Update 32 Combat Preview

silvereyes

StarOfElyon

I don't care for proc sets at all.

I like the additional hybridization since I play a number of hybrids already. However, I think after the last patch, they're in a good spot. We just need some more sources of both weapon/spell power.

What I don't like as much is making it too easy to build a hybrid, and with the proposed changes one can be a hybrid without even trying. And I think that might ruin some of the niche flavor of hybrids that I enjoy.

WuffyCerulei

Just don't nerf Khajiit as a flexible DPS race. We cats have been off-meta or just plain crap compared to Altmer, Dunmer, Orcs, and whatnot for like 5-6 years. It's only recently Khajiit are actually viable.

ealdwin

Jameson18 wrote: »

Incoming; Magplars and Mag DKs with Deadly strike.

As someone who's been requesting a version of "magicka version" of Deadly Strike for about a year now, I'm pumped.

GrumpyDuckling

Please consider hybridizing more class skills as well.

For example, on Wardens we don't need two morphs that split Green Lotus into Major Savagery and Lotus Blossom into Major Prophecy. Just roll both the stamina and magicka buffs into one skill, and create a new morph that doesn't encourage a stamina/magicka divide.

VaranisArano

A handful of meme reactions. Please, take it all in good humor.


Now, maybe the delay on burst proc sets will balance the crits out, but I have to confess this one had me scratching my head. Like, we already stopped letting proc sets crit for good reason, yeah?


Not gonna lie, this promise of Dragonknight love leaves me pretty apprehensive for my MagDK main.

Guess we'll see what the patch notes bring.

hands0medevil

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

Just don't nerf Khajiit as a flexible DPS race. We cats have been off-meta or just plain crap compared to Altmer, Dunmer, Orcs, and whatnot for like 5-6 years. It's only recently Khajiit are actually viable.

don't worry, they will hybridize all the races in the next patch - spell and weapon damage for all

Jameson18

VaranisArano wrote: »

A handful of meme reactions. Please, take it all in good humor.


Now, maybe the delay on burst proc sets will balance the crits out, but I have to confess this one had me scratching my head. Like, we already stopped letting proc sets crit for good reason, yeah?


Not gonna lie, this promise of Dragonknight love leaves me pretty apprehensive for my MagDK main.

Guess we'll see what the patch notes bring.

I loved every second of looking at this.

wolfie1.0.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings! It’s about that time again where we have another Update coming soon, even though Update 31 just released on consoles last week. With a new PTS update lurking around the corner, the combat team wanted to give you all some deep dives into the spicier stuff coming with this upcoming patch.

In the last Update, we tried to keep things simpler with the number of changes to help combat the change fatigue many have reported, but progress cannot sleep for long as we march ever forward to improving the game. Our focus in Update 32 is two-fold: improving proc set balance and continuing the hybridization improvements from previous updates. These areas are the topics we’ve seen a significant amount of discussion on in the realms of combat balance, so we’re following up to try and get better reigns on both.

In Update 30 we introduced item proc set scaling, which aimed to lower the ease of access of “free” damage and healing from them by ensuring you needed a base line of stats to make the set really stand out. While this did help significantly reduce the overbearing success of tanky builds utilizing damage-oriented sets, it also increased the amount of damage that glass cannon and more offensive-oriented builds did by a reasonable margin. This, while an intentional result, still has the issue of the power available when stacking multiples of these sets, and how certain combinations are leading to very binary and unengaging gameplay. To target that issue, we’re introducing a new rule set for offensive item sets that have low counterplay. Now when wearing a set that deals a “burst of damage” within a 4 second window, it will prevent any other use of these types of sets for 1 second. This is to deny the ability to layer multiple effects into single attacks, significantly reducing burst potential. This rule set will be explained in further detail in the PTS patch notes, and keep in mind we are open to adjusting this along the way.

