!

Could not be happier seeing Pelinal changes, I hope you guys update other unused(not regularly used) sets too. You know most of the time people use the same sets because they are so good.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Finally, there will be some targeted buffs to niche 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, as well as Frost Staff’s ability to give the touch of cold death. Keep an eye out in the patch notes for some juicy buffs to two specific abilities!

I was expecting some buff to "frost staff" which is basically turned into a support class weapon rather than the original destruction staff theme.

Integral1900

Please don’t ruin pelinal’s aptitude, if you take away the ability to copy over the hyper stat it will effectively kill hybrid builds in this game, without that set and its ability to copy over the 20% damage boost and the three damage glyphs from jewellery I’m looking at a 1200 point damage loss!

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

I don't know...We'll see how it goes, but it's still just a zergy meta.

Andre_Noir

Brrrofski wrote: »

Smaxx wrote: »

While I've seen a few people drop almost instantly in PvP during Midyear Mayhem, I don't think time to kill overall is an issue. For me the biggest issue are solo (or sometimes) duo players somehow unkillable "tanking" 10, 20 or even more attackers (simply ignoring Meatbag catapults and the like with more than 50% mitigation). And here I'm not talking about people just running around some border tower or similar, some seem to be able to do it in the open field, while still dealing out enough damage to kill people.

Maybe I'm totally missing something (and I'm really just bad at PvP, not going to hide that), but that always feels very fishy to me balance wise.

I don't see the TTK as being that low either to be honest. I think it's pretty ok.

Where is ok ? Every stamina "skilled" user just need to spam execute when 50% appears with no reliable counterplay for that. Add here selfbuff for 20% WD, Vateshran weapon and even fulltank is more dangerous then full DD in a light armor

silvereyes

Integral1900 wrote: »

Please don’t ruin pelinal’s aptitude, if you take away the ability to copy over the hyper stat it will effectively kill hybrid builds in this game, without that set and its ability to copy over the 20% damage boost and the three damage glyphs from jewellery I’m looking at a 1200 point damage loss!

It's premature to start looking at numbers until we get to PTS. The loss of Pelinals is not the only change to hybrid builds in this update. There's also this:

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Speaking of passives, we’re also adjusting all player passives to grant hybrid versions of their stats, so things like Balanced Warrior will give Weapon and Spell Damage plus Armor, rather than Weapon Damage and Spell Resistance.

My guess is that with those in place, Pelinal's was too overtuned in PvE and CP PvP.

This is conjecture, but reading between the lines of the various racial passive changes over the years, the introduction of more sets with both spell/weapon damage, and now CP changes focused on hybrid play, the devs are really trying hard to move hybrid builds out of a niche reliant on a couple of sets to something more mainstream with a lot of build options.

I think that's actually really positive goal for the game. I'm hoping that the removal of Pelinal's signals that the devs think they have arrived at that endpoint in Update 31, but I reserve judgement until the community has a chance to jump on PTS and start testing with actual numbers.

Styxius

I heard a rumor, and hopefully, it's just that. That you're planning on pairing class unique minor buffs so that NB/Sorc would give Minor Prophecy and Savagery. With DK and Templar both giving brutality/sorcerery. If this is true this defeats part of the goal to have more class diversity. I also will say this. Nightblade needs love. Their mag rotation is clunky. Their stam counterpart is much more fluid. NB tanks need so many buffs as they keep getting nerfed and need more love. But the above I heavily stand by, unless the goal is to try and make them to where they could join any comp I could see this having the inverse effect of massive class stacking if a class is underperforming naturally compared to another.

As I said earlier, hopefully, this is just a rumor and you aren't doing this.

Joy_Division

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings!

Let’s start with something we’ve seen a lot of discussion on: Time to Kill (TTK) in Player versus Player environments. Compared to previous updates, the amount of damage is higher across the board than it was previously, but simultaneously, defensive power is lower too. This is mainly caused by two things: the balance standards that Champion Point 2.0 was held to in Update 29 where we introduced more choices between either offensive or defensive options, as well boosting up stats on fresh characters with the introduction of base Weapon and Spell Damage, and the base Maximum Resource adjustments from Update 30. Between these two, many builds are making more choices in improving their ability to deal or take damage while experiencing a sharper operational loss of the other. As many player builds lean towards dealing damage in PvP environments, this creates a situation where TTK lowers. While we’ve identified specifics, such as base stat adjustments, we wanted to stay focused on where the problem was felt, which was exclusively related to PvP. Our main adjustment in Update 31 will be to Battle Spirit and focusing on the damage taken portion, increasing it so the base character takes 60% less overall damage, rather than 50%. Aside from this and a few more specific, smaller adjustments, we’re still monitoring many of the moving parts (such as proc set scaling) and discussing measures we can take in future updates that won’t adversely affect parts of the game where problems aren’t as severe.

I don't think this is going to improve the PvP experience.