In relation to this, we’re also aiming our sights on reigning in some of the power creep that’s been coming into the game as of late, particularly affecting PvE. The dominance of Critical hits in ESO is by no means new, and despite the reduction to the overall sourcing of it, we’re still seeing it win out by a significant margin when compared to other stats. Rather than outright nerfing Critical Chance or Potency (Damage and Healing) and hurting builds that aren’t really doing more than we expect, we’ve decided to move forward with a hard cap to Critical Damage and Healing. It is our hope that this keeps Critical Chance and Potency as viable and powerful stats but also helps open up other stat and build paths. Much like the Penetration stats, these will be important to prioritize up until a point, and from there builds will want to seek out other sources of power.

To tie things up in the proc set and Critical topics for this Update, we’re also making a fairly significant adjustment that we hope the previously mentioned changes will prevent from becoming too out of hand: Proc sets that scale with your Weapon or Spell Damage, Magicka, or Stamina will now once again be able to Critically strike in Update 32. By doing this, in addition to reducing the burst potential when stacking these sets and limiting the amount they can Critically strike for, we hope to give these sets some much needed love in PvE situations where they’ve struggled to maintain viability after the removal of their ability to critically strike in ye years of olde. There will be additional balance adjustments to these values to try and prevent them from becoming the best in slot, and we’ll have rules on which ones can and cannot crit, so keep your eyes peeled for the list and details in the PTS patch notes!

Aside from these changes and the usual bug fixing and less flashy/global adjustments (like some long overdue Dragonknight love), we have one more “big” change coming this Update. As mentioned before, hybridization improvements have been a push in many Updates ever since Champion Point 2.0 was released in Update 29, and it’s something we’re continuing with as we see a lot of the good it does. ESO has always tried to hold itself to the mantra of “play the way you want” but a lot of our stats and ability calculations actively push against this concept in ways we find less than ideal. In Update 32, we’re taking the next big approach to change the concept of what a hybrid is by making all item sets grant “hybrid” stats. This means sets that grant Weapon Damage will now grant Weapon and Spell Damage, Spell Penetration will be Physical and Spell Penetration, and Spell Critical will be Weapon and Spell Critical. With this change, we hope to open up builds to new abilities and ideas, make the game more digestible and understandable to newer players, and empower you with choices when creating your dream build.

Our focus with this upcoming PTS update will be heavily concentrated on ensuring that the item set proc adjustments with critting and prevention release in a way that improves the gameplay balance, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on those topics. We look forward to seeing the myriad of discussions that pop up, as we know there will be much to theory craft and mull over. Thanks for reading and see you in Tamriel!

Can you do us ALL a favor? since your capping stats now can you please put in the stats tooltips and character profiles what the limits are? what are these hard caps?

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Greasytengu wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

Also a little scared of DK love being called out specifically....last time DKs got any attention we got that stupid rock skill.

So much this. Whenever I see the word "love" I start to get paranoid.

remember when vampires needed some love before Greymoor....

Funny enough Vampires have the one ability that can save you from sets like Dark Convergence.

hands0medevil

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

So... umm... Who else is moving to Ravenwatch ?

You mean Aeter.... you know what

woe

Marto wrote: »

So we're basically looking at

• Burst damage proc sets now share a global cooldown of 1 second, preventing multiple damaging effects from being dealt all at once.
• Introduction of a critical damage/critical healing cap. Similarly to penetration, players will be encouraged to improve their crit damage only to a certain point, and then focus on other aspects.
• Proc sets can crit once again.
• All item sets will now provide hybrid stats.

That last one is... wild, to say the least. It's not really that bad of an idea, imo. But it really boils down the distinction of magicka/stamina even more.

Item sets are hybrid, ultimate abilities are hybrid, CP bonuses are hybrid, enemy debufs are hybrid, light and heavy attack damage is hybrid...

The only things that are not hybridized are regular active abilities, food items, potions, poisons and player buffs.
I think that's too few things that depend on your magicka/stamina.

SimpleN00b

Enabling crit dmg to proc sets is going to damage PVP badly.

[snip]
[edited for bashing]

tripp

Stares disinterestingly in Malacath

Greasytengu

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Greasytengu wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

Also a little scared of DK love being called out specifically....last time DKs got any attention we got that stupid rock skill.

So much this. Whenever I see the word "love" I start to get paranoid.

remember when vampires needed some love before Greymoor....

Funny enough Vampires have the one ability that can save you from sets like Dark Convergence.

I kinda liked the pre-Greymoor version of mist more to be honest.

Decimus

At this point they must be trying to drive away the remaining PvP player base. [snip]

Giving burst procs a 1s CD is probably the dumbest thing imaginable and kills the viability of many classes/builds in PvP.

What are you going to do on a stamblade for instance when some dodge roll/cloak spammer doesn't drop into execute from your burst anymore? This just makes the game infinitely worse to play for classes/builds without good undodgeable damage.

Meanwhile on classes with delayed (undodgeable) burst you can just build for max stats (as you benefit from them more than say, stamblade) and time instakill burst to deal with people spamming dodge roll/cloak/streaking away.

Literally no one complained about burst procs (especially the ones with counterplay) before this, apart from the Hrothgar/Dark Convergence that were added previous patch.

Stacking multiple burst procs was already balanced by the weapon/spell damage scaling.


Making most sets hybrid is also a terrible idea.

When everyone is a "hybrid" due to good sets granting both stats, no one is a stamina or a magicka build - just put your attributes into health and there you go, "hybrid".

No meaningful choice whatsoever when making builds and everything starts playing the same way.


[snip]
[edited for advertising]

AdamLAD

Battle spirit should prevent damage procs from critting. I do not care is theres a cooldown. Stamina hits like an absolute truck with a single proc already never mind if it crits. Amazing change for PvE but DO NOT allow it to crit in PvP unless you want to give us more easily accessible sources of critical resistance

Nord_Raseri

If my dps dips back down to (or below) 70k, again, the "change fatigue" will become a breaking point for me. I'm so tired of fine-tuning, or even completely changing, my main over weeks to make sure I can still hit numbers required by endgame guilds to be allowed in vet dlc trials and especially hm runs.

Azurya

finally we will no longer die in pvp, imagine that!
all gets nerfed, oh merfed was not the word, rescaled is the word(!), to one homogenous mass.
I see probs on the horizon occuring....

K9002

I'm watching the stream and at last I realized that since the whole year is themed after Mehrunes Dagon, the prince of revolutions and change, the whole game is flipped upside down and sideways every patch. Very meta.

Dragonlord573

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

like some long overdue Dragonknight love

Delicious, finally some good news

renne

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Our focus with this upcoming PTS update will be heavily concentrated on ensuring that the item set proc adjustments with critting and prevention release in a way that improves the gameplay balance, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on those topics.

Will you though? Recent history with the pts, bugs and overly broken things still being pushed live without any comment kinda makes me feel like you don't really care or pay attention to the feedback or discussions from the pts. 🤷‍♀️ It'd sure be nice to see that proven wrong.

AScarlato

Can we get a no-proc battlegrounds? I'm mostly a battlegrounds player when I'm not roleplaying and it really hasn't been fun at all since the proc sets became present in every match. I also have been taking a bit of a break waiting to see what they do about them.

While "play your way" sounds great, I feel you are just removing a lot of variety and decision making. This game was already very lenient in creating builds and how you want to play but I feel these changes, I don't know...cheapen any decisions we make with class and gearing. It seems dull to me, even if this was all just flavor.

Grandchamp1989

ESO meta makes my head hurt..

-DOT meta!
>Okey we go DOTs, let me refarm/transmute/gold all my gear
-No! I mean PROC meta!
>Okey we go proc, let me refarm/transmute/gold all my gear
-NO! Crit! Meta!
>Okey we got crit! , let me refarm/transmute/gold all my gear and farm leads for the new mythic
-NO! Everyone back to procs, but now.. complicated!
>........