Players need to die in PvP. We've gone through years of frustrating "tank" metas and when we finally get to the point where running into a random Dragonknight does not mean being dragged into boring stall-defense wait to ultimate is up gameplay, ZOS is giving everyone free damage mitigation that exceeds the Major Protection buff (and this mitigation is more than they even realize. A Google search reveals Battlespirit reduces damage currently by 44%, not 50% like is being claimed in the post. Though perhaps I and Google are incorrect).

Moreover, because some classes were designed differently than others, it is they who are going to reap the most benefit from this free extra mitigation. Necromancers are notoriously hard to kill without even putting much effort into building for defense because they have specially designed skills that are very effective and versatile such as spirit Mender. I'm not sure why we continue the farce that this skill is somehow comparable / balanced /standardized to say the Templar Eclipse, but if you give Necros an extra 16% damage mitigation for nothing, I will guarantee you these forums and your feedback will be filled with more complaints than we had with 35K health Arctic Blast unkillable Wardens (another class with excellent defense).

There are many reasons why a lot of people die more quickly now, and many of them are player related that you can't and shouldn;t fix through battlespirit. Players run around with 19K health, no impen, they just aren't experienced, they think Eclipse is a good skill, they run random instead of synergistic gear, etc. Battle spirit isn't going to save them from experienced players. It's just going to make those experienced players even more difficult to kill. The best way to lengthen overall TTK is to take a look at the Necromancer and recognize that if all classes had reliable and effective defensive skills such as that, not only would those other classes being more interesting and viable to play, but also the TTK against them will raise while not making the already notoriously hard to kill necros more of negative influence during the PvP experience. As it is many players "play" defense by wearing automatically scaling Pariah gear and using Radiating Regeneration - which isn't really playing - because somehow these two options are better than what their class kit gives them. Those players who don;t go these options are the ones that explode when targeted.

The other negative experience that I foresee is that this change will very much increase the potency of organized groups, which after lag, is probably the most frequently cited "pain point" of the PvP experience. Once again, I will extend an anonymous invitation to any ZOS developer to join in one of our 2 hour group sessions to get a first-hand experience as to the mechanics and workings of organized group play. As it is right now with 44% damage mitigation, our 12 players can get inside an inner Keep like Arrius and Glademist and hold off many times our number of active opponents. I don;t even want to imagine contending with those groups who run more than twice a week and take the game far more seriously than we do. I have no desire to spend my entertainment time trying to compete with Necros that are running around with permanent mitigation superior to major protection or dealing with the better organized groups unless I am in one.

In short, I don;t think the blanket effect everybody the same sort of solution is going to yield the results that ZOS hopes for. It never does because the proposed fix of using a broad sledgehammer that treats everybody as if they were the same is attempting to resolve specific issues that arise precisely because people are not the same.

PS: do not read this an interpret that I think necros need to be nerfed. Instead revert/reform the hundreds of nerfs to my original class such that it can actually compete with them and you'll kill two birds with one stone: the game will be more enjoyable to play and I'll have all the defensive capability I need without having to touch Battlespirit and the subsequent negative impact described above.

WrathOfInnos

Ganondroid wrote: »

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.

I love the Fire/Shock/Frost idea for prismatic. It would probably be meta for most PVE builds, but I think it’s ok for the rarest enchant type to be slightly more powerful than the others (I also think Nirnhoned should be the strongest trait, not one of the weakest).

Tri-stat recovery is not going to be used. It will just end up like Invigorating trait.

Red_Feather

Please add creature specific poisons then. Poison of X slaying. It makes the game feel like an rpg. It is not good to dumb down everything and make it more mush. Flavour is a long term draw. Skyrim dumbed down the elder scrolls system and the only thing that really kept skyrim going this long is that poeople modded all the dumbed down systems out of it!

Lughlongarm

"This is mainly caused by two things: the balance standards that Champion Point 2.0 was held to in Update 29 where we introduced more choices between either offensive or defensive options, as well boosting up stats on fresh characters with the introduction of base Weapon and Spell Damage, and the base Maximum Resource adjustments from Update 30. Between these two, many builds are making more choices in improving their ability to deal or take damage while experiencing a
sharper operational loss of the other. "

"Ant in Update 31 will be to Battle Spirit and focusing on the damage taken portion, increasing it so the base character takes 60% less overall damage, rather than 50%. Aside from this and a few more specific, smaller adjustments, we’re still monitoring many of the moving parts (such as proc set scaling) and discussing measures we can take in future updates that won’t adversely affect parts of the game where problems aren’t as severe."

This is very concerning, we'r basically doing a full circle to the update we had about one year ago, when we nerfed all healing by the same amount as the suggested damage nerf for the upcoming update 31. It is true that since we had "boosting up stats on fresh characters with the introduction of base Weapon and Spell Damage, and the base Maximum Resource adjustments from Update 30". but remember, these changes boost damage AND healing capabilities.

Regarding the changes to Champion Point 2.0 , if the problem is in the CP system, CP should also be the solution. If one can sack extra 20% on direct single attacks + extra 25% crit damage, one should also be able to stack 20% damage mitigation on direct single attacks + 25% crit resist, from the same system. I think this will be a much healthier adjustment which will also not impact non CP PvP(unlike the suggested change).