I love you Zos.. but bruh..

ESO_Nightingale

Myux wrote: »

are you gonna make magblade and magden playable in pvp yet

My guess is no.

Bl4ckR3alm93

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

In relation to this, we’re also aiming our sights on reigning in some of the power creep that’s been coming into the game as of late, particularly affecting PvE. The dominance of Critical hits in ESO is by no means new, and despite the reduction to the overall sourcing of it, we’re still seeing it win out by a significant margin when compared to other stats. Rather than outright nerfing Critical Chance or Potency (Damage and Healing) and hurting builds that aren’t really doing more than we expect, we’ve decided to move forward with a hard cap to Critical Damage and Healing. It is our hope that this keeps Critical Chance and Potency as viable and powerful stats but also helps open up other stat and build paths. Much like the Penetration stats, these will be important to prioritize up until a point, and from there builds will want to seek out other sources of power.

Sound like "We just nerf PVE"

This is not a nerf bro think about it. You can run combos like Bahsei and Relequan on a Mag characters now and Relequan can crit now?! Now you can run Medusa on Stam characters, Deadly Strike on MagPlar, and DLC sets that we normally dont think about like Widowmaker. That DPS is gonna shoot up and now people can run monster sets again as a option. I hope the Dragonknight changes are good!

Thannazzar

If the intent is greater hybridisation why as a magicka character am I still forced to wield a stick?

Auroan

code65536 wrote: »

In relation to this, we’re also aiming our sights on reigning in some of the power creep that’s been coming into the game as of late, particularly affecting PvE.

Hopefully, you will also reign in some of the enemy power creep that’s been coming into the game as of late, particularly affecting the incoming damage levels and DPS checks in endgame PvE.

This^

-Trying to prevent power creep and then coming out with content that forces groups to hit DPS checks that only the top 1% of players can do is counter productive.

-Basing your endgame content around the performance of the top 1%, then trying to "lower the ceiling" (and in some cases, "raise the floor") to accommodate for the other 99% is also counter productive. Not only did you fail to achieve your goal because the rest of the community still won't be able to achieve that feat, but now the top 1% struggle more. It only made things worse for everyone because the damage, health and time constraints on the content remains the same, but player potential to complete that content has been further restricted.

-Balance is great, and I'm not sure how severe you're trying to restrict power creep, but in any RPG, power creep is inevitable because it's part of the progression. Leveling up, upgrading equipment, etc., is all part of the genre. Watching your character grow stronger and overcome tough challenges while making prior challenges easier is a natural part of the genre. The summarized traditional roadmap for RPG's would be "weak character becomes strong". But in ESO, it seems as though it's becoming more like "average character becomes above average", especially since level-scaling is a thing. Don't get me wrong, the key to achieving high DPS and clearing hard content in this game is rotation/player skill more then it is gear, which I'm all about (things that you tried to curb as well, IE, that huge LA/HA change that luckily never went through), but flat-lining everything completely eliminates that sense of progression and character growth; the defining features of any RPG.

This is still the best MMO on the market IMO and I love the game. That's why I can sometimes be critical about it, because I don't want something great to get ruined. I'm totally all for the hybrid idea, and the crit damage cap that's similar to pen cap is interesting and I'm honestly okay with it, I think it raises potential to mix things up (like Mundus stone choices). I totally understand. But at the same time, if you're going to restrict and limit players potential in an RPG, you have to consider how that's going to effect not just the 1%, but the other 99% that still struggle with content (Vets, HM's and Trifecta's).
If you're going to lower the ceiling on players, you have to remember to do the same to the appropriate content.

ebix_

what about you make proc sets do not crit in pvp ? why in every patch there is one line that sound like a very bad idea and every one knows it except devs !

Shadow_CH

Yeah Rich Lambert was right... no big changes this year